"Negative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... regarded as the bulbous root of a nervous plant whose branches grow downwards—is twofold; to affect, and to be affected. In its active or positive condition it affects the whole of the vital and muscular processes in the man, finding expression in vital action. In its passive or negative state it is affected by impressions coming to it in different ways through the sense-organs, resulting in nervous and mental action. It is this latter phase of brain-function with ...
— How to Read the Crystal - or, Crystal and Seer • Sepharial
... rage for saying something, when there's nothing to be said." Mr. Burney then asked him whether he had seen the letter which Warburton had written in answer to a pamphlet addressed "To the most impudent Man alive[981]." He answered in the negative. Mr. Burney told him it was supposed to be written by Mallet. The controversy now raged between the friends of Pope and Bolingbroke; and Warburton and Mallet were the leaders ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... hardly see her horse's head—a thing of itself that seemed to have infinite powers for mischief, and which no amount of argument ever induced any normally constituted woman to believe was the mere negative absence of light, and not a terrible entity potent for all sorts of mischief. Then that wailing howl that rose and fell betimes; no wind ever made such a noise she felt sure. There were those shining white gleams which came from the little pools of water on the road, looking like ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... Ashe smiled as he rose to shake hands. (Carr's friendliness seemed a trifle negative, reserved; he had ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... palace that evening, De Froilette inquired whether Lord Cloverton had arrived, and being answered in the negative, remained at the head of the stairs, speaking a few words to this acquaintance and to that, bowing a well-turned compliment to one fair lady, or meeting another's pleasantry with an answering jest. He ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... Street, W.. before the 14th January, 1910. No replies received after that date were admitted. The Simian League, which has agents in every constituency, acted according to the replies received, and treated the lack of reply as a negative. Of 1375 circulars sent, 309 remained unanswered, 264 were answered in the negative, 201 gave a qualified affirmative, all the rest (no less than 799) a clear and, in some cases, an enthusiastic adherence to our principles. It is a sufficient proof of the power of the League and the ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... is being blown down by the hurricane, small fungi or other minute vegetation spring up in its rifts; every social shock of the day is promptly scened and 'tagged' at the minor theatres; and shall this war escape its novels? Mr. WOOD votes in the negative, and supplies us with a somewhat sensational yet not badly manufactured article, which, like the melo-dramas referred to, will be received with delight by a certain line of patrons, and, we presume, be also relished. It is a first-rate specimen ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... itself, but it is made doubly difficult by novels, which depict the ways of the world and of men who do not exist in real life. But these are accepted with the credulity of youth, and become incorporated with the mind; so that now, in the place of purely negative ignorance, a whole framework of wrong ideas, which are positively wrong, crops up, subsequently confusing the schooling of experience and representing the lesson it teaches in a false light. If the youth was previously in the dark, he will now be led astray by a will-o'-the-wisp: ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... affirmative and striking sense of the character attributed to our thrifty friend, was detached from this delay, filled up by a negative movement ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... the Chancellor of the Exchequer gave any authority, and which Mr. Hudson triumphantly refuted, in his speech on the Bill next day. But Lord John further said, that he was resolved to meet the second reading with a direct negative, and that he would resign if the Government were out-voted; an announcement which, although it lacked argument, had ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... Ann Whitworth. When asked if he liked to talk about his childhood days, he answered: "Yes Ma'am, but is you one of dem pension ladies?" The negative reply was an evident disappointment to Alec, but it ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... however, lost its validity when residents "elsewhere" had to allow that no traces of infanticide could be found in their neighbourhood; and so on. Luckily, still greater comfort is to be found in the following argument,—a rare example of proving a negative—from which it will be readily seen that female infanticide on any abnormal scale is quite beyond the bounds of the possible. Those who have even a bowing acquaintance with Chinese social life will grant that every boy, at about the age of eighteen, ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... Cannot Stand If You Do Not like Him, Let Him Alone In the Course of Ultimate Extinction Institution of Slavery in the States Where it Exists It Will Become All One Thing, or All the Other Kingcraft Lincoln and Douglas Debates Man Cannot Prove a Negative Mexico Nationalization of Slavery Negro Cannot Make a Choice No Legal Power to Choose No Wrong Without its Remedy People Were Better off for Being Ridden Perfect an Understanding Without Talking as with It Physical Difference Between the Two Political Effects of Their ...
— Widger's Quotations from Abraham Lincoln's Writings • David Widger
... of negative corroboration of this is offered by a work of high rank, the famous Speculum Regale, written in Old Norse in Norway in the middle of the thirteenth century. It contains much trustworthy information on Greenland; it tells, "with bald ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... descendants. But we continually overrate the perfection of the geological record, and falsely infer, because certain genera or families have not been found beneath a certain stage, that they did not exist before that stage. In all cases positive palaeontological evidence may be implicitly trusted; negative evidence is worthless, as experience has so often shown. We continually forget how large the world is, compared with the area over which our geological formations have been carefully examined; we forget that ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... Why should it? If it did we should doubt whether the love were true. Our own private belief is that the course of true love is always uncommonly rough, but collective human wisdom has seen fit to put the idea in the negative ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... in a free condition in metallic conductors. Each electron carries an electric charge of electrostatic units and produces a magnetic field in a plane perpendicular to the direction of its motion. This brings us to the atom, which may be described as a number of electrons positive and negative in stable equilibrium, this condition being brought about by the mutual repulsion of the like and attraction for the opposite electrification so arranged as to nullify each other. Having thus established the law of the equilibrium of electrons, ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... weight upon her. Somehow, they were not in the current of good times that the other girls and boys of their ages were having. If she suggested brightly that they go over to the Parmalees' or the Morans' and see if the young people were playing tennis, she knew that Charlotte would delicately negative the idea: "They've got their sets all made up, M'ma, and one hates to, unless they specially ask one, don't you know?" They might go, of course, and greet their friends decorously, and watch the game smilingly for a while. Then they would come home with Fraulein, not forgetting to say ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... nor any other art whatever, this cloud-walker in the realm of abstract morals. Yet he attained to moral and thereby even to political importance. In an utterly wretched and cowardly age his courage and his negative virtues told powerfully on the multitude; he even formed a school, and there were individuals—it is true they were but few—who in their turn copied and caricatured afresh the living pattern of a philosopher. On the same cause depended also his political influence. As he was the only conservative ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the doctor's new runabout, driving the high-stepping bay, natty in a "brand-new" tan harness—the first Hattie had ever seen. He asked her to come with him for a drive, and again her mother's nipping negative influenced her decision against the pleadings of ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... sugar? Will future varieties of wheat and other grain produce heavier crops than our present varieties? These questions cannot be positively answered; but it is certain that we ought to be cautious in answering by a negative. In some lines of variation the limit has probably been reached. Youatt believes that the reduction of bone in some of our sheep has already been carried so far that it entails great delicacy of constitution.[595] But seeing the great improvement ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... but he limited himself strictly to the home industry of adventurer, preferring to exploit the assured rather than to explore the unknown. Lulu's intercourse with him had been restricted of recent years to the negative processes of being out of town when he called on her, and short of money when he wrote to her. Now, however, she bethought herself of his eminent suitability for the direction of a treasure-seeking experiment; if anyone could extract gold from an unpromising situation it would certainly ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... may so legislate, that is, it may have acts and records, but each other State SHALL give to the records and proceedings of all the rest 'full faith and credit.' Does not this enactment thoroughly negative all theories of the exclusive supremacy of State rights? Independent sovereign States do not, in the absence of treaties, give any faith or credit to the records or proceedings of other independent states. Our States are not only compelled to do this, by this section, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... hypothesis is simply that we have no experimental knowledge of its being able to produce the mutual infertility which is so striking a character of species. This difficulty is, in the first place, the difficulty of proving a negative. It might be possible to prove that its operation actually does produce species; it will always be impossible to prove that, in the past, natural selection, and no other known or unknown agency or combination of agencies, had a share in the process. All naturalists are ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... not made up of the good of the parts, and whether as a part he have not some right to his share of good, the dexterous logical arithmetician answers, that B is totally out of the question, because B is a negative quantity in the equation. And if obstinate B, still conceiving himself aggrieved, objects to this total annihilation of himself and his interests, and asks why the lot of extinction should not fall upon the debtor C, or even upon the calculator himself, by whatever letter of the ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... frustrate the intentions of the founders.[254] Private charity, he thinks, would meet the distress which might afterwards arise, though humanity imperiously requires that it should be 'sparingly administered.' Upon this duty he writes a sensible chapter.[255] To his negative proposals Malthus adds a few of the positive kind. He is strongly in favour of a national system of education, and speaks with contempt of the 'illiberal and feeble' arguments opposed to it. The schools, he observes, might ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... in this way, and coming from an ordinary source, would have met with a courteous negative. But the firm of Williams & Mann were under obligations to Mr. Joyce, who had on several occasions indorsed their notes for many thousands of dollars. Besides, all three men were old friends; so Mr. Mann ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... retired location. He knew that it was just as necessary for him to keep out of the sight of the man he sought as it was for the thief to keep outside the pale of his vision. He easily found the photograph gallery of Markham, but nothing of a satisfactory nature developed. True, the negative was at last found with a number 1,761 upon it, but no name, and the artist didn't so much as ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... flowering and not flowering. A zoological classification divides animals into vertebrate and not vertebrate. By continuing the process of division in the same manner, the division is obviously exhaustive of the subject, there being always a negative subdivision to receive any subsequently created or discovered species. Although bifurcate division has been ridiculed by some, it is agreed by highest authority that it is the only plan of division by which one can be sure to have a consistent place for everything, ...
— The Classification of Patents • United States Patent Office
... given, but to appear to the world something that he was not was an art that Bunning and his kind could never acquire—that is their tragedy. It was the fate of Bunning that his boots and spectacles should always negative any attempt that he might make at ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... importance. All Americans are loyal citizens, whichever side they adopt in politics. But the two parties are the positive and negative poles that provide the current of electricity for our nation, and keep it going properly. Also they safeguard our interests by watching ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... persons, and those of respectability, who deposed positively to the prisoner's commanding his soldiers to fire, and himself firing his piece, of which some swore that they saw the smoke and flash, and beheld a man drop at whom it was pointed, with the negative testimony of others, who, though well stationed for seeing what had passed, neither heard Porteous give orders to fire, nor saw him fire himself; but, on the contrary, averred that the first shot was fired by ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... am here is called an affirmative statement. A denial of that, I am not here, is called a negative statement. The words, not, neither, never, none, nothing, etc., are all negative words; that is, they serve to make ...
— Practical Grammar and Composition • Thomas Wood
... of that servant of his who was killed, you remember. I told Pauline I would resent that conduct if it were repeated, and on the same occasion I asked her whether she had engaged herself to him in any shape or form. Her answer was a simple, straightforward negative, and the child is ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... married, of course?" the zenana women will ask when an American Bible-woman calls on them; and, if the answer is in the negative, "Why not? Couldn't they get ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... They murmured a negative, and Stafford begging to be excused, left the room, signing to Howard to follow him. He did not mean it, but his manner, in the abstraction of his grief was as lordly as if he had inherited an earldom of ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... same circumstances as other people. In amazement, she rounded and protruded the lips, opened them, and breathed strongly. It is remarkable that she constantly accompanied her "yes" with the common affirmative nod, and her "no" with our negative shake of the head, as these gestures are by no means universal and do not seem clearly connected with emotion. This, possibly, may be explained by the fact that her ancestors for many generations had used ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... correct." Now I propose to disprove his general law by simply giving one instance of its failing. One instance is quite enough. In logical language, in order to disprove a "universal affirmative," it is enough to prove its contradictory, which is a "particular negative." (I must pause for a digression on Logic, and especially on Ladies' Logic. The universal affirmative "everybody says he's a duck" is crushed instantly by proving the particular negative "Peter ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... arm of his slumbering son. The foremost of the searchers, who kept a phial of vinegar to his nose all the time he remained in the room, then demanded in a low tone whether there were any other of the household infected? The grocer replied in the negative. Upon this, Chowles, whose manner showed he was more than half intoxicated, took off his hat, and bowing obsequiously to the grocer, said, "Shall I prepare you a coffin, Mr. Bloundel?—you are sure to want one, and had better ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... that when he could not conveniently find an audience he created one by his own imagination. This peculiarity of his rendered me good service. Though for some time I understood very little of what he said, and very often misplaced the positive and negative monosyllables which I hazarded occasionally by way of encouragement, he talked vigorously all the same. Like all garrulous people, he was constantly repeating himself; but to this I did not object, for the custom—however disagreeable in ordinary society—was ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... the development of the dynamo and its work in electric lighting and traction. It brought into harmony much fragmentary knowledge which had lain disjointed in the armoury of the physicist since Dufay in France and Franklin in America had investigated their theories of positive and negative frictional electricities, and had connected them with the flash of lightning as seen in Nature. Thus it became a fresh starting point both for ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... having occurred in the icy blast which was blinding him, he perceived, at a short distance in front of him, a cluster of gables and of chimneys shown in relief by the snow. The reverse of a silhouette—a city painted in white on a black horizon, something like what we call nowadays a negative proof. Roofs—dwellings—shelter! He had arrived somewhere at last. He felt the ineffable encouragement of hope. The watch of a ship which has wandered from her course feels some such emotion ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... can commence with electricity which will generate mechanical motion; or to take a simple arithmetical instance: if 10/2 5, then 10/5 2; and therefore if we once recognize the power of thought to produce any results at all, we shall see that the law by which negative thought produces negative results is the same by which positive thought produces positive results. Therefore all our distrust of the law of growth, whether shown in the anxious endeavour to bring pressure to bear from without, or in allowing despair to take the place of cheerful ...
— The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... the negative, he laid his hand upon Moffat's breast and said, "Father, I love you much. Your visit and your presence have made my heart as white as milk. The words of your mouth are sweet as honey, but the words of a resurrection are too great to be heard. I do not wish to hear again about the ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... few hairs on his upper lip—a female attendant holding a looking-glass before him. He was an old man of Arab race, with a long white beard, and he looked sullen and angry. He surveyed me with attention, and inquired of the Moors if I could speak Arabic. Being answered in the negative, he appeared surprised, and continued silent. The surrounding attendants, and especially ladies, were much more inquisitive. They asked a thousand questions, inspected every part of my apparel, searched my pockets, and ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... Sauviat appeared, coming down a path as if she meant to join them; but Veronique drew out her handkerchief and made a negative sign; saying, with an asperity she had never before shown to ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... errors, is to take care to do nothing that will directly or indirectly help the enemy, or hinder the government in carrying on the war. When the clamor against usurpation and tyranny comes from citizens who can claim this negative merit, it may be listened to. When it comes from those who have done what they could to serve their country, it will receive the attention it deserves. Doubtless there may prove to be wrongs which demand righting, but the ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... And different spirits animated the two hosts. The Persians were moved solely by the desire for glory; the Greeks by the stern alternatives of victory, slavery, or death. These differences in strength and motive went far to negative the difference in numbers; and the Greeks, caught like lions in a snare, dashed into the combat with the single feeling that they must ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... little soprano asked me in a shy, conscious way if my friend were quite well. Had I ever fancied his brain affected? I might have answered with a simple negative: I shall always think a little better of myself, Steve, that then and there, in the full bewitchment of Miss Sparrow's presence, I had manliness enough to speak a good word for Timothy—to tell her that, spite of some eccentricities, he had the finest brain, as well as the warmest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... himself without having it look as though nobody wanted to be seen with him. And he's a stranger over there, and doesn't need to get chummy with the girls. The boys here all know me, and ask me to go, and—a man, you see, can just be passive and nothing happens. But a girl's got to be downright negative, and it's no joke. One misses so many good times. You see the cases ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... unfortunately, that most of all affected the celebrated good humors. In the first place Mrs. Condon spent an increasingly large part of the day before the mirror of her dressing-table, but without any proportionate pleasure; or, if there was a proportion kept, it exhibited the negative result of a growing annoyance. "God knows why they all show at once," she exclaimed discontentedly, seated—as customary—before the eminently truthful reflection of a newly discovered set of lines. "I'm not old enough to begin to look ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... earth. The earth is the nursery-ground of heaven. The Angels are therefore not Angels as such ('Angelic Wisdom,' 57), they are transformed through their close conjunction with God; which conjunction God never refuses, because the essence of God is not negative, but essentially active. The spiritual angels pass through three natures of love, because man is only regenerated through successive stages ('True Religion'). First, the love of self: the supreme expression of this love is human genius, whose works ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... "Have given negative results for the most part. I found Doctor Norbury, at the British Museum, very friendly and helpful; so friendly, in fact, that I am thinking whether I may not be able to enlist his help in certain private researches of my own, with reference to the changes effected ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... angrily demanded it, that M. de Blacas, the king's premier, consented to draw up the letters-patent in a different style. They read: "The king appoints Hortense Eugenie, included in the treaty of the 11th of April, Duchess of St. Leu." This was, to be sure, merely a negative and disguised recognition of the former rank of the queen; but it was, at least no longer ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... first of all, calls men to repentance, bids them turn away from their natural selves, and, to find that other and realer self, enter the straight and narrow gate. The call is not an arbitrary command, born of a negative and repressive spirit. It is a profound exhortation based upon a fundamental law of human progress, having behind it the inviolable sanction of the truth. Such preaching would have the authentic note. It is self-verifying. It stirs to answer that quality—both moral ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... his first impression of her, for first impressions are nearly always right; he should have sought for the reason of so much charm proving charmless, so much positive attraction proving so negative in effect. But he did not. He just took her as he found her and was glad ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... scoops the stakes—wins dead easy, and world without end. The man who puts his doubloons on the negative either never saw a woman until after she was dead, or didn't know what ailed him when under her hypnotic influence. Perhaps he imagined that he had a chronic case of yellow jaundice, was threatened ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... negative; and as Caracalla exclaimed, "So much the better!" a significant smile played on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... as this attitude of yours is merely passive, sullen, negative, as it mainly is, despairing of our capacity and anticipating a future of gloom, it is no game for man or woman. It is certainly the opposite of that for which I plead. Do not stand aloof, despising, disbelieving, ...
— Courage • J. M. Barrie
... was a Wee Free Presbyterian Congregationalist; and for the sixth time the worthy recipient of this news had retired to consult War Office Sealed List of Religions A.F.31 to find out if he was entitled to be anything of the sort. In each case the answer had been in the negative, and Vane had been entered as "Other Denominations" and regarded with suspicion. One stout sergeant had even gone so far as to attempt to convert him to Unitarianism; another showed him the list, and asked him ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... such wonderful eyes should transform everything to beauty," he smiled. "In a negative way ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... little doubt, of course, that under a voluntary blocking regime, even with adequate notice, some children will be exposed to signal bleed; and we need not discount the possibility that a graphic image could have a negative impact on a young child. It must be remembered, however, that children will be exposed to signal bleed under time channeling as well. . . . The record is silent as to the comparative effectiveness ...
— Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) Ruling • United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania
... begun about whether Jane should or should not marry a certain person, Jane representing the affirmative and her father the negative, had taken on new aspects, had grown and altered, and had, to be brief, become a contest between the masculine Johnson and the feminine Johnson as to which would take the count. Not that this appeared on the surface. The masculine ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... that he was hopelessly astray—one usually is on such occasions—but this time, it so happened, he was singularly right. Before one thing only his ready invention stopped every time. This vileness, this notion of unworthiness in Vance, could not be negative merely. A man with that face was no inactive weakling. The motive he was at such pains to conceal, betraying its existence by that very fact, moved, surely, towards aggressive action. Disguised, it never slept. Vance was sharply on the alert. He had a plan deep out of sight. And Henriot ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... with a thick layer of peroxide of lead. On leaving the bath it undergoes various preparations and several washings, and is then fit to be mounted along with others to form an accumulator ready to be charged and to work. The second, or negative, plate is covered with a thick sponge of lead. It is carefully washed, preserved in water with exclusion of air, and submitted to a very considerable pressure. After this operation it presents the appearance ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... one we had passed the village of Hwang-shih-kiang, and were entering that part of the river I described as a fine site for a Highland deer forest, when the 'Lee' hoisted the 'negative' (the signal to stop). She had got on a rock, where, on our way up, we had found no bottom at ten fathoms. I landed immediately, and found the people engaged in quarrying and manufacturing lime from the hills on the right bank. ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... venture to say, of absolute, though, no doubt, largely negative faith. Neither memory of pain that is past, nor apprehension of pain to come, once arises to give him the smallest concern. In some way, doubtless very vague, for his being itself is a border-land of awful mystery, he is aware of being surrounded, enfolded ...
— A Dish Of Orts • George MacDonald
... inquire his business. The youth returned an evasive answer, and withdrew; but the next day he was there again. On this occasion, Mr. Bloundel pointed him out to Leonard Holt, and asked him if he had seen him before. The youth's back being towards them, the apprentice unhesitatingly answered in the negative, but as the subject of investigation turned the next moment, and looked up, revealing features of feminine delicacy and beauty, set off by long flowing jet-black ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... was certain to find a welcome at Mr Allworthy's table, to whom misfortunes were ever a recommendation, when they were derived from the folly or villany of others, and not of the unfortunate person himself. Besides this negative merit, the doctor had one positive recommendation;—this was a great appearance of religion. Whether his religion was real, or consisted only in appearance, I shall not presume to say, as I am not ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... argument," he went on. "You know, of course, that the force of magnetic attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distances separating the magnet and the attracted particles, and also that each magnetized particle had two poles, a positive and a negative pole, or a north pole and a south pole, as they ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative by suppressing every legislative attempt to restrain this execrable commerce. And, that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms against us, and purchase that liberty ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... becomes (especially in times of pressure and competition) very important to inquire if it be not worth while to cease paying wool and fur prices for mere water. This question was answered long ago in the negative by our Continental neighbours, and in Germany, France, and Switzerland official conditioning establishments have been founded by the Governments of those countries for the purpose of testing lots of purchased wool and silk, etc., for moisture, ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... Another politician in his circle was Fitzherbert, a man of whom Burke had the highest opinion, and of whom Johnson made the curious remark that he was the most "acceptable of men because his good qualities were negative and he offended no one." Fitzherbert spoke of Johnson in the House of Commons as his friend and called him "a ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... therefore, that we may justly award to the medical pages of the Compendium not only the rather negative praise of being written as well as the work of any of Gilbert's contemporaries, but the more positive credit of being thoroughly abreast of the medical science of its age and country, an "Abstract and brief ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... man and woman who truly loved each other were cast away upon a desert island, he would tire of her long before she wearied of him. The sequence of attraction and repulsion, the ultimate balance of positive and negative, are familiar electrical phenomena. Is it unreasonable to suppose that the supreme form of attraction is governed by the ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... elements, whether spiritual or material, that menace the life of men, of animals, and of plants. According to the one theory the fire is a stimulant, according to the other it is a disinfectant; on the one view its virtue is positive, on the other it is negative. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the land; and he would support it, not against the crown or the aristocratic party only, but against the representatives of the people themselves. This was not a government of balances. It would be a strange thing if two hundred peers should have it in their power to defeat by their negative what had been done by the people of England. I have taken my part in political connections and political quarrels for the purpose of advancing justice and the dominion of reason, and I hope I shall never prefer the means, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... attentively, and I had read the Vestiges with due care; but neither of them afforded me any good ground for changing my negative and critical attitude. As for the Vestiges, I confess that the book simply irritated me by the prodigious ignorance and thoroughly unscientific habit of mind manifested by the writer. If it had any influence on me at all, it set me against evolution; and the only review I ever have qualms of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... air filter to the open end of the pressure tubing; open the screw clamp gradually, and allow filtered air to enter the flask, to abolish the negative pressure. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... have a special "distinction" or gift, which it is the task of the educator to discover. This distinction found, the child achieves happiness in creation and contribution. Self-realization demands knowledge and training: the doing of right is not a negative but a positive act; it is not without significance that the Greek word for sin is literally "missing the mark." Christianity emphasizes above all else the worth of the individual, yet recognizes that the individual can develop only in society. And if the individual be of great worth, this ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... has first learned the true theory and practical intent of the Constitution, in giving to the Executive a qualified negative on the legislative power of Congress. Far from being an odious, dangerous, or kingly prerogative, this power, as vested in the President, is nothing but a qualified copy of the famous veto power vested in the tribunes of the people among the Romans, and intended to ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... to say against Monsieur de Fischtaminel: he does not gamble, he is indifferent to women, he doesn't like wine, and he has no expensive fancies: he possesses, as you said, all the negative qualities which make husbands passable. Then, what is the matter with him? Well, mother, he has nothing to do. We are together the whole blessed day! Would you believe that it is during the night, when we are the most closely united, that I am the most ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... apparently have occurred, if they occurred at all, at a period not earlier than the XXVI. dynasty, which constitutes a minimum difference of seven hundred years. Yet, in view of the decalogue, with its curious analogy to the negative confession in the Book of the Dead; in view also of a practice surgical and possibly hygienic which, customary among the Egyptians, was adopted by the Jews; in view, further, of ceremonies and symbols peculiarly Egyptian ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... attaining its assent to those measures. During the recess a question was raised by the Crown lawyers as to the competency of the proctors to vote, while admitting their right to be present as councillors and assistants; this question, on an appeal to England, was declared in the negative, whereupon that learned body were excluded from all share in the future Irish legislation of this reign. Hence, whoever else are answerable for the election of 1541 the proctors of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... most clownish personality. I do not know; certainly some great and fine things came from him; but whether they were motions of his own soul (if he had one), or whether the Gods for Rome's sake took advantage of his quite negative being, and prompted it to their own purposes, who can say?—Sitting down, and keeping still, and saying nothing, the old man could look rather fine, even majestic; one saw traces in him of the Claudian ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... we die," Buddhism starts with the idea of the entire abnegation of self. But a self-denial that is undertaken, not for God, and in God for man, but merely to secure one's own peace and well-being—what is this but selfishness after all? Enjoining a rule of life that is essentially negative—the natural product of that blank despair of the world and of human nature which led to the Great Renunciation—Buddhism, as a religious system, has yielded but scanty fruits of positive holiness, of active benevolence. And ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... sailors, their life delays growth, as shewn "by the great difference between the statures of soldiers and sailors at the ages of seventeen and eighteen years." Mr. B.A. Gould endeavoured to ascertain the nature of the influences which thus act on stature; but he arrived only at negative results, namely that they did not relate to climate, the elevation of the land, soil, nor even "in any controlling degree" to the abundance or the need of the comforts of life. This latter conclusion is directly opposed to ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... clear also that the supposed absence of words rests solely upon the introspective testimony of the persons experimented upon. I cannot think that there is sufficient certainty of their reliability in this negative observation to make us accept a difficult and revolutionary view of thought, merely because they have failed to observe the presence of words or their equivalent in their thinking. I think it far more likely, especially in view of the fact that ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... embryologists of different persuasions. It is perhaps easy to underestimate the impact and general importance of Harvey's work in view of these qualifications, and so it should be remarked that both positive and negative features of De Generatione influenced profoundly subsequent ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... A negative shake of the golden head and ringleted curls was the answer, though the cupid mouth and the blue eyes smiled with tenderness. They stood very close to another, like poles of a magnet twixt which ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... to be wasted?" she asked calmly; and thus questioned, there was no alternative but to reply in the negative. It would never do for the head of the house to pose as an advocate of extravagance; but all the same he was irritated by the necessity, and with Agnes ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... letterboxes in spats, militant checks, high collar and a choker tie, which, yearning toward his ears, gave him the appearance of one who had floundered up out of his clothes for the third and last time. He came forward, frowned at the group, scowled at the negative distractions of the reading-room, and finally dragged over his chair just ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... fig. 883, by turning the flowers first to the right and then to the left and making the stalks come out underneath the ears of corn. In order to reverse the position of the flowers thus, you will have to make two tracings of the spray, one negative and one positive. ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... with that peculiar back-handed shake of the right forefinger which is the most expressive negative in ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... his on a priori principles: Aristotle formed his by an analysis of existing constitutions; Polybius found his realised for him in the actual world of fact. Aristotle criticised the deductive speculations of Plato by means of inductive negative instances, but Polybius will not take the 'Cloud City' of the Republic into account at all. He compares it to an athlete who has never run on 'Constitution Hill,' to a statue so beautiful that it is entirely removed from the ordinary ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... conversation; and he hastily asked, 'Did Mr. Falconer sleep here last night?' Rose, not much pleased with the abruptness of the first question which the young stranger had addressed to her, answered drily in the negative, and the conversation again ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... be an art-critic, save as complying with Blake's negative injunction or qualification "not to be connoisseured out of my senses," and I do not know what is the technical word in the arts of design corresponding to [Greek: dianoia] ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... nor negative; it's just neutral. So we separate it into two parts; and all we have to do, when we want to get away from the earth or any other magnetic-sphere, is to aim a bunch of positive current at the corresponding pole of the planet, ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... then began to offer him bribes, one after the other, making the man's eyes glisten when he promised him his double gun; but directly after the man made a negative sign, merely told him to finish his meal, and returned to ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... basin, which a waiter carried round upon his head; those that liked the person to be chosen dropped their ball into the basin without altering its figure, and those who disliked him pressed it between their fingers, and made it flat; and this signified as much as a negative voice. And if there were but one of these pieces in the basin, the suitor was rejected, so desirous were they that all the members of the company should be agreeable to each other. The basin was called caddichus, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... swiftly obeyed her desire. He then asked her if the dinner were to be kept for Monsieur Pierre, who had not yet returned. She did not know what to say, but lest he should wonder at her ignorance of Piers' doings, she answered in the negative, and ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... the important question whether the end of the new community would be better attained with the usual religious vows or without them was decided in the negative. They were not definitely rejected in the beginning; but starting without them, the Fathers were willing to allow experience to show whether or not they should be resumed. The lapse of time but confirmed the view that the voluntary agreement and the bond of fraternal ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... east, there are no sensational evidences of the great conflict of September—only, here and there, in an unploughed field, or among the fresh brown furrows, a little mound with a wooden cross and a wreath on it. Nevertheless, one begins to perceive, by certain negative signs, that one is already in another world. On the cold February day when we turned out of Meaux and took the road to the Argonne, the change was chiefly shown by the curious absence of life in the villages through which we passed. Now and then a lonely ploughman and his team ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... She would have been amazed, unbelieving, had he told her that it was her beauty; that he was clinging rather desperately to the unlovely number, which had no individuality and whose features were altogether neutral and negative. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... armed boats frequently, pushed inside the inlets, seizing coasters, and at times even attacking the gunboats. While the positive loss thus inflicted was considerable, it will readily be understood that it was much exceeded by the negative effect, in deterring from movement, and reducing navigation to the limits of ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... fascination which Alexander exercised over everybody. If it is possible to explain it at all, which is more than doubtful, I should think that it might be accounted for on some such theory as this. Hermione was negative as compared with Paul, but in comparison with Alexander she was positive. It is clear that if this were so she must have experienced two totally different sets of impressions, according as she was with the one or ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... First, negative individuality. Second, the imperfect form of a verb. Third, the ablative form of a noun signifying a portion of the ...
— Harper's Young People, September 14, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the negative, but added that Mr. Arden was waiting. The Earl ordered him to be sent in; and the Messenger accordingly entered, bearing on his face an air of triumph and insolence which provoked Wilton's anger a ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... written nothing but the 'Ernest Maltravers' books, you would think perhaps more highly of him. Do you not think it possible now? It is his most impotent struggling into poetry, which sets about proving a negative of genius on him—that, which the Athenaeum praises as 'respectable attainment in various walks of literature'—! like the Athenaeum, isn't it? and worthy praise, to be administered by professed judges of art? What is to be expected of the public, when the ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... thence into the language of Puritanism for the living Christian, as in Baxter's famous book, The Saints' Rest. The exact meaning of sanctus is extremely difficult to fix, and this may be why it was found to be a convenient word for a type of character negative rather than positive. The lawyers defined it as meaning what is sancitum by the State,[979] without tracing it back to a time when the State was a religious as well as a civil entity. But there was ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... domestic relations,—it cannot be that anybody ought to have all this, and yet do nothing for it; nor do I believe that any one's duties are bounded by the half-animal instincts of loving husband, wife, or children, and the negative virtue of wronging no man: besides we are villainously wronging many men.... What would I not give to be able to awaken in others my own feeling of this ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... subject. There is always a negative lesson implied, when the positive lesson is expressed; and there is in like manner a positive implied, whenever it is the negative that is expressed. As for example, when the child, from the history of Cain and Abel, draws the negative lesson that he should not hate his brother; the opposite of that lesson is equally binding in the positive form, that he should love his brother. And when, from the history of Job, the positive lesson is drawn that we ought to be patient; the negative of that lesson becomes ...
— A Practical Enquiry into the Philosophy of Education • James Gall
... word apologise, a cloud passed across the features of Athos, Porthos smiled contemptuously, Aramis made a negative sign. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... last cars stood a young girl and three men. One of the men was elderly, with white hair and side whiskers. The other two were young and well dressed. The girl was of our best patrician type—the type that may know little, think little, say little, and generally amount to little, and yet carry its negative qualities with so used an air of polite society as to raise them by sheer force to the dignity of positive virtues. From head to foot she was faultlessly groomed. From eye to attitude she was languidly ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... the title of the office to which each of them is to be elected. Ballot, from the French, means a little ball, and is used in voting. Ballots are of different colors; those of one color signifying an affirmative vote, or yes; those of another color a negative vote, or no. From this has come the application of the word ballot to the written or printed ticket now used ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... he murmured, "whether personality survives or whether it, too, when up against the irresistible, dissolves and resolves itself into a series of negative reactions?" ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... to one when Berry's antagonist rose again to his feet. Shortly he opened his case. Nothing, he said, was more difficult to prove than a negative. But for one thing, it might have gone hard with an innocent man. Everything looked very black, but, as luck would have it, most fortunately for himself, Mr. Bladder could prove incontestably that upon the twenty-second of ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... glossy. Whiskers that belonged rather to the chin, leaving bare the jawbone, expressive of firmness and resolve. Firm thin lips, handsomely moustached; when parted, displaying teeth well set and of dazzling whiteness. A face that might be called beautiful; and yet its beauty was of that negative order which we admire in the serpent and the pard. The smile was cynical; the eye cold, yet bright; but the brightness was altogether animal—more the light of instinct than intellect. A face that presented in its expression a ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... the churches to a need for more united efforts along lines of social and moral reform carries with it a great responsibility for women, who, representing two-thirds of the numerical power of the churches, are in their present disfranchised condition negative factors in those broader fields of activity which now constitute church work. Women are beginning to realize that they are wasting their efforts and energies in trying to effect moral and social reforms dependent upon legislative action or law enforcement and they are asking: ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... Pencroft, and Neb into the dining-room of Granite House, told them what had happened. Pencroft, seizing the telescope, rapidly swept the horizon, and stopping on the indicated point, that is to say, on that which had made the almost imperceptible spot on the photographic negative— ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... 'moon walking' is a legend which stands in contradiction to hitherto observed facts. That the phantasy of the German folk mind drew to itself the pale ghostly light of the moon and could reckon from it all sorts of wonderful things, proves nothing to us." I can only say here that ten negative cases signify nothing in the face of a single positive one and a thousand-fold experience undoubtedly represents a certain connection between the light of the full moon and the most complicated forms of ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... prudent inquiries as to his family and condition. At the same time, she began by a refusal. Then she discussed the propriety of the matter with M. de Champignelles, directing her questions so as to discover, if possible, whether he knew the motives for the visit, and finally revoked her negative answer. The discussion and the discretion shown perforce by the Marquis had piqued ...
— The Deserted Woman • Honore de Balzac
... David's, that he would make a bridge with his ships from that spot to Ireland—a haughty boast, not quite so easily accomplished. His speech was repeated to the King of Leinster, who inquired "if the king, in his great threatening, had added, 'if it so please God'?" The reporter answered in the negative. "Then," said he, "seeing this king putteth his trust only in man, and not in God, I fear not his coming." When Dermod Mac Murrough was driven in disgrace from Ireland, he fled at once to Bristol. There he learned that Henry ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... soil samples to be taken from an area covering ten thousand square miles. Our chemical analysis has been thorough, and we find nothing that could be remotely harmful to human life. Atmospheric samples produce the same negative results. On the other hand, we have direct evidence that no animal life has ever evolved on Rythar; the life cycle is ...
— The Guardians • Irving Cox
... followed out to the limit of its value. In the same manner it is often of value to tell what a thing or a proposition does not resemble, to contrast it with one or more ideas, and by this means exclude what might otherwise be confusing. Note that after the negative comparison the paragraph closes with what it is like, or what ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... discussed of late, whether Alesia is not rather to be identified with Alaise (25 kilometres to the south of Besancon, dep. Doubs), has been rightly answered in the negative by ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... friends—" suggested Barlasch, and, on receiving a more decided negative, returned the coins to ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... as in any other Part of America, and at set Times have a pretty deal of Liberty in their Quarters, as they are called. The Argument of the Reasonableness and Legality, according to Nature, of the Slave-Trade, has been so well handled on the Negative Side of the Question, that there remains little for an Author to say on that Head; and that Captives taken in War, are the Property of the Captor, as to Life and Person, as was the Custom amongst the Spartans; who, like the Americans, perpetuated a Race of Slaves, by marrying them to one another, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... from the depths of her soul. How well I remember her laugh; it had in it the same sudden recognition that flashed into her eyes, was a burst of humor, short and intelligent. Her rapid footsteps shook her own floors, and she routed lassitude and indifference wherever she came. She could not be negative or perfunctory about anything. Her enthusiasm, and her violent likes and dislikes, asserted themselves in all the every-day occupations of life. Wash-day was interesting, never dreary, at the Harlings'. Preserving-time ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... these violent events, and contending hypotheses, while La Table Parlante took a Catholic view, and Science a negative view, M. Agenor de Gasparin, a Protestant, chose a ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... in the earlier part of the poem that appear to negative the idea of its having been written in 1800. The opening lines seem to hint at an experience somewhat distant. He speaks of being "wont" to do certain things. But, on the other hand, I find an entry in Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal, which leads me to believe that the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... will add to the clearness and distinctness of the picture. Our first impression of a house may include windows, but the mention of them later will bring them out clearly on our mental picture much as the details appear when one is developing a negative ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... sending them to sea; of their officers and crews; of their passengers and lading; of the troubles that assailed before they had "shaken off the land," and of the final consolidation of the passengers and lading of both ships upon the MAY-FLOWER, for the belated ocean passage. The wholly negative results of careful search render it altogether probable that the original journal or "Log" of the MAY-FLOWER (a misnomer lately applied by the British press, and unhappily continued in that of the United States, to the ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... How handy." He punched at the calculator again. "Ah! You see, Jules! Just as we suspected! Negative gees at the surface, on the equator, comes to ten to the minus third standard gees—almost exactly one centimeter ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... bank depositor or the holder of an ordinary insurance policy is a negative rather than a positive factor in economic control. Not only does he exercise no power over the dollar which he has placed with the bank or with the insurance company, but he has thereby strengthened the hands of these organizations. Each dollar ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... be prudent or advisable to entrust a property of such enormous value to a crew of absolute strangers, of whose characters he would have no time or opportunity to judge? Upon this point he had no doubt whatever; the answer to this question was a most emphatic negative. But if—so ran his thoughts—he was not prepared to ship the treasure aboard this unknown barque, and entrust it to her unknown crew, what was he to do with it? Was he to leave it concealed in the cavern that had already been its hiding-place for so many years, and return to fetch it ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... written to my aunt Hervey, to supplicate her interest in my behalf, for my clothes, books, and money; signifying to her, 'That, if I may be restored to the favour of my family, and allowed a negative only, as to any man who may be proposed to me, and be used like a daughter, a niece, and a sister, I will stand by my offer to live single, and submit, as I ought, to a negative from my father.' Intimating, nevertheless, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... not a rack behind; go, be no more; die &c 360. annihilate, render null, nullify; abrogate &c 756; destroy &c 162; take away; remove &c (displace) 185; obliterate, extirpate. Adj. inexistent^, nonexistent &c 1; negative, blank; missing, omitted; absent &c 187; insubstantial, shadowy, spectral, visionary. unreal, potential, virtual; baseless, in nubibus [Lat.]; unsubstantial &c 4; vain. unborn, uncreated^, unbegotten, unconceived, unproduced, unmade. perished, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... music, in this connexion. A letter from Keats has been published showing that at one time he expected to meet Moore personally (see p. 45). Whether he did so or not I cannot say for certain, but I apprehend not: the published Diary of Moore, of about the same date, suggests the negative. ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... domestic institutions in their own way."[368] So stated the principle seems direct and simple. But was Toombs willing to concede that the people of a Territory might exclude slavery? He never said so; while Douglas conceded both the positive power to exclude, and the negative power to permit, slavery. Here was a discrepancy.[369] And it was probably because they could not agree on this point, that a provision was added to the territorial bills, providing that cases involving title to slaves might be appealed to the Supreme Court. Whether the people of ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... enough; the snake as a poisonous terrible animal indicates, however, a special phallus, a libido burdened with anxiety. Jung, who has copious material with which to treat this symbolism, calls the snake really a "negative phallus," the phallus forbidden with respect to the mother, etc. I would recall that alchemy, too, has the symbol of the snake or the dragon, and used in a way that reenforces the preceding conception. It is there connected with the ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... my friends, with the definition of a pseudoscience. A pseudoscience consists of a nomenclature, with a self-adjusting arrangement, by which all positive evidence, or such as favors its doctrines, is admitted, and all negative evidence, or such as tells against it, is excluded. It is invariably connected with some lucrative practical application. Its professors and practitioners are usually shrewd people; they are very serious with the public, but wink and laugh a good deal among ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)
... wondering now whether Boots had recognised Alixe when he had blundered into the room that night. He had never asked the question; he was very much inclined to, now. However, Boots's reply could be only the negative answer that any ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... of horror that was, in the great dark empty room, in a silence that was something more than negative, that ghastly figure frozen into stone by some unexplained terror! And the silence and the stillness! The very thunder had ceased now. My heart stood still with fear. Then, moved by some instinctive feeling, under whose ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... at the request of the defendant, enquired if either of the Jurors was a member of the Constitutional Association. The answer was in the negative. ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... just now dismissed the sniveling toad Dorcas, who was introduced to me for my pardon by the whining mother. I gave her a kind of negative and ungracious forgiveness. Yet I shall as violently curse the two nymphs, by-and-by, for the consequences of my own folly: and if this will be a good way too to prevent their ridicule upon me, for losing so ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... board merely to fulfil some selfish purpose of his own. To the theorist who has sampled them only from a distance, these off-scourings of Middle Europe are downtrodden people with souls; to those who happen to know them personally, all their qualities seem to be conspicuously negative. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... Corliss made a negative gesture. "He'll come back when he gets hungry. It's a long ride to the water-hole. Sinker had sand to get as near home as he did. It's going to be straight ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... table, when the company are over-excited, must be answered for; and if the party insulting have no recollection of the insult, it is his duty to say so in writing, and negative the insult. For instance, if the man say: "you are a liar and no gentleman," he must, in addition to the plea of the want of recollection, say: "I believe the party insulted to be a man of the strictest ...
— The Code of Honor • John Lyde Wilson
... both the affirmative and the negative and there was something subtly insolent in his tone—something that aroused more ire than a cruder retort would have accomplished. He turned his back on the cursing man and went on down to the bridge. He waited there for a time and watched the drift of foam on the fretted waters. The ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... nothing in that to worry mother, and soon I shall have good news for her." (If he had seen its reception, he would have learned his mistake. The intuitions of love are keen, and this formal negative note in the constrained hand told more of his disappointment than any words could have done. While he knew it not, his mother was suffering with him. In reply she wrote a letter full of general sympathy, intending to be more specific when he gave ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... understood. A dish of boiled fish, pickled ginger, chicken entrees, young onions, together with rice enough to feed a pig, form the ingredients of a very good Chinese meal. Chop-sticks are, of course, provided; but, as yet, my dexterity in the manipulation of these articles is decidedly of the negative order, and so my pocket-knife performs the dual office of knife and fork; for the rice, one can use, after a manner, the little porcelain dipper provided for ladling an evil-smelling liquid over that staple. Bread, there ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... receiving station normally maintained upon the main line a continuous electric current of a negative polarity, which did not produce a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... relentless tenacity of purpose. In particular, it owes a debt which it can never liquidate to what was at once the cause and the result of his over-seriousness,—to his lack of any sense of humour,—a negative quality which allowed his practical logic to run its course without let or hindrance, and prevented the "brakes" of common-sense from acting when he found himself, in his very zeal for the Law, descending an inclined plane into an unfathomable ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... you could not have been made opaque, without being so thick and suffocating; why it would not be as well to sit up all night half asleep in an ordinary passenger-car as to lie awake all night in a Pullman. But the snoring of my fellow-passengers answered this question in the negative. ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... takes two forms. One complacently traces himself up to a coronet; another, defiantly, to a lapstone. The sentiment is precisely the same in both cases, only that one is the positive and the other the negative pole ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... are you, Master Wag?" said he, when they met. "Did you observe that green chariot that stands down in the yard there, and came in more than an hour ago?" Jeremiah answered in the negative. "Well," continued mine host, "it belongs to one of the oddest, rummest, little old gentlemen I ever clapped my eyes on. He's been asking me all sorts of questions, and seems mightily tickled with your name above all things. I think he's ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... fearful fiasco with CHAPLIN last Friday, OLD MORALITY checked disposition to give young Ministers opportunity of distinguishing themselves. If MAXWELL made a mull of this, following on Friday week's catastrophe with CHAPLIN, it would be serious. MAXWELL won more than negative credit of not making mistake. He delivered excellent speech, showing complete ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... to her annoyance, Wharton came forward to her help, guaranteeing the solvency and permanence of her new partnership in glib and pleasant phrase, wherein her angry fancy suspected at once the note of irony. But Mrs. Jellison held firm, embroidering her negative, indeed, with her usual cheerful chatter, but sticking to it all the same. At last there was no way of saving dignity but to talk of something else and go—above all, to talk of something else before going, lest the would-be benefactor ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seems that the definition of eternity given by Boethius (De Consol. v) is not a good one: "Eternity is the simultaneously-whole and perfect possession of interminable life." For the word "interminable" is a negative one. But negation only belongs to what is defective, and this does not belong to eternity. Therefore in the definition of eternity the word "interminable" ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... more than negative difficulty to be feared, have you ever tried in thought to change places with such a girl? Have you ever considered how impossible it is for such a one to grow? The simple grace of continuance is in danger of withering ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael |
