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More "Immaterial" Quotes from Famous Books



... the teacher, "it is immaterial to me whether you sit together or apart, if you are only good boys, so you may take your seats and try it a little while. If you find it too hard work to be studious and orderly together, I can make a change hereafter. I ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... about those questions which had agitated the Grecian schools: whether genera and species—called "universals," or ideas—have a substantial and independent existence, or whether they are the creation of our own minds; whether, if they have a real existence, they are material or immaterial essences; whether they exist apart from objects perceptible by the senses. It is singular that such questions should have been discussed in the ninth century, since neither Plato nor Aristotle were studied. That age was totally ignorant ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... that all that happens in 'public life' is of consequence? That is not sensible. Thee is in the midst of a thousand immaterial things, though they have importance for the moment. But the chief things that matter to all, does thee not know that a 'silly Quaker village' may realise them to the full—more fully because we see them ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... scientific conception of a non-anthropomorphic god. In elaborating this conception Anaxagoras proved himself one of the most remarkable scientific dreamers of antiquity. To have substituted for the Greek Pantheon of anthropomorphic deities the conception of a non-anthropomorphic immaterial and ethereal entity, of all things in the world "the most rarefied and the purest," is to have performed a feat which, considering the age and the environment in which it was accomplished, staggers the imagination. As a strictly scientific accomplishment the great thinker's ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... imagination, and that ministers have no difficulty in conceiving of angels and disembodied souls. I have not the slightest idea how a soul looks, what shape it is, how it goes from one place to another, whether it walks or flies. I cannot conceive of the immaterial having form; neither can I conceive of anything existing without form, and yet the fact that I cannot conceive of a thing does not prove that the thing does not exist, but it does prove that I know nothing about it, and that being so, I ought to admit my ignorance. I am satisfied of a ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed every particle of evidence, constructed alternative theories, balanced one against the other, and made up his mind as to which points were essential and which immaterial. I therefore spent the day at my club and did not return to Baker Street until evening. It was nearly nine o'clock when I found myself in the ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle

... afford him greater delight than "minding" other children, or them less. He would take upon himself this harassing duty entirely of his own accord, without hope of reward or gratitude. It was immaterial to him whether the other children were older than himself or younger, stronger or weaker, whenever and wherever he found them he set to work to "mind" them. Once, during a school treat, piteous cries were heard ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... unconceivable. And words whereby we conceive nothing but the sound, are those we call Absurd, insignificant, and Non-sense. And therefore if a man should talk to me of a Round Quadrangle; or Accidents Of Bread In Cheese; or Immaterial Substances; or of A Free Subject; A Free Will; or any Free, but free from being hindred by opposition, I should not say he were in an Errour; but that his words were without meaning; that is to ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... ORNAMENTS.—Allow twelve ounces of Gelatine to soak for a few hours in water, until it has absorbed as much as it can, then apply heat, by which it will liquify. If the mould is required to be elastic, add three ounces of Treacle, and mix well with the Gelatine. If a little Chrome Alum (precise proportions are immaterial) be added to the Gelatine, it causes it to lose its property of being again dissolved in water. A saturated solution of Bichromate of Potash brushed over the surface of the mould, allowed to become dry ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus

... travels, and had been the spectator of some of the last of his military exploits. This is a work of much higher authority, and contains much valuable information; but it is prolix, long-winded, and diffuse, filled with immaterial documents, and written throughout in a tone of inflated panegyric. III. Another life of Marlborough, written with more ability, appeared at Paris in 1806, in three volumes octavo, by Dutems. The author had the advantage of all the resources for throwing light on his history which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... arrival there had obtained leave to return to Naples, in order to avert the confiscation of his property by the Republican government. He subsequently joined the Republicans, or Jacobins, as they were called by Nelson and the Court. His reasons for so doing are immaterial; they were doubtless perfectly sound from the point of view of apparent self-interest; the substantial fact remains that he commanded the insurgent vessels in action with the British and Royal Neapolitan ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... the women who kissed and gushed around her must surely have something infectious in its nature, since she herself was beginning to feel an insane inclination to burst into tears or laughter, it was immaterial which of the two it should be. Darsie turned a quick look around, searching for a way of escape, and at that moment Noreen's hand pressed on her arm, and she found herself being led gently ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... that so-and-so remembered so-and-so out of gratitude, and, "Here lies the best of friends," and much poor stuff of that kind;[627] which indeed do not seem to do much harm, except indirectly, to those that read them, by engendering the practice of curiosity about things immaterial. And as huntsmen do not allow the hounds to follow any scent and run where they please, but check and restrain them in leashes, keeping their sense of smell pure and fresh for the object of their chase, that they may the keener dart on their tracks, "following up the traces of ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... bless her! And I fear I wearied her with my reasons for not sustaining it. But I did not tell her, what I may confide in you, that in Hays versus The People—25 New York—it is held immaterial whether a person who pretended to solemnise a marriage contract, was or was not a clergyman, or whether either party to the contract was deceived by false representations of this character. ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... debated whether the Hostia and Plania, to whom, under assumed names, the amatory poems of Propertius and Tibullus were addressed, were more or less married women (for at Rome there were degrees of marriage), or women for whom marriage was a remote and immaterial event. The same controversy has raged over Ovid's Corinna, who is variously identified as Julia the daughter of the Emperor herself, as a figment of the imagination, or as an ordinary courtesan. The truth is, that in the society so brilliantly drawn in the Art of Love, such ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... while he lived. Thus when he was sent by the Journal to Jefferson City to report the proceedings of the Missouri State Legislature, what his paper got was not an edifying summary of that unending grist of mostly irrelevant and immaterial legislation through the General Assembly hopper, but a running fire of pungent comment on the Idiosyncrasies of its officers and members. He would attach himself to the legislators whose personal qualities afforded most profitable ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... contemptuous laugh, "Really, Miss Harlowe, I congratulate you upon your loyal support. It is a good thing to have friends at court. However, it is immaterial to me what position I play, for I am not particularly enthusiastic over basketball. The juniors are sure to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower

... the impression of the passing accident? Or do these workings argue something within us above the trodden clod? I own myself partial to such proofs of those awful and important realities—a God that made all things—man's immaterial and immortal nature—and a world of weal or woe beyond death and ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp

... Poem is located on the banks of the Eden, a pleasant river in Cumberland. It is founded on facts, but the names and some other immaterial points ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar

... VERI. Consists in the suppression of any fact or circumstance as to the state of the ship, the nature of her employ, and the time of sailing or expected arrival, material to the risk of insurance, and is fatal to the insured. But it is held immaterial to disclose the secret destination of privateers, the usages of trade, or matters equally open to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth

... amendments were, in substance, the undertakings entered into in the bond of the colonial agents. Franklin soon afterward had occasion to review this whole business. He showed that of the six amendments, five were immaterial, since they only expressed with greater clearness the intent of the Assembly. He admitted that the sixth was of more consequence. It seems that L100,000 had been voted, appropriated, raised, and expended, chiefly ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... calm, disinterested, and immaterial. It was repose of the heart, after having met with the long sought-for, and till then unfound, object of its restless adoration; the long-desired idol of that vague, unquiet adoration of supreme beauty which agitates the soul until the divinity has been discovered, and that our heart ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine

... poem. The passage is a definition of divine magic, which is apparently another term for alchemy; and lays down the great doctrine of all mediaeval occultism, as of all modern theosophy—of a soul-power equally operative in the material and the immaterial, in nature and in ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... am the speech of prophets when their eyes Behold some splendid vision of the soul; The song of morning stars, the hills' replies, The far call of the immaterial pole. ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove

... or taking part in the work of the Society, that is immaterial. Darwin never did either, though he did once come to one of the evening receptions, and ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... say so) the less important half of the material of the physical universe."[29] And even Mr. Huxley, though in a different sense, assures us, with Descartes, "that we know more of mind than we do of body; that the immaterial world is a ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... a few times on the subjects of will, liberty, and personality; after having distinguished between IMMATERIAL-NATURAL property, and MATERIAL-NATURAL property, a distinction similar to Destutt de Tracy's of innate and acquired property,—M. Joseph Dutens concludes with these two general propositions: 1. ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... seen that biology leads us to psychology, if we choose to follow the path; and thus the passage from the material to the immaterial has already unfolded itself at one point; and we now perceive that there are several large provinces of speculation which concern subjects belonging to man's immaterial nature, and which are governed by the same laws ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... mockery. hollowness, blank; void &c. (absence) 187. inanity, fool's paradise. V. vanish, evaporate, fade, dissolve, melt away; disappear &c. 449. Adj. unsubstantial; baseless, groundless; ungrounded; without foundation, having no foundation. visionary &c. (imaginary) 515; immaterial &c. 137; spectral &c. 980; dreamy; shadowy; ethereal, airy; cloud built, cloud formed; gossamery, illusory, insubstantial, unreal. vacant, vacuous; empty &c. 187; eviscerated; blank, hollow; nominal; null; inane. Phr. there's nothing in it; "an ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... of his long series of discoveries a fair percentage were valuable and are producing-properties to-day. Yet he confessed his bank balance to be less than five hundred dollars. Why was this? Simply and solely because he did not care. At heart it was entirely immaterial to him whether he ever owned a dollar above his expenses. When he sold his claims, he let them go easily, loath to bother himself with business details, eager to get away from the fuss and nuisance. The few hundred dollars ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... however, if Anna Gates would have applauded Peter had she followed the two in their rambling walk that night. Direction mattering little and companionship everything, they wandered on, talking of immaterial things—of the rough pavements, of the shop windows, of the gray medieval buildings. They came to a full stop in front of the Votivkirche, and discussed gravely the twin Gothic spires and the Benk sculptures on the facade. And there in the open square, casting ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... we must know exactly what we wish to produce. It is well in drafting escapements to make them as large as possible, say thirty to forty times larger than in the watch, in the present case the size is immaterial, but we must have specifications for the proportions of the angles. Our draft is to be the most difficult subject in lever escapements; it is to be represented just as if it were working in a watch; it is to represent a good and reliable action in every respect, ...
— An Analysis of the Lever Escapement • H. R. Playtner

... inflamed him, with some kisses which drew forth his soul. Where had she learned these caresses almost immaterial, so profound and evasive ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various

... There is nothing in Domesday to justify the doubts alluded to. A consideration of the objects of that survey will dissipate them: the purpose was principally financial. It was directed so as to obtain a correct account of the taxable property within the kingdom. And it was immaterial whether the proceeds were paid altogether to the owner, or a definite portion was diverted into other channels. Therefore those churches which were endowed only with tithes of the surrounding districts, as Eccleston and Croston, Penwortham and Leyland, in Leyland ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 233, April 15, 1854 • Various

... woman! He could never be hers, but at least she could love him. Already she had begun to do so with a measure of calm. She could hide him in her soul and count him wholly hers; and the prospect seemed far sweeter and more satisfactory than she should have imagined of such immaterial union. And some day, she believed, he would write to her. He had spoken authoritatively of the permanence of their friendship, and of its necessity to him. He had not loved her, as men count love, but for a little ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... went, past the churchyard, with its marble slabs indistinctly outlined in the darkness, like a phantom graveyard, as immaterial and ghostlike itself as the spirits of the earliest settlers at rest there beneath the sod. This was the last indication of the presence of the town, the final impression to carry away into the wide country, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... assumption that something must have existed from all eternity, it was open to Holbach to say, as Locke said on setting himself to examine Descartes' proof of a God: "I found that, by it, senseless matter might be the first eternal being and cause of all things, as well as an immaterial intelligent spirit." But what we feel is that the whole controversy is being conducted between two disputants on two different planes of thought, between two creatures dwelling in different elements. To apply to Clarke's propositions, or to the slightly different propositions ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... out just as you put them in. If you put in stale, tough, stringy beans you will be sure to find them there when you open the can, but if you put in fresh, tender beans, peas, corn or whatever else, you will find these exactly as you put them in, and it's immaterial whether you open this can the first, second or tenth year. We must not forget that vegetables properly sterilized and sealed will keep indefinitely, and they require no preservative of any kind. No canning factory uses any preservative, and no ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... close juxtaposition and then assert that they are one. But this placing them side by side and asserting that they are one does not make them one. They are just as far apart as ever. The cells of the brain remain material and the phenomenon of consciousness remains immaterial and they are still as remote from one another and as "unfused" as if consciousness were outside ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... was forced to be content. For the first time in his business career a real anxiety gnawed at his vitals. He had been in many tight places; but somehow heretofore success or failure had seemed to him about immaterial, like points gained or conceded in the game; a fresh start was always so easy, and what had been already won as yet unreal. Now the game itself was at issue. Property, reputation, and the family's future were at stake. When the three had lived in the tiny house ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White

... an accident, impossible to prevent. But console yourself with the reflection that it is perfectly immaterial whether the French ideas are brought into your country by your soldiers or by ours. Besides, this is an article which so easily eludes the vigilance of the custom-house, that the railways are already bringing it in daily, and you will soon have a large stock on hand. And after all, ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... that it must also be opaque to any wave whatever, propagated through air or through ether, clear down to cosmic rays. Behind it, we would be blind and helpless, so we can't use it at all. It drives me frantic! Think of a barrier of pure force, impalpable, immaterial, and exerted along a geometrical surface of no thickness whatever—and yet actual enough to stop even a Millikan ray that travels a hundred thousand light-years and then goes through twenty-seven feet of solid lead just like it was so much vacuum! That's what ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith

... an instant. Sights take up a great space, a tune is a succession of sounds; but scents are at once specific and complete, yet indivisible. Who can halve a scent? they need neither time nor space; thus they are immaterial or spiritual." ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... for some satisfaction in life, nor trouble about "raising" himself into some other class, so long as he could live on peasant lines. And it is in the virtual disappearance of this civilization that the main change in the village consists. Other changes are comparatively immaterial. The valley might have been invaded by the leisured classes; its old appearance might have been altered; all sorts of new-fangled things might have been introduced into it; and still under the surface it would have retained the essential village characteristics, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... evolved in the infinite past a more profound electrician, who, with his battery and etherial wires can shiver a planet with his touch? A marvelous power—the human spirit—has gained a vast control over the blind, stubborn substances and forces that created it, and by its immaterial, invisible will, can in a limited degree overrule the most imperious law of nature by throwing a stone into the air. Is it unscientific, then, or derogatory to the vaunted potency of matter to affirm that the eternal ages may have developed an intelligent will that can project ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880

... grown up, can understand this: "It was indeed a higher kind of impressionism that Monet originated, one that reveals a vivid rendering, not of the natural and concrete facts, but of their influence upon the spirit when they are wrapped in the infinite diversities of that impalpable, immaterial, universal medium which we call light, when the concrete loses itself in the abstract, and what is of time and matter impinges on the eternal and the universal." Monet's pictures look just as ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... Nature. His Creation, and every Part of it, is full of him. There is nothing he has made, that is either so distant, so little, or so inconsiderable, which he does not essentially inhabit. His Substance is within the Substance of every Being, whether material, or immaterial, and as intimately present to it as that Being is to it self. It would be an Imperfection in him, were he able to remove out of one Place into another, or to withdraw himself from any Thing he has created, or from any Part of that Space which is diffused and ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... than the vain leading of the fashions of the passing hour. Let us renounce the corrupt spirit of the times in which we live, with all that is not worthy of art, all that will not endure, all that does not contain in itself some spark of that eternal and immaterial beauty, which it is the task of art to reveal and unveil as the condition of its own glory! Let us remember the ancient prayer of the Dorians whose simple formula is so full of pious poetry, asking only ...
— Life of Chopin • Franz Liszt

... corresponding return; this was necessary to his complete management, the securing of the greatest possible amount of new clothes. It was as far as love should be allowed to enter marriage. But that reality, with a complete expression in shopping, was distant from the immaterial and delicate emotions that in her ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer

... the law of differentiation and zoological development there must have been at some time one origin of the species (monogenesis). So far as the scientific investigation of mankind is concerned, it is rather immaterial which theory is accepted. We know that multitudes of tribes and races differ in minor parts of structure, differ in mental capacity, and hence in qualities of civilization, and yet in general form, brain structure, and mental processes, it is the same human being wherever ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar

... orator born, and has developed this inborn power by the hardest of study and thought and practice. He is one of those rare men who always seize and hold the attention. When he speaks, men listen. It is quality, temperament, control—the word is immaterial, but the fact ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell

... enormous lack of appropriation of energy in most men's lives is an undoubted fact. Just where this energy is stored, and just what its eternal significance may be, is immaterial to our purpose. ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton

... combined, the young men and women of the Halidome used to distinguish Mary among themselves by the name of the Spirit of Avenel, as if the fair but fragile form, the beautiful but rather colourless cheek, the dark blue eye, and the shady hair, had belonged rather to the immaterial than the substantial world. The general tradition of the White Lady, who was supposed to wait on the fortunes of the family of Avenel, gave a sort of zest to this piece of rural wit. It gave great offence, ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... lunch introduced a stately-looking gentleman as Sir Kenelm Digby, it gave me a start, as if a ghost had stood before me. I recovered myself immediately, however, for there was nothing of the impalpable or immaterial about the stalwart personage who bore the name. I wanted to ask him if he carried any of his ancestor's "powder of sympathy" about with him. Many, but not all, of my readers remember that famous man's famous preparation. When used to cure a wound, it was applied to the weapon that made ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... example, he wished but to open a small wicket in the gate of truth, and admit the world only on that limited scale. Seest thou, Hereward, thy grandsire and most men of religion would fain narrow our intellect to the consideration of such parts of the Immaterial world as are essential to our moral guidance here, and our final salvation hereafter; but it is not the less true, that man has liberty, provided he has wisdom and courage, to form intimacies with beings more powerful than himself, who can defy the bounds of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... towards them? Would not this have been perfectly easy if true? Why do they blink the question, and tell a long story about a conversation which they held with Mr. Bunce, which whether it was true or untrue, is totally immaterial? What do they mean in a later stage of their certificate, by the unsuspecting and unguarded conversation, they had held with Mr. Bunce, and which they were afraid he would make mischief of? Do they call the conversation which ...
— A Review and Exposition, of the Falsehoods and Misrepresentations, of a Pamphlet Addressed to the Republicans of the County of Saratoga, Signed, "A Citizen" • An Elector

... the first question be decided in accordance with my views, the other questions become immaterial; if the second be decided adversely to my views, the first and third become immaterial. The first two are questions of law to be decided by the court, the other is a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... his arm outwards, withdrawing it from his chest; and his stick, which he takes care to raise slightly above the level of his shoulder, remains perfectly visible to all eyes. When the conductor faces the players, it is immaterial whether he marks the second beat to the right, or to ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz

... indefeasible, except by the subsequent execution of a fresh testamentary document, or by its destruction or attempted destruction, animo revocandi, or by marriage. Subject to these formalities required by the law, the form of the document—provided that its meaning is clear—is immaterial. Now, do the tattoo marks on the back of this lady constitute such a document, and do they convey the true last will or wish of the testator? That is the first point that I have to decide, and I decide it in the affirmative. It is true that it is not usual for testamentary documents to be ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard

... Melody unformulate, music immaterial, such was the voice of the Singing Mouse; faint, small and clear, a piping of fifes so fine, a touching of strings so delicate, that it seemed to come from instruments of beryl and of diamond, a phantom music, impossible to fetter ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough

... "A—it is immaterial, I am obliged to you, Cousin Phoebe," said Mr. Homer Hollopeter, looking up with the air of one suddenly awakened. "The inner man has been abundantly refreshed, ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards

... mere technical objection, surely the Bank guarantee, even if void, could not affect the contract itself. 2d. The purchase, even if made by the bank, was not of stock, but a loan made upon bonds. 3d. The right of the bank to make the purchase is immaterial, if the money was paid, as in this case, the bonds received, payable to bearer, and passed for value, into the hands of bona fide holders. What an objection to the refunding the money—that, although ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... probably a black doleful-looking grate, which during two-thirds of the year is stuffed with paper shavings of all the colours of the rainbow and several others which good Mother Nature forgot to put into it. On the chimney-piece is a Louis XVI. clock and a pair of ornaments to match. A piano, tune immaterial, is a sine qua non even in a middle-class house, but when Muttonwool has got all these things—in short, paid his upholsterer's bill—he thinks a ten-pound note should cover the rest of his drawing-room furniture. Household ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... led the world in knowledge. These latter were near-sighted, and absorbed [Page 245] in the pictures on the first veil of matter; the former were far-sighted, and penetrated a hundred strata of thickest material, and saw the immaterial power behind. The one class studied the present, and made the gravest mistakes; the other pierced the uncounted ages of the past, and uttered the profoundest wisdom. There is but one explanation. He that planned and made ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... sandal attar, and the water put into carboys and disposed of as rose-water. At the time of sale a few drops of sandal oil are placed on the neck of the carboy to give it fresh scent, and to many of the natives it appears perfectly immaterial whether the scent arises solely from the sandal oil or from the roses. Large quantities of sandal oil are every year brought up from the south and expended ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... views, appeared as much calculated to gain the men of order as they were offensive to the democrat Caesar. On the other hand Cato and his followers, instead of combating with their wonted sternness the proposal to confer the dictatorship on Pompeius, had made it with immaterial alterations of form their own; Pompeius had received the undivided consulship primarily from the hands of Bibulus and Cato. While the Catonian party and Pompeius had thus at least a tacit understanding as early as the beginning of 702, the alliance might be held as ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... all crimes, all forces were set in motion by a feverish yearning for immaterial pleasures, beauty, power, and immortality. The Renaissance has been called an intellectual bacchanalia, and when we examine the features of the bacchantes they become distorted like those of the suitors in Homer, who anticipated ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... to blame for the gossip concerning himself and the lady, was immaterial, since his wife was reported happy and content,—besides, he was a man, and women are notoriously hard upon women; as was proved when the ladies of the Station were ready to throw stones at the erring one the instant it was known that ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... greatly disturb us. In aesthetics, as in ethics, the question of validity has to be kept distinct from that of origin. If symmetry (in general) is appreciated as aesthetically pleasing, the question of its genesis becomes immaterial. Another difficulty, not peculiar to aesthetic investigation, is that of reconstructing the modes of aesthetic consciousness represented by forms of art which differ widely from those of our own age and type of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... issues were not clearly defined, and neither party was able to occupy its true and final position, or to rally to its standard all who were in fact its friends. Old parties encumbered the ground. Men were slow to give up old associations and leave the discussion of obsolete, immaterial, or ephemeral issues. ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... threw herself into the sea from the promontory of Leucate. Doubtless she too had 'poetic idiosyncrasies'; but her spotless life and, I believe, natural death, afford no indication of an unsound intellect. It is rather immaterial, however, to—" Beulah paused abruptly as a servant entered and ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... as the ghost followed them out, he was conscious of an immaterial form similar to his own standing at his side. "Come with me," said the form; and they whirled through space until they arrived in the same court in which sentence had been passed upon him. The three Mahatmas were still sitting on the bench, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... He watches and bides his time with the intentness of a brooding spirit that in all material happenings seeks its own. He makes them his instruments of vengeance. And Heathcliff's vengeance, like his passion for Catherine, is an immortal and immaterial thing. He shows how little he thinks of sordid, tangible possession; for, when his vengeance is complete, when Edgar Linton and Linton Heathcliff are dead and their lands and houses are his, he becomes utterly indifferent. He falls into a melancholy. He neither eats nor drinks. He shuts ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... business; something I heard him say, and which, to my regret, I shall have to repeat in court, almost proves that he was so. Still, let us hope none of the stolen property will be found upon him; whether they had intended to pass it over to his care or not is immaterial. If they had not done so, I doubt whether he could be charged with receiving stolen goods, and we might make the charge simply one of aiding these two criminals, and of being so far an accessory after ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty

... anything he was not told to, even when most obvious, that he was lacking in any characteristic of interest, that he was moreover a supreme coward, afraid to be left alone in the woods—these things were after all immaterial, for, as John pointed out, we didn't really need ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... stage—exactly three months from to-day—you will receive the gift of second-sight; the power of separating your immaterial from your material body and projecting it, anywhere you will, on the physical plane; and, to a large extent, you will be enabled to circumvent gravity. Thus you will be able to perform all manner of jugglery tricks—tricks that will set the whole ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... war by providing one belligerent side with its implements? Do American pacifists really fail to see that their country by such proceedings disables herself from being the peacemaker of the future? Do they think it immaterial from the standpoint of her moral power, as well as of her material interests, how central Europe, a mass of 120,000,000, think of her, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... we recognize as divine the principle within us which can be overthrown by a few glasses of rum? How conceive of immaterial faculties which matter can conquer, and whose exercise is suspended by a grain of opium? How imagine that we shall be able to feel when we are bereft of the vehicles of sensation? Why must God perish if matter can be proved to think? Is the vitality of matter in its innumerable manifestations—the ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... primarily owed their birth, but by means of formulas, or even of the voice alone, "the first time" when he awoke in the Nu. In fact, the articulate word and the voice were believed to be the most potent of creative forces, not remaining immaterial on issuing from the lips, but condensing, so to speak, into tangible substances; into bodies which were themselves animated by creative life and energy; into gods and goddesses who lived or who created in their turn. By a very short phrase Tumu ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... suffering—and even of suffering in the brain—the mind carries itself, and this fact seems worthy of more distinct recognition than it has received. It significantly confirms our belief in the existence of an immaterial principle, or soul, superior to the mere functions of the brain. Great and healthful mental activity often exists in a disordered body; and biographical literature is full of illustrations of the power of a strong will to accomplish brilliant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... journey a needless expense. This, however, he did not mention, but contented himself with the suggestion that it would seem a reflection upon Mrs Grantly's competence to do anything of the kind; and that consideration weighed heavily with his wife where the other would have been brushed aside as immaterial and irrelevant. "I can't understand it," the Squire remarked plaintively; "I did not know there had ever been any eye trouble ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker

... number of coins in the tail, the spectators could hardly fail to observe that the same final coin was always indicated, and thereby to gain a clue to the secret. The number of coins in the circle itself is quite immaterial. ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort

... I, though whether with a smile or a groan is immaterial; they would have meant the same thing. Should I put the book back on its shelf? I asked, and she replied that I could put it wherever I liked for all she cared, so long as I took it out of her sight ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie

... carrying the planets round the sun by its revolution, as a whirlpool carries straws, could be readily understood, and though it appears to have been held by Kepler that this current and Vortex were immaterial, he ascribes to it the power of overcoming the inertia of bodies, and of putting them and keeping ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... godhead, should shine upon us, if it were not by the diversities of holy covertures. Also it is not possible, that our wit or intendment might ascend unto the contemplation of the heavenly hierarchies immaterial, if our wit be not led by some material thing, as a man is led by the hand: so by these forms visible, our wit may be led to the consideration of the greatness or magnitude of the most excellent beauteous clarity, divine and invisible. Reciteth ...
— Mediaeval Lore from Bartholomew Anglicus • Robert Steele

... must not be confused with Christian beliefs, for Buddhism teaches nothing of any immaterial existence. The foundations of its creed have been summed up in the Four Great Truths, which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... made itself known, and a word has come to be judged like a note in music—as a potential element of harmony—a sound that in its own place may mean any emotion of joy or sorrow, hate or love. Whether a thought is behind these alluring rhythms, with their sensuous swing or their rush of sound, is immaterial so long as the ear has satisfaction; thus Swinburne and his school fill the place of Spenser and the elder poets, and many an "idle singer of an empty day" jostles aside the masters, who can wait, knowing that sooner or later, return ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell

... inexpressible images which all fine literature summons to the mind. As the chemist in his experiments is sometimes astonished to find unknown, unexpected elements in the crucible or the receiver, as the world of material things is considered by some a thin veil of the immaterial universe, so he who reads wonderful prose or verse is conscious of suggestions that cannot be put into words, which do not rise from the logical sense, which are rather parallel to than connected with the sensuous delight. The world so disclosed is rather the world ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen

... something when the councilor came with a question about the boat. Yes, it was at his service. But who was going to do the rowing? Why, he of course, said the girl, and paid no attention to what her father said about it; it was immaterial whether it was a bother to the gentleman, for sometimes he himself did not mind at all troubling other people. Then they went down to the boat, and on the way explained things to the councilor. They stepped into the boat, and were already a good ways out, before the girl had settled herself ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen

... been considered as sufficient proof that no organised being could ever have been called into existence by other agency than by the direct intervention of a reflective mind. This argues strongly in favour of the existence in every animal of an immaterial principle similar to that which by its excellence and superior endowments places man so much above the animals; yet the principle unquestionably exists, and whether it be called sense, reason, or instinct, it presents in the whole ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... a thief—" Lablet was ready to dismiss it as immaterial. "Naturally they would be upset if they were having trouble with one of their own men. But to leave now, just when we are on the verge of new discoveries—That anti-gravity unit alone is worth our whole trip! Imagine being able to return to earth ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... seemingly miraculous powers exhibited, however weakly and childishly, in numberless seances, privileged to possess among the company an ecstatic medium between (as is assumed) themselves and beings immaterial. ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... of other men's minds they have so often displayed, that America meant to keep out of the war at all costs, or were merely careless of consequences so long as the immediate end was attained, is now immaterial. From the welter of Teutonic misdeeds and lies arises the vital, the soul-inspiring spectacle of a union of all ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... point of dispute among the Jews here is the number of months. But why waste any more time upon immaterial matters, particularly as we see that the suggestions of the rabbis are not at all wise? It is more to the purpose for us to inquire where the mountains of Ararat are to be found. It is generally believed that they are mountains of Armenia, close by the highest ranges of Asia Minor, the Caucasus ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther

... the way of news, there is something strangely alluring and inspiring to the editorial imagination in the comprehensive purpose which has prompted their mission to the civilized nations of the West. That purpose is doubly peaceful, for it includes a two-fold commerce of material products and of immaterial ideas. Probably the vastest conception which ever entered into the mind of a conqueror was that which was profoundly meditated, and, in its initial steps, practically carried out, by Alexander the Great. He was engaged in a clearly defined project of assimilating the populations of Europe ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... charged Burton the evidence with disingenuity in what she delivered on her oath against them, and yet Fitzpatrick could not absolutely deny having been guilty of a multitude of offences as to shoplifting, so that it is highly probable, even if the evidence erred a little in immaterial circumstances, that in the main she ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward

... beauty, infinitely preferring the expression of the soul to the perfection of the body. Every man was great in its eyes, not by his perishable members, but by his immortal soul. With this religion begins the reign of painting, which is a more subtle art, more immaterial, than the others—more expressive, and also more individual. We will give some proofs of it. Instead of acting, like architecture and sculpture, upon the three dimensions of heavy matter, painting acts only upon one surface, and produces its effects with an imponderable thing, which is color—that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various

... here cease. There are beyond the limits of our system, beyond the visible forms of matter, other principles, other powers, higher orders of beings, an immaterial world which we cannot yet know; other modes of existence which we cannot comprehend; yet however inscrutable to us, this spiritual world must be guided by its own unerring laws, and the harmonious ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... cannot see the four sides of a house from the same place, though we may wish to have our reader know how each side looks. It is, therefore, necessary to change our point of view. It is immaterial whether the successive points of view are named or merely implied, providing the reader has due notice that we have changed from one to the other, and that for each we describe only what can be seen from that position. A description of a cottage that by ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks

... doubtfully. Was she crazy? There was something odd about her, now that he noticed, as she stood rigidly there, with that queer red spot on her face, a strange fire in her eyes, and that weird reflection from the maple enveloping her like an immaterial flame. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... is any difference in definition between the "romance" and the "heroic romance" seems immaterial, since Professor Thorndike uses one term as synonymous with the other. He gives "the most noticeable characteristics of the romances": "A mixture of tragic and idyllic events, a series of highly improbable events, heroic and sentimental characters, foreign scenes, ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith

... be considered as his own act, or the act of those who fled with him? Was it a spontaneous resolution of his own, or was it inspired by others? The alternative is immaterial; whether fool or hypocrite, idiot or traitor, he has proved himself equally unworthy of the important functions that had ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... unlimited number of motor mechanisms, to oppose new habits to the old ones unceasingly, and, by dividing automatism against itself, to rule it. He owes it to his language, which furnishes consciousness with an immaterial body in which to incarnate itself and thus exempts it from dwelling exclusively on material bodies, whose flux would soon drag it along and finally swallow it up. He owes it to social life, which stores and preserves ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... in the absorbing excitement of a professional or mercantile career, can testify to the arresting, reposeful, humanizing atmosphere of a home where the wife, mother, or sister exerts her kindly sway; and it is as necessary to the immaterial interests of a nation, to the prevention of the legislative mind and executive hands being completely swallowed up in the actual, the present, the mechanical, the sensible, that some counteracting influence should be allowed ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... object is the soul. "Receiving the end of your faith even the salvation of your souls." By the soul we understand the immaterial principle or spiritual part of man; which though united with the body, is perfectly distinct ...
— The Wesleyan Methodist Pulpit in Malvern • Knowles King

... when he had fastened them securely upon his feet, he prepared to lower himself over the edge of the wharf. He asked the spectators to designate a point upon the thither shore at which they wished him to land. It was immaterial to him, he said, whether he went one mile or ten, up stream or down, because he should glide around upon the surface of the stream with the ease and grace of a swallow. Then they fixed a point for him; and when he had dropped into the water, he steadied ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)

... the present Government since it came into power in 1906, it is well to explain what the principal societies—secret or other—are which now conduct the Government of Ireland. In one sense indeed the names are immaterial; for, as in 1798, in whatever various ways the societies have commenced, they are all working towards the same end, and being ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... modelled in men's imaginations into a Shape, a Visibility; and reasoned of as if it had been some composite, divisible and reunitable substance, some finer chemical salt, or curious piece of logical joinery,—began to lose its immaterial, mysterious, divine though invisible character: it was tacitly figured as something that might, were our organs fine enough, be /seen/. Yet who had ever seen it? Who could ever see it? Thus by degrees it passed into a Doubt, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... ideal scheme for benefiting Bressant was actuating her in her intercourse with him. She proposed to educate him in pure beliefs and true aspirations; to show him that there was more in life than can be mathematically proved. But that she could derive other than an immaterial and ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... supported exclusively by such doctrines as—an independent and immaterial soul, a special moral faculty, and what is called free-will,—the metaphysician is a person of importance in the contest; he is powerful either to uphold or to subvert the fabric. But, if these were ever ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... said, on the part of those who oppose the bill, on the subject of its injustice to the white inhabitants of the District of Columbia. Indeed, the argument on that side of the question is, when divested of all that is immaterial, meretricious, and extravagant, reduced almost entirely to that single position. Abstract this from the excited declamation to which you have listened, and what is left is but the old revolting argument in favor of slavery, and a selfish appeal ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... unbodied essence lurks The fire of Siva's anger, like the flame That ever hidden in the secret depths Of ocean, smoulders there unseen. How else Couldst thou, all immaterial as thou art, Inflame our hearts thus fiercely?—thou, whose form Was scorched to ashes by a sudden flash From the offended god's terrific eye. Yet, methinks, Welcome this anguish, welcome to my heart These rankling ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson

... your sisters (one of them, it is immaterial which) would select from my clothes certain things which they will easily perceive belonged to my mother. These, with whatever lace they find in a large trunk in a garret-room of the Oaks house, added to a little satinwood box (the largest, and having a lock and key), and ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... seen by the citizens of Richmond a few weeks ago. The right arm, however, should lie more at length upon the box, a chess-board should appear upon it, and the cushion should not be seen while the pipe is held. Some immaterial alterations have been made in the costume of the player since it came into the possession of Maelzel—the plume, for example, was not originally worn. {image ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... the common mind of Quaker Hill is the practice of inner and immaterial religion. It looks for the effects of certain dogmas, effects expressed in emotions, convictions, experiences. The ideal contains no thought of the community or of its welfare. It is purely individual, ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson

... real meaning of a myth can be reached. He who fails to guess the riddle of the sphynx, need not hope to gain admittance to the shrine. With delicate ear the faint whispers of thought must be apprehended which prompt the intellect when it names the immaterial from the material; when it chooses from the infinity of visible forms those ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... of Helium or another," he replied, "is immaterial, to serve thus a red woman of Barsoom ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... vessels against both wind and current, and machinery to do all manner of work had not been thought of. The instantaneous transmission of messages around the world by means of electricity would probably at that day have been attributed to witchcraft or a league with the Devil. Immaterial circumstances had changed as greatly as material ones. We could not and ought not to be rigidly bound by the rules laid down under circumstances so different for emergencies so utterly unanticipated. The fathers themselves would have been the first ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... told them all—the crew as well as passengers—time and again, that she was never afraid. She didn't see why she need have any fear, she would have to die at one time or another, she had said, and whether it happened soon or late was immaterial to her. Nor was she afraid now; she had gone up on deck simply to see if anything interesting or exciting ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof

... efficiency of a heat engine, such as a boiler, is to raise the temperature of the furnace to the utmost, and reduce the heat of the smoke to the lowest possible point. It should be noted, in addition, that it is immaterial what liquid there may be in the lake; whether water, oil, mercury, or what not, the law will equally apply, and so in a heat engine, the nature of the working substance, provided that it does not change its physical state during a cycle, does not affect ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various

... in denying the Right of Search, that he boldly informed Palmerston, in 1841, "that there is no shadow of pretence for excusing, much less justifying, the exercise of any such right. That it is wholly immaterial, whether the vessels be equipped for, or actually engaged in slave traffic or not, and consequently the right to search or detain even slave vessels, must be confined to the ships or vessels of those ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... they would simply take a cigar and ask no questions all would be well; for, as I have said, there are cigars on the top. But they spoil everything by remarking that they have not seen the brand before. Should my wife not be present this is immaterial, for I have long had a reputation of keeping good cigars. Then I merely remark that it is a new brand; and they smoke, probably observing that it reminds them of a Cabana, which is natural, seeing that it is a Cabana in disguise. If my wife is present, however, she comes forward smiling, and ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie

... (like Aladdin's old lamps for new) that he wishes to give new books in exchange for old ones, or that he can smarten up old ones by binding, or otherwise, and give them a renovated appearance. But the solution is immaterial: the inscription being as above. The interior of the younger Manoury's book repository almost appalled me. His front shop, and a corridor communicating with the back part of the house, are rank with moisture; and his ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... lies not in territory, revenue, population, commerce, crops or manufactures, but in immaterial or spiritual tilings; in the purity, fortitude and uprightness of their people, in the poetry, literature, science and art which they give birth to, in the moral worth of their history and life. With nations, as with individuals, none but moral supremacy is immutable ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner

... are all moral. The organ for reception of the Gospel is the heart, not the head. To receive it by faith is a spiritual, not an intellectual process. Ignorance is no qualification nor no disqualification. Ignorance or knowledge is immaterial. The one condition is to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... thine eyes upon thyself! Dost thou not understand that there are two distinct forces in us, that of the soul and that of the body—that is, a movement and a regulator? The soul is the principle of life; that is, then, the movement. Whether it is produced by a weight, by a spring, or by an immaterial influence, it is none the less in the heart. But without the body this movement would be unequal, irregular, impossible! Thus the body regulates the soul, and, like the balance-wheel, it is submitted to regular oscillations. And this is so true, ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne

... but he found the uranium salt did not wait for the sun. Some strong radiation from it went through the opaque covering and made an impression of the cross upon the plate underneath. Light or darkness was immaterial. The mysterious rays streamed night and day from the salt. This was something new. Here was a substance which appeared to be producing X-rays; the rays emitted by uranium would penetrate the same opaque substances as the ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... also, wish to appear, not as men, like the spirits of other earths, but as crystalline globes. Their wanting to appear so, although they do not, arises from the circumstance that the knowledges of immaterial things are in the other ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg

... accused took various exceptions to the evidence given in by this witness; but his exceptions were set aside by the magistrate as vexatious and immaterial. ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth

... Dupin, "abounds with very strict analogies to the immaterial; and thus some color of truth has been given to the rhetorical dogma, that metaphor, or simile, may be made to strengthen an argument, as well as to embellish a description. The principle of the vis inertiae, for example, seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Substance of the Angels Absolutely Considered 51. Of the Angels in Comparison with Bodies 52. Of the Angels in Relation to Place 53. Of the Local Movement of the Angels 54. Of the Knowledge of the Angels 55. Of the Medium of the Angelic Knowledge 56. Of the Angels' Knowledge of Immaterial Things 57. Of the Angels' Knowledge of Material Things 58. Of the Mode of the Angelic Knowledge 59. The Will of the Angels 60. Of the Love or Dilection of the Angels 61. Of the Production of the Angels in the Order of Natural ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... always desirable, and especially where matter is abundant; and the problem is less a grammatical than a substantial one; the solution, I mean, is to deal summarily with all immaterial details, and give adequate treatment to the principal events; much, indeed, is better omitted altogether. Suppose yourself giving a dinner, and extremely well provided; there is pastry, game, kickshaws without end, wild boar, hare, sweetbreads; well, you will ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... knitting of the brows in that aquiline countenance, would suggest that in the midst of their earnest eloquence the philosopher's thoughts might sometimes come to a stand. Indeed, the visible scene did not exhaust the complexity of his problem; for there was also what he called "the scene of ideas", immaterial and private, but often more crowded and pressing than the public scene. Locke was the father of modern psychology, and the birth of this airy monster, this half-natural changeling, was ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana

... it, you would not inquire into the changes which may have been made, many or few, with or without lawful authority, between the 1st George I. and the passing of the new Act. All these, that Act, specifying the earlier date, would have made wholly immaterial. It would have seemed strange, I suppose, if a commanding officer, disobeying the statute, had said in his defence, "There have been many changes since the reign of George I.; and as to 'retaining,' we put a gloss on that, and thought it might ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... go up to the regiment before the duel, and now he was explaining to Reimers the reasons which had decided him to take this sudden step. To Reimers alone. But if he wished he might show the letter to the colonel. The opinion of any one else was immaterial to him. ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... all laws of nature, a liberal interpretation is the one nearest the truth. What part of these supplements are opposites? What part of substance is manner? What part of this duality is polarity? These questions though not immaterial may be disregarded, if there be a sincere appreciation (intuition is always sincere) of the "divine" spirit of the thing. Enthusiasm for, and recognition of these higher over these lower values will transform ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... white brilliance. They come slower with a drowsy light, which casts a less defined shadow of the still oaks. The yellow and brown leaves in the oaks, in the elms, and the beeches, in their turn affect the rays, and retouch them with their own hue. An immaterial mist across the fields looks like a cloud of light hovering on the stubble: the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies

... the burden of life as I feel it?" she resumed. "It is immaterial to me, whether we are united in this world or in the next. Accept my rose, Ernest, as an assurance that I speak with perfect sincerity. I see but two alternatives before us. One of them (beset with dangers) is elopement. And the other," she added, with truly ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins

... manner in which Eve had centred her childish affections in Philip, who had made her his especial favourite, was even more prejudicial to his interests in that quarter. Hitherto, indeed, Sylvester's vague dislike had been so undemonstrative and immaterial that he would hardly have owned to it as such, and far less would he have acknowledged that he was, however unconsciously, feeling for a peg on which to hang it, for ground to support it; and yet from the first moment when the man's ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... may have in part arisen from the prepossession, which has almost universally prevailed, that ideas are immaterial beings, and therefore possess no properties in common with solid matter. Which I suppose to be a fanciful hypothesis, like the stories of ghosts and apparitions, which have so long amused, and still amuse, the credulous without any foundation ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin

... one German town—I forget which; it is immaterial; the incident could have happened in any—noticing an open gate leading to a garden in which a concert was being given. There was nothing to prevent anyone who chose from walking through that gate, and thus gaining admittance to the concert ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome

... classes: the ordinary shaver, the safety shaver, and the extraordinary-safety shaver, who buys each safety razor as soon as it is invented and is never so happy as when about to try a new one. To a shaver of this class, cost is immaterial. A safety-razor for a cent, with twenty gold-monogramed blades and a guaranty of expert surgical attendance if he cuts himself, would stir his active interest neither more nor less than a safety-razor for a hundred dollars, with one Cannotbedull blade and an iron-clad agreement to ...
— The Perfect Gentleman • Ralph Bergengren

... for you to decide. It is immaterial to me, at present, whether he goes or stay, though I wish ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

... milkmaids, even laid aside by balladers. He assents to all men that bring any shadow of reason, and you may make him when he speaks most dogmatically even with one breath, to aver poor contradictions. His compositions differ only terminorum positione from dreams; nothing but rude heaps of immaterial, incoherent, drossy, rubbishy stuff, promiscuously thrust up together; enough to infuse dulness and barrenness in conceit into him that is so prodigal of his ears as to give the hearing; enough to make a man's memory ache with suffering such dirty stuff cast ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... another point as important, and will here confess that it was on account of this very point that I have just undertaken this entire discussion concerning the two psychic systems, their modes of operation, and the repression. For it is now immaterial whether I have conceived the psychological relations in question with approximate correctness, or, as is easily possible in such a difficult matter, in an erroneous and fragmentary manner. Whatever changes may be made in the interpretation of the psychic censor and of the correct and of the ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud

... preliminary remarks, to show how the struggle for existence bears on Natural Selection. It has been seen in the last chapter that amongst organic beings in a state of nature there is some individual variability: indeed I am not aware that this has ever been disputed. It is immaterial for us whether a multitude of doubtful forms be called species or sub-species or varieties; what rank, for instance, the two or three hundred doubtful forms of British plants are entitled to hold, if the existence of any well-marked varieties be admitted. But the mere existence ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... hast sworn unto Thy servants, for Thou alone art He who changest not, Thou alone art the Infinite and Boundless One, Thou only art unengendered, born of Thyself, Self-Father, Thou only art Unmoved and Unknowable, Thou only Silence art and Love and Fount of the Universe, Thou only art immaterial and hast no stain, ineffable in Thy generation and inconceivable in Thy manifestation. Hear us, then, O Father Incorruptible, Father Immortal, God of Hidden Beings, sole Light and Life, Alone beyond ...
— The Gnosis of the Light • F. Lamplugh

... blessing and a boon to our perishing race, a burden and a curse. And yet neither good nor evil is unmixed. Such is the nature even of our most baneful impressions that instances do arise where good may come from so corrupt a source. The connection between material and immaterial, between mind and matter, so operates, that sometimes, and in proportion to the strength of the impression, a change is wrought by the mere control of the mind over the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby

... myself from you at Delvile Castle, I confessed to you the reason of my flight, and I determined to see you no more. I named not to you, then, my family, the potency of my own objections against daring to solicit your favour rendering theirs immaterial: my own are now wholly removed, but ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)

... gentleman who brought you, we happened to think that we had not asked your name. We accordingly wrote to the address which had been given us, making the inquiry. In return we received a slip of paper containing these words: 'The name is immaterial; give him any name you ...
— The Cash Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.

... realised, with an odd mixture of pleasure and annoyance, that, for the first time in his life, he was so dependent upon another person that his happiness was in her keeping. The days were completely wasted upon trifling, immaterial things, for after three weeks of such intimacy and intensity all the usual occupations were unbearably flat and beside the point. The least intolerable occupation was to talk to St. John about Rachel's illness, and to discuss every symptom and its meaning, and, when this subject ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf

... which the name occurs in this chapter, the word is used in the general sense. In the other two instances it means the Roman province of Africa. Kaltwasser has used the term Africa in all the four instances. It is immaterial which is used, if rightly understood ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... work? Work is energy applied to the creation of either material or immaterial products. The digging of the soil preparatory to raising a corn-crop is work; the making of brooms; the writing of fugues. There is no one who does not work, at one time or another, and a man's social ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown

... very little battery power, no matter how long the line may be, and that steel magnets are entirely dispensed with. It is not necessary to have a separate battery for this purpose, as the microphone battery may also be used for the telephone receiver. The shape of the vibrating electro-magnets is immaterial, as they may be made of a ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various

... not recur to his lonely adversary at Piper's Crossroads. His thoughts were always of the moment and aroused by the present company. He was just as ready to shout for others as he was to shout for himself, and that is saying a great deal. It was immaterial to him who he shouted for so long ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... the romantic accessories of the first act have an unsatisfactory sequel in the last, as the poet here too feels obliged to take a roundabout road instead of the direct one. But we surely do not need to prove thus late that the fault is quite as immaterial ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various

... stream and tree Something still of what was He,— Plainly put, his More or Less Immaterial Consciousness,— Very fine and very large, Floating o'er his College barge: Always while the world continues Bards shall sing his thews and sinews,— Here he rowed and here he ran, Being rather more than man;— Thus as ages onward go Still he'll great and greater grow, Larger still in prose ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley

... disciple, pursued his inquiries, and adopted his method. He also was born in Miletus, but at what time is unknown, probably B.C. 529. Like Thales, he held to the eternity of matter. Like him, he disbelieved in the existence of any thing immaterial, for even a human soul is formed out of matter. He, too, speculated on the origin of the universe, but thought that air, not water, was the primal cause. [Footnote: Cicero, De Nat. D., i. 10.] This seemed to be universal. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... Graffenreid says: "A notable instance of reckless giving came under my observation just after the great strike in the mining regions, {26} when a man who had lost both arms went begging in Georges Creek Valley. How he was maimed, whether he was worthy, proved immaterial. Nor does it appear that he was even a miner; but he asked alms at all the mines. Now the miners had had no money since they were paid off for April, the strike having begun on the 7th of May and having lasted until the 1st ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... After all, it is but human nature. I have run over the world a long while, and have always observed that people are very religious so long as religion does not interfere with their pockets; but, with gold in one hand and godliness in the other, the tangible is always preferred to the immaterial. In America everything is sacrificed to time—for time is money. The New Yorkers would have dashed right through the church itself; but then, they are publicans, and ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... hundred years ago; we are only gaining our rights inch by inch, prejudice is only being overcome very slowly, and whenever women have had equal, or nearly equal, advantages they have proved themselves equal or superior to men. Women's inferiority in physical strength is immaterial, for, as mankind grows more civilised, force will be found in the brain ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... the celebrated clause in which the Constitution is said to recognize slavery. To our view the clause is perfectly immaterial in this sense, making the simple provision that so long as a State shall choose to keep a portion of her people in this subordinate condition, she shall enjoy only this limited degree of representation. To us, it appears to be ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper

... curious, to his dying day, in things terrestrial and in nothing else. From a Jewish-American father he has inherited that all too common taint of psychasthenia (miscalled neurasthenia); he confesses, moreover,—like other men of strong carnal proclivities—to certain immaterial needs and aspirations after "the beyond." Not one of these earthquake-specialists, in fact, but has his Achilles heel: a mental crotchet or physical imperfection to mar the worldly perspective. Not one of them, at close of life, will sit beside some ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... child nothing could afford him greater delight than "minding" other children, or them less. He would take upon himself this harassing duty entirely of his own accord, without hope of reward or gratitude. It was immaterial to him whether the other children were older than himself or younger, stronger or weaker, whenever and wherever he found them he set to work to "mind" them. Once, during a school treat, piteous cries were heard coming from ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... indispensable to its existence. The river Mudiboo is deep and rapid, and said to swarm with alligators, though I have heard but of three being seen at one time, and none of those above eighteen feet long: this, however, is immaterial, as we do not use the river fluid, which is thick and dirty, but draw all our water from natural wells and tanks. Poisonous springs are rather common, but are easily distinguished by containing no fish or living animal. Those, however, which swarm with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 402, Supplementary Number (1829) • Various

... she had never realised Agatha Verrall. She used to say that she had never seen anything in Agatha, which amounted, as he once told her, to not seeing Agatha at all. Still less could she have compassed any vision of the tie—the extraordinary, intangible, immaterial tie that ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair

... in whose service they will incur no greater risk than in ours. The reasons that induce me to recommend the employment of negro troops at all render the effect of the measures I have suggested upon slavery immaterial, and in my opinion the best means of securing the efficiency and fidelity of this auxiliary force would be to accompany the measure with a well-digested plan of gradual and general emancipation. As that will be the result of the continuance of the war, and will certainly occur if the enemy ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... himself, has a material as well as an immaterial world with which he must be concerned. To transpose Bagehot's profound little saying,—Each man dines in a room apart, but we all go down to dinner together. And though Holbein knew the pinch of narrow means, he had no lack of good cheer ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue

... his nature was soured into bitter malignity. He believed every word of the story of Creemer, and harped upon it with the pertinacity of the Venetian upon the daughter of Shylock. He was scarcely ever upon the floor that some offensive allusion was not made to this subject. It was immaterial to him what the subject-matter was under discussion: he found a means to have a throw at the Administration, and of consequence, at Clay; and bargain and corruption slid from his tongue with the concentration of venom of the rattlesnake. ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... socialism were confined to such persons as these, who are in America spoken of as the "parlour socialists," it would not only be impossible to tell what socialism actually was, but what it was or was not would be immaterial to any practical man. As a matter of fact, however, between socialism of this negligible kind—this sheet-lightning of sentiment reflected from a storm elsewhere—and the socialism which is really a factor to be reckoned with in the life of nations, we can start with drawing a line which, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... Hsi Jen explained; "whether you really like to study or whether you only pretend to like study is immaterial; but you should, when you are in the presence of master, or in the presence of any one else, not do nothing else than find fault with people and make fun of them, but behave just as if you were genuinely fond of study, so that you shouldn't besides provoke your father ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... it! Articulate or inarticulate, something like this is what every one thinks when he first sees Tahoe, and the oftener he sees it, and the more he knows it the more grand and glorious it becomes. It is immaterial that there are lakes perched upon higher mountain shelves, and that one or two of them, at equal or superior altitudes, are larger in size. Tahoe ranks in the forefront both for altitude and size, and in beauty ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both, or anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. The M'Choakumchild school was all fact, and the school of design was all fact, and the relations between master and man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery, ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... abuse. Prayer for the dying was legitimate and obligatory at ten minutes to three, but prohibited at five minutes to three when the breath had passed away. We have gone too far in this direction. We live in an immaterial as well as in a material world. We are planted at the overlap of two spheres, that which is spiritual and that which is physical, and we gravitate so sensibly and so rapidly to the latter as to lose touch ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... has made, that is either so distant, so little, or so inconsiderable, which he does not essentially inhabit. His substance is within the substance of every being, whether material or immaterial, and is intimately present to it, as that being is to itself. It would be an imperfection in him, were he able to remove out of one place into another, or to withdraw himself from any thing he has created, or from any part of that space which is diffused and spread abroad to infinity. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... change is predicated upon the assumption that elections are fair and returns are honest in all the States at each and every National election. If that were true the difference in the representation from the several States would be unimportant and immaterial, even under the proposed change, hence there would be no occasion for the change. The fact that this assumption is not true furnishes the basis for the alleged inequality in representation, and the apparent necessity for the change ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch

... voice rose only so little above that of the winds and trees and the life of undertone we share with them as to make us first doubt the silence and then lend an ear to the incessant pulses of which it is composed. The infinite and infinitesimal vague happinesses and immaterial alarms, terrors and beauties scared by the sound of speech, memories and forgettings that the touch of memory itself crumbles into dust—this very texture of the life of the soul might have been a gray background over which tumultuous existence passed unheeding had not Edward ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry

... out. Yes, it was the work of an incendiary. The actual damage is immaterial." Varr's answers were curt. "Every ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston

... court, as by rude and contumelious behaviour, by obstinacy, perverseness or prevarication, by breach of the peace, or any wilful disturbance whatever"; in other words, direct insult to or interference with a sitting court is treated as contempt of the court. It is immaterial whether the offender is juror, party, witness, counsel, solicitor or a stranger to the case at hearing, and occasionally it is found necessary to punish for contempt persons under trial for felony or misdemeanour if by violent language or conduct they ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... are in no respect the ancestors of the reptiles of the Secondary age, nor does man descend from the mammals which preceded him in the Tertiary age. The link by which they are connected is of a higher and immaterial nature; and their connection is to be sought in the view of the Creator himself, whose aim in forming the earth, in allowing it to undergo the successive changes which geology has pointed out, and in creating successively all the different types of animals which have passed away, was to introduce ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... in order to its complete extirpation."[53] So zealous was Stevenson, our minister to England, in denying the Right of Search, that he boldly informed Palmerston, in 1841, "that there is no shadow of pretence for excusing, much less justifying, the exercise of any such right. That it is wholly immaterial, whether the vessels be equipped for, or actually engaged in slave traffic or not, and consequently the right to search or detain even slave vessels, must be confined to the ships or vessels of those nations with whom it may have treaties on the subject."[54] Palmerston courteously replied ...
— The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America - 1638-1870 • W. E. B. Du Bois

... put life into them. This is the case even in judicial matters. You can tie up the judges of the land much more closely than it would be right to tie up the Secretary for the Home Department or the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Yet is it immaterial whether the laws be administered by Chief Justice Hale or Chief Justice Jeffreys? And can you doubt that the case is still stronger when you come to political questions? It would be perfectly easy, as many of you ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... are driven by girls belonging to the V. A. D. I'm not sure whether it means Volunteer Ambulance Department or Volunteer Aid Department, but that is immaterial; they are wonders, whatever ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride

... like cats, cannot in ordinary circumstances be killed, and, instead of breaking my neck, I merely suffered that most immaterial injury—immaterial, at least, in my case—a temporary disendowment of the senses. On regaining the few wits I could lay claim to, I fully expected to find myself in the hands of the irate laird, who would seize ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... a glass of the Cypriani's excellent sherry and caught his host's eye. "Mr. Varney! By a pleasant coincidence, we happen to be gathered here within a day or two of the birthday of one member of our charming party. The little discrepancy of date is immaterial—am I right? Why may I not propose the health and great happiness ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... Tribune, began to discredit its work. Horace Greeley, who was a member, talked often and always well, but the more he talked the more he revealed his incapacity for safe leadership. He seemed to grow restive as he did in Congress over immaterial matters. Long speeches annoyed him, and adjournments from Friday to the following Tuesday sorely vexed him, although this arrangement convenienced men of large business interests. Besides, committees not being ready to report, ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... company of the bearer of an old historic name. When my host at the lunch introduced a stately-looking gentleman as Sir Kenelm Digby, it gave me a start, as if a ghost had stood before me. I recovered myself immediately, however, for there was nothing of the impalpable or immaterial about the stalwart personage who bore the name. I wanted to ask him if he carried any of his ancestor's "powder of sympathy" about with him. Many, but not all, of my readers remember that famous man's famous preparation. ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... life of relation. By what means, have they long asked themselves, can that which is only extent act on that which is only thought? How can we represent to ourselves this local union of matter with an immaterial principle, which, by its essence, does not exist in space? The two substances have been so completely separated, to insure the liberty of the soul and its superiority over the body, that it has become impossible to bring ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... are immaterial in themselves," he reminded her. "It's just a question how much happiness they have brought her, whether the ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... a separate order of beings, living on this earth, but invisible and immaterial to us. Able, however, occasionally to manifest their presence; known in almost all countries and ages as demons not necessarily bad, gnomes, fairies, kobolds, elves, goblins, ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... sed he would state a few remarks. He sed man was a critter of intelleck & was movin on to a Gole. Sum men had bigger intellecks than other men had and thay wood git to the Gole the soonerest. Sum men was beests & wood never git into the Gole at all. He sed the Erth was materiel but man was immaterial, and hens man was different from the Erth. The Erth, continnered the speaker, resolves round on its own axeltree onct in 24 hours, but as man haint gut no axeltree he cant resolve. He sed the ethereal essunce of the koordinate branchis ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... he would have struggled until he fell senseless, rather than ask his friend to desist. His principle seemed to be, if a man cannot understand without talking to him, it is useless to talk, because it is immaterial whether such a man understands or not. His own sympathy was so broad and sure that, although nothing had been said for hours, his companion knew that nothing had escaped his eye, nor had a single pulse of beauty in the day or ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... whirling motion by the sun itself, and carrying the planets round the sun by its revolution, as a whirlpool carries straws, could be readily understood, and though it appears to have been held by Kepler that this current and Vortex were immaterial, he ascribes to it the power of overcoming the inertia of bodies, and of putting them and keeping ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... You will, I am sure, agree with me that if the page be given, the number of the chapter is immaterial. Also that if page 534 finds us only in the second chapter, the length of the first one must ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... and women, who belonged to such things?" As Lee watched her it seemed that she grew more remote, shadowy, like a memory of long vanished beauty made before his eyes from the shifting firelight and immaterial shadows. Mina Raff lost her reality in an unreal charm that compressed his heart. The atmosphere around her stirred with ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer

... the immaterial world. I like to live among thoughts and images of the past and the possible, and even of the impossible, now ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... withdrawing it from his chest; and his stick, which he takes care to raise slightly above the level of his shoulder, remains perfectly visible to all eyes. When the conductor faces the players, it is immaterial whether he marks the second beat to the right, or to ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz

... yourselves that it is immaterial to you and to your less developed brothers as to who wins in this great international collision going on now, and if you act accordingly, Russia will be crushed by Germany. And when Russia will be crushed ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... near to the place of observation. The action of these vortices is proved to be of variable force, whether arising from atmospheric conditions, or due to an increased activity of the ethereal medium throughout the whole system, is at present immaterial. They do vary, and sometimes the passage of a vortex will deflect the needle a whole degree. At other times, there are magnetic storms extending over a great part of the earth's surface; but there is reason ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... genius did not deter him, any more than Ducis was deterred by his more subdued veneration, from working havoc on the English text. Shakespeare's blank verse was necessarily turned into Alexandrines. That was comparatively immaterial. Of greater moment is it to note that the denouement of the tragedy was completely revolutionised by Dumas. The tragic climax is undermined. Hamlet's life is spared by Dumas. The hero's dying exclamation, "The rest is silence," disappears ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... passions, splendours, sorrows, will leap out of darkness into the conscious being of thought, when this interwoven net of brief, small sounds will form the centre of a web that will hold together in its threads the universe, the All, visible and invisible, material and immaterial, real and imagined, of a human mind. And if we are to make the best of a child, it is in no way secondary to its physical health and growth that it should acquire a great and thorough command over speech, not merely ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells

... suppose that it would embrace the appointments to the Senate, unless we can at the same time suppose the voluntary co-operation of the State legislatures. If we make the latter supposition, it then becomes immaterial where the power in question is placed—whether in their hands or in those of ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... Layman that it has of late become an "obnoxious Number." I have Reason to think I was truly informed; if it was a misrepresentation, the Reverend Doctor who presided at the Meeting, may set us right, if he thinks it worth his While. I am still of Opinion, that is immaterial to my Purpose, whether twenty-four or thirty Gentlemen were present, when the Address was carried through; either of those numbers being very inconsiderable, when compared with the whole Number of Congregational Ministers in the Province, which is said to be at least four ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams

... about forty years of age when I first saw him; and I knew him intimately for the greater part of twenty years. Small and spare in person, and with small legs ("immaterial legs" Hood called them), he had a dark complexion, dark, curling hair, almost black, and a grave look, lightening up occasionally, and capable of sudden merriment. His laugh was seldom excited by jokes merely ludicrous; it was never spiteful; and his quiet ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall

... synagogues? I say so too! and that fact will be presented by and by, in its place. This does not touch the point. Jesus was here, giving instruction to his [30]followers, both Jew and Gentile, respecting the Sabbath which they would have to do with. It is immaterial what kind of sophistry is presented to overthrow the point, nothing can touch it short of proving it a mistranslation. Jesus did here recognize the perpetuity of the seventh day Sabbath. And John will ...
— The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign - 1847 edition • Joseph Bates

... should buy the first L100 in one office, the second in another, and so on. All the difference between buying the whole from one office and buying all the separate contingent payments at different offices, is immaterial to calculation. Mr. Lee would have agreed with the rest of the world about the payments to be made to the several different offices, in consideration of their several contracts: but he differed from every one else about the sum to be ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan

... interaction all becoming and all life depend. These are warmth, which expands, and cold, which contracts; the former resides in the sun and thence proceeds, the latter is situated in the earth. Although Telesius acknowledges an immaterial, immortal soul, he puts the emphasis on sensuous experience, without which the understanding is incapable of attaining certain knowledge. He is a sensationalist both in the theory of knowledge and in ethics, holding the functions of judgment and thought deducible from the fundamental power of perception, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... reasons and in part "a question of economy of coal and labor in time of war." No profit was expected and none was made, but the company continued to operate the ship as a public service. The reduction from twenty-four to twenty-one knots is, however, quite immaterial to the controversy, as ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... "It is immaterial to me, so long as you do not interfere with the course of the experiment. You must sit perfectly still, you must not speak until Allen stands before you ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... overhead to a man standing or a growing cabbage. A man in bed or a cabbage in the pot is not considered as having a zenith, though from this view of the matter there was once a considerably dissent among the learned, some holding that the posture of the body was immaterial. These were called Horizontalists, their opponents, Verticalists. The Horizontalist heresy was finally extinguished by Xanobus, the philosopher-king of Abara, a zealous Verticalist. Entering an assembly ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce

... muttered in a careless voice, as though that gentle man's presence ought to strike all the world as though both natural and immaterial. ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola

... no excuse for a player who has led his partner on to their mutual destruction to murmur, "I could have made my bid." An early bid being allowed to become the final declaration is exceptional. Whether or not it could be made is, therefore, immaterial, but the result it may produce ...
— Auction of To-day • Milton C. Work

... thou, then, exasperate, thou idle immaterial skein of sleave silk, thou green sarcenet flap for a sore eye, thou tassel of a prodigal's purse, thou? Ah, how the poor world is pestered with such ...
— The History of Troilus and Cressida • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]

... matter of fact, neither was the case; Robert was merely fractious, and in that particular mood when he wished to have his mind imperceptibly made up for him, while prepared to combat any direct suggestion. From what quarter the ignoble proposition that we should go home arose is immaterial. It is enough to say that Robert believed it to be his own, and that, before he had time to reconsider the question, the tactful Croppy had crammed the old white horse into the shafts ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross

... place at dusk. It was a raw, black day. We have a couple of good rooms, close to the savage sea. I am nevertheless afraid I have made a mistake. It would perhaps have been wiser to go inland. These things are not immaterial: we make our own heaven, but we scarcely make our own earth. I am writing at a little table by the window, looking out on the rocks, the gathering dusk, and the rising fog. My wife has wandered down to the rocky ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various

... that he tried to say two things at the same time; that Orton's job or loss of it was entirely immaterial and a matter of perfect indifference. What he said was, "It's material of perfect immaterence ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes

... to lift his people from a lower to a higher form of religion, from idolatry to theism. The Inca even went so far as to banish all images of Viracocha from his temples, so that this, the greatest of gods, should be worshiped as an immaterial spirit only. ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... was being performed when DICKENS's short tale of The Boarding-House appeared. For my part, I long ago came to the conclusion that Sam Weller was absolutely an original creation, as far, that is, as anything outside the immaterial realms of fancy and fairyland can be an original creation. Our FITZ gives CALVERLEY's Examination Paper, and also an Oxford imitation of it, which, however, is not by any means up to the CALVERLEY-BLADES mark. There is also a preface to Pickwick, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various

... is something strangely alluring and inspiring to the editorial imagination in the comprehensive purpose which has prompted their mission to the civilized nations of the West. That purpose is doubly peaceful, for it includes a two-fold commerce of material products and of immaterial ideas. Probably the vastest conception which ever entered into the mind of a conqueror was that which was profoundly meditated, and, in its initial steps, practically carried out, by Alexander the Great. He was engaged in ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... lasted while he lived. Thus when he was sent by the Journal to Jefferson City to report the proceedings of the Missouri State Legislature, what his paper got was not an edifying summary of that unending grist of mostly irrelevant and immaterial legislation through the General Assembly hopper, but a running fire of pungent comment on the Idiosyncrasies of its officers and members. He would attach himself to the legislators whose personal qualities afforded most profitable ammunition for sport in print. He shunned ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... dinner consisted of soup, bread, and water. He would not even touch the fish or the eggs elaborately prepared for his especial benefit. Yet he was far from being a skeleton at the feast, to whose immaterial side he contributed a good deal—not taking the lead in conversation, but readily following whosoever did, giving his opinions on one topic after another in the manner of a man well informed, cultured, thoughtful, original even, and at the same time with no warmer interest in all he spoke of ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer

... awoke and lay moaning, while his little body shook with the long stifling gasps that struggled between his lips, she held him tightly clasped in her arms, with a woman's pathetic faith in the power of a physical pressure to withstand the immaterial forces of death. A hundred times during the day he aroused himself, stirred faintly in his feverish sleep, and called her name in the voice of terror with which he used to summon her ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... unknown to fame, and their names are only to be found in ancient peerages and suchlike books. Whether they were good or bad, religious or wicked, useful to their country or indifferent, handsome or ugly, is immaterial to him. In some cases they founded families that have endured, in others they perished with all their kindred within a century of the Norman Conquest. But to our genealogist they are very living people. He is intimately acquainted with the most of them, no less than with their ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... God bless her! And I fear I wearied her with my reasons for not sustaining it. But I did not tell her, what I may confide in you, that in Hays versus The People—25 New York—it is held immaterial whether a person who pretended to solemnise a marriage contract, was or was not a clergyman, or whether either party to the contract was deceived by false representations of ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... material, for a philosopher who proclaims, as he did, that the senses are the only source of knowledge, must necessarily attach himself to a material element as the primary one. And yet he seems to have spiritualized matter. "The moving unit of Heraclitus—the Becoming—is as immaterial as the resting unit of the Eleatics—the Being."[418] The Heraclitean "fire" is endowed with spiritual attributes. "Aristotle calls it psyche—soul, and says that it is asomatotaton, or absolutely incorporeal ("De Anima," i. 2. 16). It is, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... fellow-cell with those that build up the body of the parent animal and remain component parts of it. This intangible something is the subtile element that eludes our closest analysis; it is the germ of the immaterial principle according to which the new being is to develop. The physical germ we see; the spiritual germ we cannot see, though we may trace its action on the material elements through which it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... including the five senses and the six objects of sense; the six kinds of knowledge; the forty-six mental qualities, grouped under six heads; and the fourteen conceptions separated from the mind; thus making in all seventy-two compounded things and three immaterial things. These latter are "conscious cessation of existence," "unconscious ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis

... violated or repudiated by them afterwards." But Santa Anna, as recognized dictator, was the de facto government, and the acts of a de facto government were binding on the nation as against foreign nations. "It is immaterial, therefore, whether Mexico has or has not since repudiated Santa Anna's treaty with Texas. It was executed at the time by competent authority. She availed herself of all its benefits." Forthwith Texas established counties ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson

... public. It is sufficient that the measures which they patronized were in a high degree beneficial to the Irish nation; and whether they urged them from a wish to raise themselves to office, or from a principle of pure patriotism, was to the public immaterial. That they supported them zealously and faithfully, from whatever motive, was indubitable. So zealously and faithfully indeed did they exert themselves, that the very same men who had for years made a constant and violent opposition to those measures, exhausting ...
— The Causes of the Rebellion in Ireland Disclosed • Anonymous

... Maker and I, His creature, were the two beings, luminously such, in rerum natura. I will not here speculate, however, about my own feelings. Only this I know full well now, and did not know then, that the Catholic Church allows no image of any sort, material or immaterial, no dogmatic symbol, no rite, no sacrament, no Saint, not even the Blessed Virgin herself, to come between the soul and its Creator. It is face to face, "solus cum solo," in all matters between man and his God. ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... is the only real existence; the intercourse which we apparently have with a material world being really the result solely of the laws of our mental constitution. This is Idealism, which again has next to attempt to reduce the various phenomena to some one immaterial principle. Or it may be maintained, thirdly, that real existence is to be sought neither in mind as mind nor in matter as matter; that both classes of phenomena are but qualities or modes of operation of something distinct from both, and on which both alike are dependent. Hence ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel

... long beset it; if he sometimes accepted distractions in the form of light pleasures, as well as in the form of study,[54] did he not likewise always impose hard laborious occupation upon his mind, thus chaining it to beautiful immaterial things? Did his intellectual activity slacken? Was his soul less energetic, less sublime? The works of genius that issued from his pen at Venice are a sufficient reply. "Manfred," conceived on the summit of the Alps, was written at Venice; the fourth canto of "Childe Harold" was conceived and ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... by such doctrines as—an independent and immaterial soul, a special moral faculty, and what is called free-will,—the metaphysician is a person of importance in the contest; he is powerful either to uphold or to subvert the fabric. But, if these were ever to constitute the chief stronghold of the faith, its tenure ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... be decided in accordance with my views, the other questions become immaterial; if the second be decided adversely to my views, the first and third become immaterial. The two first are questions of law to be decided by the court, the other is ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... education. The one was the Education Commission of 1882-83, appointed by Lord Ripon, with Sir William Hunter as President, and the other the Public Service Commission of 1886-87, appointed by Lord Dufferin, with Sir Charles Aitchison as President. It is quite immaterial whether the steps taken by the Government of India during the subsequent decade were actually due to the recommendations of the Education Commission, or whether the Report of the Commission merely afforded a welcome opportunity to carry into practice the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol

... and some others with their fancies, and the farther they are off truth, the more confident they are they are near it, as those that are out of their way believe the farther they have gone they are the nearer their journey's end, when they are farthest of all from it. He is confident of immaterial substances, and his reasons are very pertinent; that is, substantial as he thinks, and immaterial as others do. Heretofore his beard was the badge of his profession, and the length of that in all his polemics was ever accounted ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various

... comprehensive groups, equally with Species, have a positive, permanent, specific principle, maintained generation after generation with all its essential characteristics. Individuals are the transient representatives of all these organic principles, which certainly have an independent, immaterial existence, since they outlive the individuals that embody them, and are no less real after the generation that has represented them for a time has passed away than they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... meats, because he feared the Jews that came from James. Peter's weak attitude endangered the principle of Christian liberty. It is the deduction rather than the fact which Paul reproves. To eat and to drink, or not to eat and drink, is immaterial. But to make the deduction "If you eat, you sin; if you abstain you are righteous"—this ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther

... the product of our past ideals. We are making our future in form and texture and dynamics by the force of our present hour idealism. Finer and finer, more and more immaterial and lustrous we become, according to the use and growth of our real and inner life. It is the quickening spirit which beautifies the form, and draws unto itself the excellences of nature. The spiritual person ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort

... trifle disappointed upon finding how eagerly these young men sought information in regard to a matter that I considered so unimportant that I had forgotten even to mention it. But I reflected that, after all, the motive by which they were induced to join in our adventure was immaterial, while our need for the strength that their joining in it would give us was so pressing that upon gaining them for allies very likely depended our eventual success. Being moved by which considerations, I dilated upon the magnitude of the hidden treasure with such vehemence that ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... regret. Perhaps he was not the first bridegroom who felt loath, on the eve of his marriage, to change the delicate, almost ethereal tenderness of betrothed lovers for the close and intimate association of husband and wife. The one relationship has something in it immaterial, exquisite, and unearthly, a bond invisible and yet as potent as the winds we cannot see and the melodies we only hear. The other, with its profound appeals to mortality, its demands upon all that ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... emptiness, there is opened to the view boundless knowledge. Endowed with inward rest and peace, the idea of 'I' departs, and the object of 'I'—clearly discriminating the non-existence of matter, this is the condition of immaterial life. As the Munga (grass) when freed from its horny case, or as the wild bird which escapes from its prison trap, so, getting away from all material limitations, we thus find perfect release. Thus ascending above the Brahmans, deprived of every vestige ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... no great importance to it. Sir George Templemore was inquiring concerning the recording of deeds, a regulation that had recently attracted attention in England; and one of Mr. Effingham's replies contained some immaterial inaccuracy, which Aristabulus took occasion to correct, as his first appearance ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper

... impressed me more than little things, and apparently immaterial ones, which have influenced the careers of many people. My father and his brothers, all active business men, were also deeply interested in politics, not on the practical side but in policies and governmental measures. ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew

... ability, and of women of vivid religious emotions; but we do not so readily comprehend how such persons as Napoleon and Talleyrand should have embraced a delusion which was utterly irreconcilable with their skeptical natures, and which necessarily presupposed an immaterial state of existence, and the providential superintendence of human affairs by a benevolent order of beings, whose powers must have been deputed to them by a superior and over-ruling Intelligence. It was the part of an ancient ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... world, a man is judged not by what he is, but by what he appears to be. Everything pointed to the belief that Gordon was working against the interests of Fernhurst; whether he actually meant to do so or not was immaterial. He had to be dealt with as if it was deliberate. It might be hard on him, but it was not the interests of the individual, but of the community, that ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... marking a transition from one historical period to another, although no date which shall mark that transition is universally accepted. The year 311, the year in which the Diocletian persecution ceased, has been accepted by many as the dividing point. The exact date adopted is immaterial. ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... denotes, an external thing, and never a sensation of the mind."—Moral Science, i, 54. Here is some difference of opinion; but however the thing may be, it does not affect my argument; which is, that to perceive or think is an act or attribute of our immaterial substance or nature, and not to be supposed the effect either of the objects perceived or of our ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... it. She smiles sweetly, but it is clear she has not the slightest idea who I am, and is waiting to catch my name from the butler. I whisper it to him. Perhaps he will get it right, perhaps he won't; it is quite immaterial. They have asked two hundred and forty guests, some seventy-five of whom they know by sight, for the rest, any chance passer-by, able, as the theatrical advertisements say, 'to dress and behave as a gentleman,' would do every bit as well. ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... conceiving of angels and disembodied souls. I have not the slightest idea how a soul looks, what shape it is, how it goes from one place to another, whether it walks or flies. I cannot conceive of the immaterial having form; neither can I conceive of anything existing without form, and yet the fact that I cannot conceive of a thing does not prove that the thing does not exist, but it does prove that I know ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll

... opportunity, as the principal defendant, 'Blackie' Ford, puts it, 'to start something.' On Friday, two days after picking began, the practical agitators began working through the camp. Whether or not Ford came to the —— ranch to foment trouble seems immaterial. There are five Fords in every camp of seasonal laborers in California. We have devoted ourselves in these weeks to such questions as this: 'How big a per cent of California's migratory seasonal labor force ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... through space, held to the earth by gravitation, partaking of the earth-inertia, moving in its wreath of epicycles round the sun, and with the sun and the planets on their vast march through space. But the immaterial has no inertia, feels nothing of the pull of matter for matter: where it parts from its garment of flesh, there it remains (so far as space concerns it any longer) immovable in space. I was not leaving the ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... big-store system into Yugoslavia, but this the Serb does not understand. He has a greater sense of responsibility and is more careful with regard to the expenses. To the Croat, in the old Empire, it was immaterial whether the officials were more or less costly. The bill was paid by Austria, who was the foe. For some time the Croat found himself forgetting that he was in Yugoslavia. When Cardinal Bourne came to Zagreb in the ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... battery and etherial wires can shiver a planet with his touch? A marvelous power—the human spirit—has gained a vast control over the blind, stubborn substances and forces that created it, and by its immaterial, invisible will, can in a limited degree overrule the most imperious law of nature by throwing a stone into the air. Is it unscientific, then, or derogatory to the vaunted potency of matter to affirm that the eternal ages may have developed an intelligent ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880

... aesthetically. The discovery of its date or of its author may be otherwise interesting; it only remotely affects our aesthetic appreciation by adding to the direct effect certain associations. If the direct effect were absent, and the object in itself uninteresting, the circumstances would be immaterial. Moliere's Misanthrope says to the court poet who commends his sonnet as written in a quarter of ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... take one more thorough look, your honour," answered the serjeant, mounting to the ridge of the building, where he obtained the immaterial advantage of seeing more at the same time, at the risk of exposing his whole person, should any hostile rifle be in reach of a bullet—"then we may ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... on the part of those who oppose the bill, on the subject of its injustice to the white inhabitants of the District of Columbia. Indeed, the argument on that side of the question is, when divested of all that is immaterial, meretricious, and extravagant, reduced almost entirely to that single position. Abstract this from the excited declamation to which you have listened, and what is left is but the old revolting argument in favor of slavery, and a selfish appeal to prejudice ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... propose in the publication is proper enough; the omission of business and immaterial letters being perfectly proper, as they can interest nobody. I had supposed my last letter would have formed an exception to the rule, which excluded immaterial papers. It explained, more fully than my first, my reasons for this correspondence, defined ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... and (so to speak) comfort require the nominal separation. So electricity sets up for itself; and chemistry, the metropolis, swells into other offshoots. So numerous and so great are these that the old alchemists, unlimited range through the material, immaterial and supernatural as they claimed for their art, would rub their eyes, bleared over blowpipe and alembic, at sight of its present riches. The half-hewn block handed down by these worthies—not by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various

... Christian revelation, and more deep and fruitful principles than a man can keep and make his own in the course of a lifetime, however purely and faithfully he lives and strives. To myself the doubtful matters are things absolutely immaterial, like the debris of the mine, while the precious ore gleams and ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... entire life to the study of the bee. In the annals of human suffering and human triumph there is nothing more touching, no lesson more admirable, than the story of this patient collaboration, wherein the one who saw only with immaterial light guided with his spirit the eyes and hands of the other who had the real earthly vision; where he who, as we are assured, had never with his own eyes beheld a comb of honey, was yet able, notwithstanding the veil on his dead eyes that rendered double the veil in which nature enwraps ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck

... the Family are certainly immediately distinguished among each other as to sex and age, but this difference is entirely immaterial as far as the nature of their employment goes. In China, therefore, every man can attain any position; he who is of humblest birth in the great state-family can climb to the highest honor. But the progress of spirit now becomes so mediated that the division ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz

... the Inflammation lasts; and that as really, and to all Intents and Purposes, as if he had the Angel (Satan) before his Face, in his Locality and Personality; that is to say, all Devil and Monster in his Person, and an immaterial but intense Fire flaming about and from within him, at all the Pores ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... pictured it, not with a bold unhallowed hand, but as the completion, the consummation of all those dim whisperings of joy, and hope, and wisdom, which had engrossed him below—the perfection of that beauty, that loveliness, in the material and immaterial, he had yearned for in vain ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar

... "I can't help asking myself what it all means. Is life, after all, merely a series of immaterial phenomena, self-developing and based solely on sensation and reaction, or is it ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock

... forces, which regarded them as material entities, may now be regarded as abandoned. Light, Heat, Electricity, Magnetism, etc., which have hitherto been considered under the self-contradictory designation of "Imponderable Elements," or immaterial matter, are now, by common consent, beginning to be ranked as pure forces; having passed through their material stage, they are regarded as kindred and convertible forms of motion in matter itself. The old notions, that light consisted of moving ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... these estimates include allowance for contingent and immaterial damage as well as ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... sense which the term has under the code duello governing "affairs of honour." It carries no connotation of honesty, veracity, equity, liberality, or unselfishness. This national honour is of the nature of an intangible or immaterial asset, of course; it is a matter of prestige, a sportsmanlike conception; but that fact must not be taken to mean that it is of any the less substantial effect for purposes of a casus belli than the material assets of the community. Quite the contrary: "Who steals my purse, steals ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen

... is no instinctive repugnance felt universally by man to marriage within the prohibited degrees, but that its present strength is mainly due to what I may call immaterial considerations. It is quite conceivable that a non-eugenic marriage should hereafter excite no less loathing than that of a brother ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various

... are alike in every material respect. Even the myriads of leaves are all different, and yet all alike. So why may not the millions of stars that fill the sky be like our own sun and like each other, differing in such immaterial things as size and brilliancy, color and constitution, but alike in the chief object of their being, the giving of light and heat, as vivifying forces to dark bodies surrounding them? And why may not these planets resemble the earth ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... bed was some inches higher than the other. This was immaterial, and he felt satisfied that even the craftiest snake could ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty

... desultory conversation followed, on immaterial matters; and some orders were issued by telegraph, by the Secretary of War, for some small reenforcements to be sent to Kentucky ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman

... quarter of a century ago the word "animism" began to be used to describe that particular phase of the psychological condition of primitive peoples by which they believe that a spirit (anima) resides in everything, material and immaterial. This spirit is generally closely associated with the thing itself, sometimes actually identified with it. When it is thought of as distinct from the thing, it is supposed to have the form of the thing, to be in a word its "double." ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter

... again, brief as the time may be? The pain is immaterial. It will have its inevitable quick anodyne. It is what I would wish, what you would wish. She loved life, every moment of it. Why should we deny her any ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London

... afterwards found to belong to the regular course of events, are regarded as prodigies. The same delusion prevails as to moral phenomena, and many of these are ascribed to the intervention of demons, ghosts, witches, and other immaterial and supernatural agents. By degrees, many of the enigmas of the moral and physical world are explained, and, instead of being due to extrinsic and irregular causes, they are found to depend on fixed ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... wonderful with how much independence of bodily suffering—and even of suffering in the brain—the mind carries itself, and this fact seems worthy of more distinct recognition than it has received. It significantly confirms our belief in the existence of an immaterial principle, or soul, superior to the mere functions of the brain. Great and healthful mental activity often exists in a disordered body; and biographical literature is full of illustrations of the power of a strong will to accomplish brilliant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... apprehension as to our ready ability to pay our way with such money as we had, and the question whether or not our current receipts met our current expenses has not entered into the estimate of our solvency. Of course the general state of our funds, exclusive of gold, was entirely immaterial to the foreign creditor and investor. His debt could only be paid in gold, and his only concern was our ability to keep on ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland

... that matter? I do not expect to live very long in any case; whether a little longer or a little shorter, is most immaterial. I care to live only so far as I can be of service to you, and while you ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner

... heart that sighs for freedom seeks Her image; there the winds no barrier know, Clouds come and rest and leave your fairy peaks; While even the immaterial Mind, below, And Thought, her winged offspring, chained by power, Pine ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... mastery over the herd, and then the defeated ones cower away abjectly, and submit themselves meekly to their lord. All the male animals are given to issuing challenges in a very self-assertive manner, and the object is the same in every case. But we are far above the brutes; we have that mysterious, immaterial ally of the body, and our struggles are settled amid bewildering refinements and subtleties and restrictions. In one quarter, power of the soul gives its possessor dominion; in another, only the force of the body is of any avail. If we observe the struggles of savages, we see that the idea ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... cells he had built must remain empty?" The answer of Bishop Law to this remark is by no means satisfactory. He says it assumes that more misery than happiness exists. Now, in this view of the question, the balance is quite immaterial. The existence of any evil at all raises the question as much as the preponderance of evil over good, because the question conceives a perfectly good Being, and asks how such a Being can have permitted any evil at all. Upon ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham

... Probability to consider), the supposition, that the presence in all of the common antecedent may be simply a coincidence, is rebutted; and this is the sole reason why mere number of instances, differing only in immaterial points, is of any value. As applied, indeed, to negative instances, i.e. to those resembling each other in the absence of a certain circumstance, the Method of Agreement is not vitiated by Plurality of Causes. But the negative premiss cannot generally ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing









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