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More "Positive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Howe was enclosed one to her from Miss Harlowe,* to be transmitted to my cousins, containing a final rejection of me; and that in very vehement and positive terms; yet she pretends that, in this rejection, she is governed more by principle than passion—[D——d lie, as ever was told!] and, as a proof that she is, says, that she can forgive me, and does, on this one condition, that I will never molest her more—the whole letter so written ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... wholesome corrective of the teaching of our new jurists, "that no intention, however sincere, of protecting the interests of others can make it safe or salutary to tie up their own hands. Still more obviously true is it, that by their own hands only can any positive and durable improvement of their circumstances in life be worked out" (Repres. Government, p. 57). It is these wise lessons from human experience to which the advocate of Home Rule appeals, and not ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... so much said of Johnson's slovenliness and roughness. I have preserved nothing of what passed, except that Crosbie pleased him much by talking learnedly of alchymy, as to which Johnson was not a positive unbeliever, but rather delighted in considering what progress had actually been made in the transmutation of metals, what near approaches there had been to the making of gold; and told us that it was affirmed, that a person in the Russian dominions had discovered the secret, but died without ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... unsuitable—something either too special or too every-day. She longed to evince sympathy for Mr. Farron, but was afraid that, if she did, it would be like intimating that he was as good as dead. She was caught between the negative danger of seeming indifferent and the positive ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... herdsman: the buffaloes observing it, attacked the tiger, and rescued the poor man; they tossed him about from one to the other, and, to the best of my recollection, killed him; but of that I am not quite positive. Both of the wounded men were brought to me. The Biparie ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... watched the distant form of a husband, engaged in a duty like that we have described. Notwithstanding the influence of long habit, the forest was rarely approached, after night-fall, by the boldest woodsman, without some secret consciousness that he encountered a positive danger. It was the hour when its roaming and hungry tenants were known to be most in motion; and the rustling of a leaf, or the snapping of a dried twig beneath the light tread of the smallest animal, was apt to conjure images of the voracious and fire-eyed panther, or perhaps of a lurking ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... difficult to see how Germany can make any break for freedom without coming in conflict not only with one of the Great Powers but with a combination of two or more. It is improbable that she will attempt the enterprise without at least the benevolent neutrality of the United States. Assurances of positive sympathy would probably go a long way towards encouraging her to the hazard. But if the United States should range herself definitely on the side of peace the venture ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... carriage struck a stump instead of a stone." The public mind was divided. Some held that the attempt to operate the coal mine was farcical, but that the improvement of the Lehigh River was an undertaking of great value and of probable profit to investors. Others were just as positive that the river improvement would follow the fate of so many similar enterprises but that a fortune was in store for those who invested in the ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... are often used without proper discrimination being made in their respective meanings. Indecency and immodesty are opposed to morality: the former in externals, as dress, words, and looks; the latter in conduct and disposition. "Indecency," says Crabb, "may be a partial, immodesty is a positive and entire breach of the moral law. Indecency is less than immodesty, but more than indelicacy." It is indecent for a man to marry again very soon after the death of his wife. It is indelicate for any one to obtrude himself upon another's retirement. It is indecent for women to expose ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... now we shall find Gilbert dismissing belief in any positive existence of evil and treating the universe on the Whitman principle of jubilant and universal acceptance. He writes, too, in the Whitman style. By far the most important of his notebooks is one which, by amazing good ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... one I am doing, I am afraid that the idea is defective, an irremediable fault; will such weak characters be interesting? Great effects are reached only through simple means, through positive passions. But I don't see simplicity anywhere ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... his wife. "I would allow more latitude to medical men," he said. "In such a case as this child of the Stotts, for instance; it becomes a burden on the community, I might say a danger, yes, a positive danger. I am not sure whether I was right in administering ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... all the rest were to be taken in the confidence; but she looked so conscious, and Jim was so positive, ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Handsome, sir? handsome, sir, as—as—oh, dammit, words fail me; but go, sir, go and ransack Olympus, and you couldn't match her, 'pon my soul! Diana, sir? Diana was a frump! Venus? Venus was a dowdy hoyden, by George! and as for the ox-eyed Juno, she was a positive cow to this young beauty! And then—her ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... sooner arrives at any truth which admits of an unconditional positive statement—a statement defying all rational contradiction—than he abstracts it from amongst the acquisitions of experience, and throwing over it, we suppose, the light of these fundamental ideas, pronounces it enrolled in the higher class of universal and necessary truths. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... in news writing is that the story begin with the most important fact and give all the essential details first. These details are generally summarized in the questions who, what, when, where, why, and how. If the writer sees that his lead answers these questions, he may be positive that, so far as context is concerned, his lead will ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... caressed by old women, and wondered at by spectacled fellows of colleges." Eustace paused. "I see, my brave fellow," resumed the tempter, "you are determined to be one of us. I know your heart, and can predict that the consciousness of positive disobedience will make you miserable. Go, then, in the hope that your uncle would not have restrained you. Are you not old enough to judge for yourself? They have permitted you to chuse a wife; why ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... exposed and the eminent services they performed as facing the hostile shores of France. Owing to their privileges and their position, the 'Cinque Ports' came to be cities of great strength, till, as time went on, they became a positive weakness rather than a strength to the land that lay behind them. Privilege bred pride, and in their pride the Cinque Ports proclaimed wars and formed alliances on their own account: piracies by sea and robberies ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... fellow-mortal who knows how to make up his mind for twelve months ahead. All the woman in his nature surrenders to this businesslike decisiveness. "O man!"—the exhortation is Mr. George Meredith's, or would be if I could remember it precisely—"O man, amorously inclining, before all things be positive!" I have sometimes, while turning the pages of Mrs. Beeton's admirable cookery book, caught myself envying Mr. Beeton. I wonder if her sisters envy Mrs. Zadkiel. She, dear lady, no doubt feels that, if it be not in mortals to command the weather her husband prophesies for August, ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... at last, "what is right. Mr. Murray is very positive, and absolutely insists that it is my duty to allow ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... period to his own existence. But what established the truth of the whole was, a book in cyphers found among my papers, which exactly tallied with one found in his chest, after his disappearance. This, he observed, was a presumption very near positive proof, and would determine any jury in Christendom to find me guilty. In my own defence, I alleged, that I had been dragged on board at first very much against my inclination, as I could prove by the evidence of some people now in the ship, consequently could have no design of becoming spy ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... for the black and the yellow sinner. True, the black and the yellow man will first have to shed their somewhat irregular appearance and come forth white and radiant, but the belief in the possibility of such a feat is proof positive that we regard the nationality of a man as a transient business. Nationality is local, spirituality universal. Nationality is a form, a mould, a means; spirituality is the essence, the force, the object. The problems of nationality ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... submit to the ordeal of being present in the court on the occasion of the trial. The Marchese's extreme dislike to appearing thus publicly had been in no degree overcome or diminished. And it was only the lawyer's positive and repeated declaration, that he would assuredly be sent for, if he did not spontaneously present himself, that had availed to induce him to say at length that he would go. Every possible attention, the lawyer had assured him, would be paid to ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... by Natural Selection. It appears to me that, given a differentiation of a species into two forms, each of which was adapted to a special sphere of existence, every slight degree of sterility would be a positive advantage, not to the individuals who were sterile, but to each form. If you work it out, and suppose the two incipient species a...b to be divided into two groups, one of which contains those which are ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... it awful! You can't make him jealous! I think it's a positive flaw in his character! Not like—us, ...
— The Girl with the Green Eyes - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... one had shown on positive evidence the economic basis of the political, juridical and moral life, the aspirations of the great majority for the amelioration of social conditions aimed vaguely at the demand and the partial conquest of some accessory instrumentality, such as freedom of worship, ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... to march. My head was swimming, but all thoughts of my own plight were dispelled by an incident which was as unexpected as it was sudden. At the command "March" one of the two Indian students, positive that he was now going to his doom, staggered. I caught him as he fell. He dropped limply to the ground, half-dead with fright, and with his ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... help that, why, he would. And considering that this day's evidence rather bound him down to the morrow's, he determined, after much ploughing and harrowing through obstinate shocks of hair, to be not altogether positive as to the person. It is possible that he became thereby more a mansion of truth than he previously had been; for the night, as he said, was so dark that you could not see your hand before your face; and though, as he expressed it, you might be mortal sure of a man, you could not identify him ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he had made such a study of the younger man. He paused for a moment; but meeting his daughter's absorbed gaze, he continued: "The thing which gives me most hope of Flint is his genuine devotion to truth. Positive or negative truth—it is all the same to him. Now, many a man is loyal to his convictions; but very few are loyal to their doubts. He will 'come into port greatly or sail with God the seas.' Fine line that, isn't it? The sound is quite majestic if you say ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... demand some trifling payment in advance; but he could not get a doit. Should we be violating secrecy too much if we suggested that George Bertram had had some slight partial success even when he had no such positive claim—some success which had of course been in direct ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... always imperfect light on the question of the conformation of the coast-line. How was it, we may ask, that it was especially after 1616 that this coast was so often touched at, whereas there had never been question of this before that time? The question thus put admits of avery positive answer. ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... to be positive. May I not want to be in so many places, and in so many things, that I can never be found in anything. Help me to know that a purpose secured is worth many attempts, and that to have a character I must ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... operation above described so far as the production of the positive, and so perfect is the impression that I see no reason why the second negative should be at all distinguishable from ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... fear to leave her, or because you get on all right, is not love at any rate. I can't see that marriage has got much to do with it. It's a decent convention of society at this stage of development perhaps, and it may sign and seal love for some people. But I reckon love's love—a big positive thing that's bigger than sin, and bigger than the devil. I reckon that if God sees that anywhere, He's satisfied. I don't think Cranmer's marriage service affects Him much, nor the laws of the State. If ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... became their theme. Then he told something of Milly's sleep-walking, her collapse of memory; and watched Tims meantime, hoping to see in her face merely surprise and concern. But there was no surprise, hardly concern in the queer little face. There was excitement, and at last a flash of positive pleasure. ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... it was the habitual beverage of all English people, and had actually sent his steward ashore to procure the precious liquid. It was a delicate attention, but it so happened that both ladies had a positive aversion to stout; they drank it bravely notwithstanding, and we all assumed expressions of intense delight, to the Admiral's ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... inclined to the opinion, that, if positive legislation could be brought to bear upon this subject, making it a criminal offence for one person deliberately to concoct and designedly to spring a surprise upon another, society would derive incalculable benefit from the act. For the ordinary and inevitable surprises of every-day life ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... if I had noticed how unusually feeble her mother looked. I imagined that some one was dragging the ladder from under the window, and once I fancied that I heard the old man call me. The thought, the possibility of committing murder never occurred to me. The positive knowledge that I should never be discovered and that I should get every dollar of his money would not have tempted me to kill him. I lay for a long time—until I knew that every one must be asleep. Then I carefully got out of bed. I struck a chair, and I waited to see if my wife had been awakened ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... the marines. The pilot made his appearance, and soon afterwards down went the bridles, and we were fairly adrift. We reached the Nore, and let go the anchors in a hail squall, and it was with the greatest difficulty we got the top-sails furled. The admiral, having proof positive that we were as helpless as a cow in a jolly-boat, took compassion on us and sent fifty more men from the flag-ship, most of them able seamen. On the fourth day after quitting the Nore we anchored in ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... annual percent change in the population, resulting from a surplus (or deficit) of births over deaths and the balance of migrants entering and leaving a country. The rate may be positive or negative. The growth rate is a factor in determining how great a burden would be imposed on a country by the changing needs of its people for infrastructure (e.g., schools, hospitals, housing, roads), resources (e.g., food, water, electricity), and jobs. Rapid population growth can be ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... before, Mr. Curtis would have considered impossible. But now, to his surprise, he found himself actually doing it to an amazing extent, and discovered that no calamity resulted in consequence. On the contrary it was a positive relief to have a bright, strong, eager boy lift a part of the burden which had become so heavy for the older man to bear alone. For Giusippe possessed that rare gift seldom found in the young and often lacking, even, in elder persons—he ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett
... dumfoundered and mad, too, when he told me that his father was alive, and that he would some day find him and his big nugget together. Mind you, he didn't say this as though he hoped and believed it might be true, but as positive as though he ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... negative is coated with solutions of collodion and rubber cement, which makes the film exceedingly tough—so tough that it is easily stripped from the glass on which it was made, and is "turned" with the positive side up on another sheet of glass. If this were not done, the plate would be reversed in printing—that is, a line of type would read from right to left, or backward. After the negative is "turned," it is ready for the etching room. Here the surface of a sheet of zinc about one-sixteenth of an inch ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... only number of a new magazine[1] that expired for want of patronage, and support, having just survived long enough to give ample proofs that it deserved the patronage, and support, that were denied it. The very favorable notice that the Evening Star took of "Old Cuff," is proof positive that it is much higher than "fair to middling;" and if it is true that "the proof of the pudding is eating the bag," (and the reader will consider "Old Cuff" as the bag,) I think it follows that the pudding now set before him cannot ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... were destined to become so. The disparity in force was justly less considered than the result. However bravely the British commanders had fought their ships, the disasters were no less distressing, politically considered, than if they had been the result of positive weakness or of lamentable cowardice. These advantages even compensated in glory to the Northeastern States for the losses which their commerce had sustained, and would, had they continued very much longer, have stimulated them to forget their selfishness, their bankruptcies, and ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... father of George Bellmont; tyrannical, positive, and headstrong. He imagines it is the duty of a son to submit to his father's will, even in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... around the difficulties by devices not provided for in the Constitution, sometimes with unfortunate results. But a recognition of defects in our government should not cause us to lose respect for the Constitution. They are due not to positive blunders on the part of the framers, but to the mere absence of provision for conditions that did not exist when the Constitution was framed and that could not be foreseen by the wisest men of that time. The wise course for all good citizens is to seek to understand ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... business in the ship, but it was plain he was Swope's enemy, and there was a private feud between them. His mere appearance had caused the Old Man to run below, and remain hidden for three days! . . . There was the lady. She was Newman's friend. She knew the Old Man's moods, and she was positive about it. The warning was doubtless well founded, I concluded. And Newman was my friend, my chum for the voyage, I hoped. If there were danger for him in the dark, it were well his friend stayed handy by. So, throughout ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... foregoing hemistich is rather lame without it. The propriety of consulting Micio, or Demea's present ill-humor with him, are of no consequence. The old man is surprised at Hegio's story, does not know what to do or say, and means to evade giving a positive answer, by saying that he ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... Grandpa Horton. "Positive. The poor lad is as hoarse as a crow. Got the New Year cakes and the candy canes, Sunny Boy? Then I think we are ready ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... 'Proof positive of my two propositions,' said Hazel with a laugh. 'Waiting on me, is bewildering work to a ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... was!" exclaimed Ruth, with a look of triumph. I have found that out—only I fear that is not proof positive, because, you know, although not a common name, Bream is ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... I shall come over and spend a month going about everywhere. But, of course,' he added, with a twinkle in his eyes, 'I have about two years' imprisonment to do as things stand, so I must make no positive promises.' ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... nature of property of all sorts is that it becomes the inmost shrine of its possessor's being, and when the shrine is robbed or desecrated, the injured personality resents the outrage with bitterness. Many a man or woman will submit with Christian fortitude to insults upon character or positive unjust burdens, but will flame into rebellion at the least touch upon the purse. In the case of Archie and Adelle it was all the more remarkable because neither had been born to wealth so that property could become a part of the nature: they were both "the spoiled ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... Amahagger sowing a plot of ground with the grain from which they make their beer. This they did in scriptural fashion—a man with a bag made of goat's hide fastened round his waist walking up and down the plot and scattering the seed as he went. It was a positive relief to see one of these dreadful people do anything so homely and pleasant as sow a field, perhaps because it seemed to link them, as it were, with the rest ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... at this season, any more than all the year through in heaven. Indeed we have seldom real positive night in this world—so many provisions have been made against it. Every time we say, "What a lovely night!" we speak of a breach, a rift in the old night. There is light more or less, positive light, else were there no beauty. Many a night ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Chateaubriand, who was truly devoted to the elder branch of the Bourbons,[4] may at that time have discovered in Lamartine little of that political talent or devotion which could have recommended him to a diplomatic post. Chateaubriand was a man of positive convictions in politics and religion, while Lamartine, at that period, though far surpassing Chateaubriand in depth of feeling and imagination, had not yet acquired that objectiveness of thought and reflection which is indispensable to the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... has just come; yes, it was long enough, though you did not tell us how the cat did. You speak as if you were going to Paris, but papa is positive you are not. Yesterday was a lovely day, though very hot. Dr. Adams came and drove papa to the Park. Late in the afternoon I went to see Mrs. G., the woman whose husband is in jail. She is usually all in a muss, but this time was as nice as could be, the ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... good providence of God, that the field in which she went to glean belonged to a very rich and prosperous man named Boaz. And to that very field where Ruth was gleaning Boaz came that day. He was a young, vigorous, and positive man. He was accustomed to command. There was a dignity about him that made him seem older than his years. Everybody respected him. He was just and ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... nothing to do with France, I imagine," he said. "The person I refer to is an American, and although I have no positive information, I believe that he is sometimes intrusted with the carrying of despatches from Washington to his Embassy. Once or twice lately I have had it reported to me that communications from the other side to Mr. Harvey have been sent ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... have laughed in his face. It is possible he remained unconscious of this extreme fever of my resentment; yet I think he was too quick; and rather that he had fallen, in a long life of idleness, into a positive need of company, which obliged him to confront and tolerate my unconcealed aversion. Certain, at least, that he loved the note of his own tongue, as, indeed, he entirely loved all the parts and properties ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... waste is so very trifling, especially with brain-workers, that one may be a vegetarian, fruitarian, or even an eater of pork, without positive violence to practical physiology. There is this further very practical consideration, that when Nature is so fairly dealt with that she can speak in natural tones she will call only for those foods easily available along ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... Tom is so cheerful and positive," thought Hazelton. "I'll do my best to help him keep in that frame of mind; though, for myself, I believe we would make more money if we stood on a cliff and tossed pennies into ...
— The Young Engineers in Nevada • H. Irving Hancock
... centre was to grow the workingmen's consumers' league. Finally he warned the men earnestly against damage to the company's property, smashing of windows and breaking of machines. Help should come in a positive and constructive manner, and the destructive tactics of passive resistance and of sabotage should be discarded as being unworthy of a German workingman. One should not forget that besides a strong body one had to transmit to one's children ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... white man is prejudiced against eating human flesh, and consequently they conceal very carefully their performances in this line. In former times they were not so particular, and there was the most positive proof that they devoured their enemies killed in battle, and also killed and devoured some of their own people. They were not such epicures in cannibalism as the inhabitants of the Feejee Islands formerly were, ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... became owners of slaves, in imitation of the colonists around them. No positive condemnation of the evil system had then been heard in the British islands. Neither English prelates nor expounders at dissenting conventicles had aught to say against it. Few colonists doubted its entire compatibility with Christian ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Bet was so positive in her assertion that the treasure could remain in the ground for all she cared, that no one guessed that before the month was out, not Bet alone, but all The Merriweather Girls would have no thought of anything except that treasure, and all the ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... the preceding, insomuch that the seductive advances of the Fairies failed in their object. I am not quite positive whence I obtained the story, but this much I know, that it belongs to Pentrevoelas, and that a respectable old man was in the habit of repeating it, as an ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... appointed. I need not tell you that Beauman is to be the happy deity of the hymeneal sacrifice. I had this from his own declaration. He did not name the positive day, but it is certainly to be soon. You will undoubtedly, however, have timely notice, as a guest. We must pour a liberal libation upon the mystic altar, Alonzo, and twine the nuptial garland with wreaths ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... his dragoman began, "is either superlative, comparative, positive, or negative. And superlative morality is found, of course, only in the newspapers. It is the special prerogative of leader-writers. Its note, remote and unchallengeable, was well struck by almost every organ at the commencement of the Great Skirmish, and may be summed up in a single ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... judgment, and a delicacy of impression which would not be imagined, unless one has studied them. Justice and equity are easily born in their minds, for they possess, above all things, positive logic. Profit by all this. There are unjust and harsh words which remain graven on a child's heart, and which he remembers all his life. Reflect that, in your baby, there is a man whose affection will cheer ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... spring; but the season had hitherto been backward, with only a few warm and pleasant days. The present afternoon, however, was a delicious mingling of spring and summer, forming in their union an atmosphere so mild and pure, that to breathe was almost a positive happiness. There was a little alternation of cloud across the brow of heaven, but only so much as to render the ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... up quickly, pleased with this mark of confidence from his uncommunicative chief. He was positive. ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... you cannot rest happy in the fact that you and she do not disagree. For comfort's sake you would have a negative dimension to your cosmos, forgetting that your longings and your needs and, it may be, your dreams, are positive. If sex-comradeship and affection were not as accidental and as dependent on mood as love itself, your position would have much in its favour. You could then arrange for compatibility ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... we must have money. We are in positive want. Of course, I never meant to proceed to extremities; I thought the mere mention of such a threat would be enough to make him see that we really were desperately hard up, and that he might as well help us. But he doesn't care. Like all rich people, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... surprise was entirely disagreeable. He had not expected to be dismissed in this summary fashion, and the thought of so speedy a break with the new life came upon him with a positive shock. To-morrow! To-morrow, then, at this very hour he would be back in the dingy lodgings which did duty for home, preparing to sit down to a solitary meal, to spend a solitary evening, to sleep and wake up to a day's work in the stifling City, where the thought of green fields and rose- gardens, ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... nominative of the personal pronouns is commonly expressed only when emphatic. Here the use of the pronoun makes the promise more positive. ...
— Ritchie's Fabulae Faciles - A First Latin Reader • John Kirtland, ed.
... the story of a young man of positive character facing the stern problem of earning his way in a big school. The hero is not an imaginary compound of superlatives, but a plain person of flesh and blood, aglow with the hopeful idealism of youth, who succeeds and is not spoiled by success. ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... spirits, and a yearning for their native land, of which they are so justly proud, contribute to make our countrymen in the East even more than usually unsusceptible of pleasurable emotions until at last they turn away in positive disgust from the scenes and objects which remind them that they are ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... in that state of hope and fear when inaction becomes positive pain, and relief is only felt while in pursuit of an object which entails some degree of bodily movement. Joan had so laughed at her fears for the Lottery that to a great extent her anxiety had subsided; and everybody else seemed so certain that with Adam's caution and foresight ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... who at one time have an excessive affection for some friend, and at another take a violent disgust at him: and who (though sometimes permanently remaining at the latter point) oscillate between these positive and negative poles. You, being a sensible man, would not feel very happy if some men were loudly crying you up: for you would be very sure that in a little while they would be loudly crying you dovvn. If you should ever happen to feel for one day an extraordinary ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... give you personal and positive orders not to let anything or anybody occupy this space after the baggage was got aboard, sir?" ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... right of possession. Men lived in a state of communism; whether positive or negative it matters little. Then there was no property, not even private possession. The genesis and growth of possession gradually forcing people to labor for their support, they agreed either formally or tacitly,—it makes no difference which,—that ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Vicksburg was doomed unless "Joe" Johnston came west with sufficient force to relieve it in time. Johnston did come early enough, but not in sufficient force; so the next best thing was to destroy all stores, abandon Vicksburg, and save the garrison. The Government, however, sent positive orders to hold Vicksburg to the very last gasp. Johnston had meanwhile sent Pemberton (the Vicksburg commander) orders to combine with him in free maneuvering for an attack in the field. But Pemberton's own idea was to await Grant on the Big Black River, where, with ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' There's no strong imagination, understand—nothing of that sort! but you have a sweet, fresh, cool sylvan feeling with him, rare among Frenchmen of his class. Edgar Quinet has more positive genius. He is a man of grand, extravagant conceptions. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... you. The passage is from One of our Conquerors. Here is another:—"Reverting to the father and mother, his idea of a positive injury, that was not without its congratulations, sank him down among his disordered deeper sentiments, which were a diver's wreck, where an armoured livid subtermarine, a monstrous puff-ball of man, wandered seriously light in heaviness; trebling his ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... Colloquies might seem to be mere innocent genre-pieces. But as to the contents, they are more satirical, at least more directly so. The Moria, as a satire, is philosophical and general; the Colloquia are up to date and special. At the same time they combine more the positive and negative elements. In the Moria Erasmus's own ideal dwells unexpressed behind the representation; in the Colloquia he continually and clearly puts it in the foreground. On this account they form, notwithstanding all the ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... circumstances admitted of no such expenditure, and before many weeks she was again without materials. She would not tell Russell that she had exhausted his package, and passed sleepless nights trying to devise some method by which she could aid herself. It was positive torture for her to sit in school and see the drawing-master go round, giving lessons on this side and that, skipping over her every time, because her aunt could not afford the extra three dollars. Amid all these yearnings and aspirations she turned constantly to Russell, ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... readily accepted as facts owing their origin to divine interposition, they fall to the opposite extreme of denying the occurrence of any events out of the common course of Nature's operations. Of the positive and powerful ministration of angels in human affairs they make no account whatever, or accept it as a pleasing dream; and they forget that what we call a miracle may be as truly an offspring of immutable law as the dew and the sunshine,—failing to learn of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... former case nobody could blame him for the resolution he had taken, for he was not obliged to keep a whore for the greatest prince alive; and the indignity to himself he would submit to the good pleasure of God. But if there were any reason to suspect the other, he was ready to give a positive judgment, in which he hoped their lordships would concur with him; that the King should immediately cause the woman to be sent to the Tower, and to be cast into a dungeon under so strict a guard, that no person living should ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... expressed to me respecting the education which ought to be given youth. Though the sworn enemy of everything like liberty, Bonaparte had at first conceived a vast system of education, comprising above all the study of history, and those positive sciences, such as geology and astronomy, which give the utmost degree of development to the human mind. The Sovereign, however, shrunk from the first ideas of the man of genius, and his university, confided to the elegant suppleness of M. de Fontaines, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... all changed, Amanda, the chambermaid, is the only one who knows the truth; and she will be very careful to say nothing about it. Therefore, all our positive information goes back no farther than five months. And what do we hear? That your father seemed to try and make his extravagant expenditures as conspicuous as possible. That he did not even take the trouble to conceal the source of the money he spent so profusely; for ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... in a wood some hundreds of yards from her home; its result will sufficiently appear in the sequel. One circumstance, however, we must not omit. She recurred to a conversation which had passed sometime before, in relation to the legality of her marriage; and though Cutler gave no positive opinion, his parting advice was nearly ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... order to protect others from infection. But the cause must be explicitly declared. By declaring it, you educate the country to look beyond the temporary measure,—to look forward to a return to a normal state of things, and to study the positive organic principle destined to govern that normal state. By keeping silence, you accustom the mass to disjoin the moral from the political, theory from practice, the ideal from the real, heaven ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... the services toward equal opportunity programs, had been used to advise civilian officials on complaints from the black community, especially black servicemen, and to rationalize service policies for civil rights organizations. The new civil rights office, reflecting McNamara's positive intentions, was organized to monitor ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... beg pardon," interrupted he; "but my friend is most positive in his account, and describes the altercation as having continued from the Salon to the street, when you struck him, and at the same time threw him your card. Two of our officers were also present; and although, as ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... at the sale of Dean Stanley's pictures, several of those which had been the dean's favourites, and which, independently of their positive merit, were peculiarly dear to Helen. He had ordered that they should be sent down to Clarendon Park; at first, he only begged house-room for them from the general while he and Lady Davenant were in Russia; then he ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... writing by Mr. Cotton in the name of them all, they being all present, and not one dissentient." Then the magistrates propounded four more questions, the last of which is as follows: "Whether a judge be bound to pronounce such sentence as a positive law prescribes, in case it be apparently above or beneath the merit of the offence?" To which the elders replied at great length, saying that the penalty must vary with the gravity of the crime, and added examples: ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... his hands together with positive enjoyment, "we can't pay a cent: isn't it great? Have ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock
... one mark of age that strikes me more than any of the physical ones;—I mean the formation of Habits. An old man who shrinks into himself falls into ways that become as positive and as much beyond the reach of outside influences as if they were governed by clock-work. The ANIMAL functions, as the physiologists call them, in distinction from the ORGANIC, tend, in the process of deterioration to which age and neglect united gradually lead them, to assume the periodical or ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... he had trouble a-plenty. When, short-handed as he was, two of his cowboys went a-spreeing and a-leisuring in town, with their faces turned from honest toil and their hands manipulating pairs and flushes and face-cards, rather than good "grass" ropes, he was positive that his cup was dripping trouble all ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... if it were not evaded, we must remember that the Civil Service examinations and rules are not a guarantee of efficiency or excellence. The best that can be said for them is that they are a protection against absolute incompetence and, to a certain extent, against political spoiling. But in a positive sense, the Civil Service is merely a guarantee of mediocrity. And mediocrity never yet made a success of a great transportation or productive system such as our railroads or industrial corporations. The political ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers
... man, who promised as well as he does, that turned out very badly; and men fully developed in character, sustaining the highest reputations in the community, have been detected in the grossest frauds. I trust Don John will realize the hopes of his friends; but we must not be too positive." ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... calumnies have brought down upon me; and the disfavor in which I stand before a majority of the people, excited against me by their artifices;—their demerits to me are proportioned to the obligations to me—Jackson's the greatest, Crawford's the next, Calhoun's the least of positive obligation, but darkened by his double-faced setting himself up as a candidate for the Presidency against me in 1821, his prevarications between Jackson and me in 1824, and his icy-hearted dereliction of all the decencies of ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... this it is easy to see that much has been borrowed from the Christian conception of God's character and attributes, but the value of this Aryan testimony lies in the fact that it claims for the ancient Vedas a clear and positive monotheism. ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... Bright sternly. "We will go, but we shall take Miss Mabel with us. I am a lawyer, Miss Brant, and I have positive proof that this child is not bound to you in any way. You took her from the orphanage on trial, exactly as you might hire a servant. You did not even take the trouble to have yourself appointed her guardian. You agreed to pay her for her work, but blows ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... "Beginning to use his old head at last!" he thought as he watched the Superintendent's keen face. "Well, well, it's never too late to mend, anyhow." And then aloud, "Exactly my thought, Mr. Narkom. Perhaps Mr. Brent could enlighten us as to his own suspicions, for I'm positive that he has some tucked away ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Detective Stories • Various
... overrule the seamen in this particular, though in their own art, and though his own desires were sufficiently earnest to hasten to his dear relations and country; yet the present haste he feared might hinder the seeing of them at all. Upon a strange earnestness in his own mind and judgement, he gave a positive command to the captain to cause all the sails to be taken down except the mainsail only, and that to be half-furled. Upon the captain's dispute, Whitelocke with quickness told him that if he did not presently ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... humane attitude, the young Hegel approached religious and historical problems. The dramatic life and death of Jesus, the tragic fate of "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome," the discrepancies between Christ's teachings and the positive Christian religion, the fall of paganism and the triumph of the Christian Church—these were the problems over which the young Hegel pondered. Through an intense study of these problems, he discovered that evil, sin, longing, and suffering ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... point! But the danger is, that, whether he comes or not, she is a woman well on in years, with a constitution breaking down under her,—that is as far as appearances go, for of course I can't say anything positive about it,—and she has nobody to inherit her money, and as far as anybody knows she has never made ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... of purely abstract reasoning, the progressive development of science, of psychology, and kindred branches of knowledge cannot fail by its influence to modify the form and arrangement of thought. But in those purely positive sciences (if indeed sciences they can properly be called) which deal with the life of man and its organisation, the very principles and postulates will be found to need continual readjustment. For with man's life, social, ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... lord who dated his family from the ark, and was as rich as Croesus. Accordingly, Vargrave spoke with more than his usual vigour. His first sentences were welcomed with loud cheers; he warmed, he grew vehement, he uttered the most positive and unalterable sentiments upon the question alluded to, he greatly transgressed the discretion which the heads of his party were desirous to maintain,—instead of conciliating without compromising, he irritated, galled, and compromised. The angry cheers of the opposite party were loudly ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book III • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... our monastic establishments is but little regarded and as little known. The obscurity in which all monastic institutions is involved renders it difficult to give any certain and positive information respecting the origin of the building to whose history these pages are devoted; but it appears to have been founded at a very early period—the churches of Canterbury, Rochester, London, Westminster, York, and Winchester, being the only large sacred edifices ...
— The New Guide to Peterborough Cathedral • George S. Phillips
... demand for perfection, and the positive and explicit declaration that he must have no maim or defect, the remainder of the sentence has, within a few years past, by some Grand Lodges, been considered as a qualifying clause, which would permit the admission ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... opposition and with great labour subduing themselves into conformity. They are precious aids in the service of the Church as controversialists when enlisted on the right side, for controversy is their element. But for positive doctrine, for keen appreciation, for persuasive action on the wills of others, they are at a disadvantage, at all events in England, where logic does not enter into the national religious system, and the mind is apt to resent conviction as if it were a kind of coercion. ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... thus, like questions of religion, touch the deeper springs of emotion. And they spring from, or are involved with, incompatibilities of character which prevent the men of either stock from fully understanding, and therefore fully trusting, the men of the other. Suspicion, if not positive aversion, makes it difficult for two races to work together, even where the political arrangements that govern their relations are just and reasonable. But something may also be ascribed to certain malign accidents which blasted the prospect, once fair, of a friendly ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... Adjectives are compared either by using an adverb expressive of degree, or, more regularly, by adding to the stem of the positive the syllables ότερος or ίων for the comparative, and ότατος or ιστος for the superlative. Some euphonic changes occur in making these additions, which then take the ...
— Greek in a Nutshell • James Strong
... I should have been positive at any time during my life of forty-nine years, that no temptation could drag me over that precipice of presumption and illusion which awaits the man who confides himself to the world. As it is the unexpected which happens, so it is the unwelcome which we choose. I do not tell this story for ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... any clear idea, however, of what Montaigne did or could do for Shakspere, we must revise our conception of the poet in the light of the positive facts of his life and circumstances—a thing made difficult for us in England through the transcendental direction given to our Shakspere lore by those who first shaped it sympathetically, to wit, Coleridge and the Germans. ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Army to the Rio Grande was made by the commanding general under positive orders to abstain from all aggressive acts toward Mexico or Mexican citizens, and to regard the relations between the two countries as peaceful unless Mexico should declare war or commit acts of hostility indicative of a state of war, and these orders he faithfully executed. Whilst occupying ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... this thing straight. Thane crossed the pasture from this direction. That's positive,—because I followed him. It is a dead certainty he did not meet the Vick girl. I would have witnessed any such meeting. The fact that he lived at her father's house for several weeks may have something to do with the case,—but ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... snug and warm; But only to dream of a dreadful storm From Autumn's sulphurous locker; But the only electrical body that falls Wears a negative coat, and positive smalls, And draws the peal that so appals From the Kilmanseggs' ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... sure he thinks her innocent," said Daventry, still almost with heat. "Not that it much matters," he added, in a less prejudiced voice. "The point is, we must prove her to be innocent whether she is nor not. I happen to feel positive she is. She isn't the least the siren type of woman, though men ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... needed for "the flourishing of the spirit" quite as much as healthy exercise; that bracing as well as relaxing is part of the soul's hygiene; that the directive force of a fine asceticism, exerted towards positive and not towards negative ends, is an ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... Jerome at Bethlehem between A.D. 384-391, is called the Gallican Psalter. There is good reason to believe that Jerome's revision extended to all the remaining books of the Old Testament, though we have positive evidence in respect to only a part of ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... one similar to it, for a few months and we defy any girl to keep well. She may not yet break down altogether, but she will have lapsed from positive into negative health, and the merest straw may turn her negative health into actual bodily incapacity—which means the loss of work and wages ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... on the legal and economic factor—a factor not ignored but strictly subordinated by the Canonists—and regarded it as essentially a contract. In so doing they were on the negative side effecting a real progress, for they broke the power of an antiquated and artificial system, but on the positive side they were merely returning to a conception which prevails in barbarous societies, and is most pronounced when marriage is most assimilable to purchase. The steps taken by Protestantism involved a considerable change in ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... would have done if we had discussed it a few hours before. I therefore observed I was not quite sure of that. But Biddy said she was, and she said it decisively. In my heart I believed her to be right; and yet I took it rather ill, too, that she should be so positive on the point. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... during the migratory march probably passed from Java to Timor, and from thence to Australia.** Dr. Latham also inclines to the belief that Australia was peopled from Timor and not from New Guinea, judging, in the absence of positive proof, from the probability that "occupancy had begun in Australia before migration across Torres Strait had commenced in New Guinea," inferred "from the physical differences between the Australian and the Papuan, taken with the ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... she to have behaved but once in this wise," she observed, "I feel positive that a couple of the tendons of her legs would have long ago been snapped. But, Miss, don't credit all they say. It's because they see that our senior mistress is as sweet-tempered as a 'P'u-sa,' ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... according to special formulae, however, and called solid eyepieces, give excellent results, and for high powers are often to be preferred to any other. The eyepieces usually furnished with telescopes are, in their essential principles, compound microscopes, and they are of two descriptions, "positive" and "negative." The former generally goes under the name of its inventor, Ramsden, and the latter is named after great Dutch astronomer, Huygens. The Huygens eyepiece consists of two plano-convex lenses whose focal lengths are in the ratio of three to one. The smaller lens is placed next to ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... implies reproduction not according to kind. While the process of change implied in evolution is covered up in endless eons of time it is change nevertheless. The Bible does not say that reproduction shall be nearly according to kind or seemingly according to kind. The statement is positive that it is according to kind, and that does not leave any room for the changes however gradual or imperceptible that are necessary to ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... promises and engagements are as chaff before the wind—to whom bloodshed, robbery, assassination, and murder, are objects of placid contemplation—whose narrow creed of bigotry supersedes all the obligations, of morality, and all the commands of positive law. With such men what valid compact can be made? The appeal must be to those who think that a deliberate compact is mutually binding on parties of any and every religious creed. To such men I appeal, and ask, ought you not resolutely to restore peace, and ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... the barracks an hour or so earlier. Kent made no effort to figure out a reason for Kedsty's lateness, but he did observe that after his arrival there was more than the usual movement between the office door and the outside of the barracks. Once he was positive that he heard Cardigan's voice, and then he was equally sure that he heard Mercer's. He grinned at that. He must be wrong, for Mercer would be in no condition to talk for several days. He was glad that a turn in the hall hid the door of the detachment office from him, ...
— The Valley of Silent Men • James Oliver Curwood
... It is a positive relief to go out of the city, a distance of four miles, to Sarnath, where the great Buddha—"The Enlightened One"—spent many long years in establishing his faith and in inculcating his "Doctrine of the Wheel." It is a beautiful drive ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... dislike of all that is positive and arbitrary, she was, nevertheless, subject rather to her intellect than her emotions. An insult to her intelligence was the one thing she found it hard to pardon, and she allowed no external interference to disturb her relations with her own reasoning faculty. She followed caprices, no doubt, ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... we shall find Gilbert dismissing belief in any positive existence of evil and treating the universe on the Whitman principle of jubilant and universal acceptance. He writes, too, in the Whitman style. By far the most important of his notebooks is one which, by amazing good fortune, can ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... believe you lied. I believe you have perjured yourself and sent your soul to endless torment," answered Charles Stevens. John was a cunning rascal and thought to give him a proof positive of the powers of witchcraft. He fell down in a fit, and Charles applied his cane to him until he ran howling away effectually cured, while Charles, disgusted with the black-skinned African, left him and hurried ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... here in the interests of the Allies," he said, lowering his voice. "I know that he has entered into negotiations for the purchase of war munitions, and that he is hoping to put through a deal for certain cavalry horses. I am so positive that he is what he represents himself to be that I have given him letters to influential ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... off to assist their companions in bringing home the game, while the women remained for an hour in anxious suspense as to the extent of their husbands' success. At length one of the men arrived with the positive intelligence of two walruses having been taken, and brought with him a portion of these animals as large as he could drag over the snow. If the women were only cheerful before, they were now absolutely frantic. A general shout of joy instantly re-echoed through the village; they ran into ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... however, boldly attempted to leave the modern beaten track, and made a positive effort to entertain her guests. Alas! she did so with but moderate success. They had all their own way of going, and would not go her way. She piped to them, but they would not dance. She offered to them good ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... to Irkutsk, where a court-martial investigated the affair. A Russian court-martial does not differ materially from any other in the manner of its proceedings. It requires positive evidence for or against a person accused, and, like other courts, gives him the benefit of doubts. My informant told me that the court in this case listened to all evidence that had any possible bearing on the question. The sitting continued several weeks, and after ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Mrs. De Witt's funeral, [6] when her husband said, Good-bye, dear wife, you have been my greatest blessing next to Christ; and he added, "and that I can say of you." This was very sweet to me, for I have faults of manner that often annoy him—I am so vehement, so positive, and lay down the law so! But I believe the grace of God can cure faults of all sorts, be they deep-seated or external. And I ought to be one of the best women in the world, if I am good in proportion to the gifts with which I am overwhelmed. I count it not the least of your ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... a foe would also render the other's forces inefficient by producing disunion. Ascertaining the beginning, the middle and the end of his foes,[309] a king should in secret cherish feelings of hostility towards them. He should corrupt the forces of his foe, ascertaining everything by positive proof, using the arts of producing disunion, making gifts, and applying poison. A king should never live in companionship with his foes. A king should wait long and then slay his foes. Indeed, he should wait, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... she, "for they have nothing to do with her abduction. They were articles of positive value to her, though I assure you of little importance to any one else. All that is shown by their disappearance is the fact that she had a moment's time allowed her in which to collect what ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... last to take refuge from the driving rain, it was in John Knox's house that we ensconced ourselves—the grim, unlovely house of the great Calvinist, the doorway of which fanatically baptised me in a positive waterfall, and in whose dark rooms, as the buxom care-taker declared in explaining the presence of an empty cage, no bird could live. It is not only in its Closes, methought, that Scotland needs regen eration. Many a spiritual blind-alley has still to receive sunshine ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... questioned, recalling Mrs. Hill's positive genealogy of the Michells in which there was no place for ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the more anxious concerning the developments to be made above, and began to be conscious of a vague foreboding of what actually befell; not that I was given to fear, but rather because my instincts, usually so positive and true, seemed vitiated in some way, and were leading me astray. At length, after attaining an elevation of about 12,800 feet, I found myself at the foot of a sheer drop in the bed of the avalanche channel I was tracing, which seemed ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... laws of war, because the bible is the word of God. As a matter of fact, there never was, and there never can be, an argument, even tending to prove the inspiration of any book whatever. In the absence of positive evidence, analogy and experience, argument is simply impossible, and at the very best, can amount only to a useless agitation of the air. The instant we admit that a book is too sacred to be doubted, or even reasoned about, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... six victims in all stages of induced catalepsy, one man with head flung back, one with his hands pointing, fixed in furious appeal. Another with bowed head was being worked upon by a brother of hypnotic appeal. He struck with downward, positive gestures on either side ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... this once widely spread species. The present distribution, it is true, is decidedly southern, it being almost wholly confined to limited areas within the Gulf States. Formerly, however, it ranged much farther north, and there is positive evidence that it occurred in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Nebraska. Up to 1835 it was extremely abundant in Southern Illinois, and, as Mr. Ridgway informs the writer, was found ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... sanguine youth. He took a great deal for granted, prepared only for the best, and although inclined to worry over the irrevocable, took no thought for the morrow until he was obliged. He was sorry he had been so positive with Spearman on the subject of his friend's hospitality. He was sorry he had asked and been refused, rather sorry he had not caught that last train back from St. Pancras. Yet he left poor Miss Harbottle the best part of another hour to go to bed ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... she was at least thirteen years and eight months old. As to the profession we have overwhelming evidence that it took place on the 3rd of November, 1536, and her entrance in the convent a year and a day earlier. To begin with, we have the positive statement of her most intimate friends, Julian d'Avila, Father Ribera, S.J., and Father Jerome Gratian. Likewise dona Maria Pinel, nun of the Incarnation, says in her deposition: "She (Teresa of Jesus) took the habit on 2 November, 1535." [6] ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... overwhelmingly to the effect that Laka was the one and only divine patron of the art known to them, there has been a small number equally ready to assert that there were those who observed the cult of the goddess Kapo and worshiped her [Page 25] as the patron of the hula. The positive testimony of these witnesses must be reckoned as of more weight than the negative testimony of a much larger number, who either have not seen or will not look at the other side of the shield. At any rate, among the prayers before the kuahu, of which there are ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... kind of incarnation of the Divinity, a character in which his lineal representatives were held in some manner to partake; in another direction to the development of Pantheism, and release from all positive creed and precepts. Of these Aliites, eventually called Shiahs, a chief sect, and parent of many heretical branches, were the Ismailites, who took their name, from the seventh Imam, whose return to earth ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... force given to the Government by the war seemed likely to continue. The task of the National Government no longer seemed merely negative,—to "restrain men from injuring one another," in the Jeffersonian phrase,—but positive and constructive. Even Madison, in his annual message of 1815, recommended liberal provision for defense, more military academies, an improved and enlarged navy, protection to manufactures, new national roads and ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... pleasure of thus bearing and hearing, he struck so on the flint of what firmness I owned, that it emitted fire once and again. I chanced to assert one day, with a view to stilling his impatience, that in my own mind, I felt positive Miss Fanshawe must intend eventually to ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... which we wish to think and act. For instance, my parents object to Sunday travelling and Sunday visiting. Now, while I am living with them, I feel it would not be right for me to do either of these things—even though as a matter of principle I might not see any positive wrong in them—because it would bring me into opposition with my parents. So, in spending evenings away from home, I know it would be contrary to their wish, and it is right to try and ...
— Life in London • Edwin Hodder
... impute to those who scorn him." This dignified, though trenchant, rejoinder would have been unanswerable; but the writer goes on to charge the Laureate with spreading calumnies. To this charge Southey, in January, 1822, replies with "a direct and positive denial," and then proceeds to talk at large of the "whip and branding iron," "slaves of sensuality," "stones from slings," "Goliahs," "public panders," and what not, in the manner of ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... mysterious VV which is found on the Berlin portrait, and (half-obliterated) on the Buda-Pesth "Young Man." In short, no one would naturally think of Titian were it not for the misleading signature, and I venture to hope competent judges will agree with me that the proofs positive of Giorgione's authorship are of greater weight than a signature which—for reasons given—is ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... was not recognized save by those churlish souls with whom his awkwardness brought him into physical contact. A belt-line car charged at him as though it mattered little if he were ground beneath its wheels. A truck hurled at him as though it were a positive blessing could the world be rid of him. Plunging to safety, he bowled over a man who made it perfectly plain that he regarded himself as just as important as Malcolm of '91. Pausing on a corner with his shining ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... Marsden, whose motive for questioning him on the subject was not to discover the nature of a practice so revolting to humanity, but to develop more fully the character of the individual, told him he must fight no more, and desired him, in positive terms, never to attempt to bring any sample of his art on board, as he had no intention of seeing it himself at the time he inquired about it, nor would he suffer any one in the ship to countenance such ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik
... have gone on without any apology from Mr. Dryfoos; he transcended his authority, but that's a minor matter. I could have excused it to his ignorance of life among gentlemen; but I can't consent to Lindau's dismissal—it comes to that, whether you do it or I do it, and whether it's a positive or a negative thing—because he holds this opinion ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... any extraordinary efforts to acquire this reputation, but my disposition was naturally tractable and tranquil; my inclinations led me to apply to study; and even the natural dislike I felt for vice was placed to my credit as positive proof of virtue. The successful progress of my studies, my birth, and some external advantages of person, made me a general favourite with the inhabitants of ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... a definite idea in his mind about what he felt as to their relationship. It was altruistic he knew, gentle he was sure, educational he was positive. But half sleepily he spoke, unaware that what he said might sound differently to ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... judgement of Horace nor the pure fervour of Persius. He is more positive than the former, more negative than the latter. But he has lived in a sense in which Persius never had, and possesses the gift of direct and lucid expression; therefore, when he strikes, he strikes home. He ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... friends—and for Janet it added something to existence that was not there before, more delightful and important than a mere opportunity of expansion. The time came speedily when it would have been a positive pain to either of them to hear the ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... Harris Davies, a medical student, spoke in like manner, and was perfectly positive that nothing had been given to her during the fortnight he had watched there, with the exception of three drops of water, once, to moisten her lips with. He was as great a sceptic as any one before he began watching, but as he saw nothing to ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... necessary reforms. If such a course should have been accepted by the Porte there could be no question of the salutary effect, as the presence of British officials in actual authority throughout the provinces of Asia Minor would have proved to the various races our positive determination to uphold their rights, and to defend them from the oppression and extortion to which they had been subjected. Such a position would have given England the control that is absolutely necessary to effect the reforms in the administration of ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... being pure mutulary Doric and more ornate than the Ionic detail of Whitby Hall. However, this was quite in keeping with the larger and more pretentious character of the former. The entablature is a positive triumph in cornice, frieze and architrave. The moldings are of good design and carefully worked; the guttae of the mutules, the triglyphs with paneled metopes between, and the guttae of the architrave all closely follow the classic ...
— The Colonial Architecture of Philadelphia • Frank Cousins
... to the Spirit. Perfect freedom is essential to progression. Consequently, above a certain plane, monogamy, which has undeniable primitive uses, ceases to exist. The laws of chemical affinity teach this by analogy. When the mutual impartations which result from the conjunction of positive and negative have blended in a state of equilibrium, there is consequent repulsion, and the law of harmonies ordains new combinations. You see ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... obvious to the meanest capacity that, if the President of the United States has an implied constitutional right, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, in time of war, to disregard any one positive prohibition of the Constitution, or to exercise any one power not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, because in his judgment he may thereby 'best subdue the enemy,' he has the same right, for the same reason, to disregard each and every provision of ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... has the choice of playing his round either in the morning or the afternoon, I strongly advise him to select the former and get the thing over as soon as possible. I am positive that his chances of success are usually greater when he does so, especially if, in case of his electing to play in the afternoon, he has nothing particularly to occupy his mind and attention in the interval except his prospects in the forthcoming contest. Golfers are ...
— The Complete Golfer [1905] • Harry Vardon
... resources of the European Allies had disclosed their utter lack of men for such an expedition and it was found that the only hope lay in drawing the bulk of the needed troops from the United States forces, and when the statement of the cases in the usual polite arguments brought from President Wilson a positive refusal to allow American troops to go into Russia, it was only by the emphasis, it is said, of the pathetic appeal of the North Russian anti-Bolshevists, coupled with the stirring appeals of such famous characters ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... me, youngster," he said. "It's not a question of picking one's words. It's a question of a fact, a positive, indisputable fact; and that fact is this: in all the past ten years, I have not yet knocked up against an adversary of your capacity. With Ganimard and Holmlock Shears I played as if they were children. With ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... remark of mine about all the passengers having been lost, that that was not quite correct, for that one of them had certainly been saved—a lady or a nurse, he didn't know which, and also a little child that she was in charge of. He was positive about it, he added, upon my expressing my doubts, for they got to shore in the same small ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... inquest and before the Brunford magistrates. It seemed to him, too, that the way the counsel for the prosecution dwelt on insignificant details, details which could have nothing whatever to do with the real issues, was childish. Indeed, Mr. Bakewell appeared not only to have a positive genius for, but also a personal interest in, dragging out the case as long as possible. In a way Paul supposed it was necessary to inquire into the minutest details concerning the evidence that was given, nevertheless, it was wearying in the extreme. ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... corrected Ned. "I maintain that the window being unsnibbed and that mud on the floor and the table near the window being upset is evidence; but not proof positive." ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... him as he lounged in his lambent fashion in her home, he was so attentive and courteous to her mother and to herself all the time. It was wonderful to have his awareness in the room. She felt rich and augmented by it, as if she were the positive attraction and he the flow towards her. And his courtesy and his agreement might be all her mother's, but the lambent flicker of his body was for ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... formed by adding ah and the superlative by adding a to the positive, but as in English they can also be formed by the use of moy, more, and moyha, most. There are, of course, the usual irregular comparisons. The comparative or superlative adjective usually precedes the noun which it qualifies, though for the sake of verse or on account of ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... writes:—"Richard Lalor Shiel forms one of the many examples history presents of splendid oratorical powers clogged by insuperable natural defects. His person was diminutive and wholly devoid of dignity. His voice shrill, harsh, and often rising to a positive shriek. His action, when most natural, violent, without gracefulness, and ...
— The Young Priest's Keepsake • Michael Phelan
... the air, how exquisitely one could annihilate him with showing him his ignorance of claret; and when an epicure dined, how delightfully, as one carried in a turbot, one could test him with the eprouvette positive, or crush him by the eprouvette negative. We have been Equerries at the Palace, both of us, but I don't think we know what true dignity is till we shall have risen to ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Eyre, too, while reflecting something of the author's nature, was distinctly individual; and it is interesting to note here that with Jane Eyre came a new heroine into fiction, a woman of calm, clear reason, of firm positive character, and what was most novel, a plain woman, a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... It was here, in this patient suffering and obedience. These men might well glory in their infirmities. This was heroism, the real thing, the spirit rising to incredible heights of patient endurance in the foreseen possible result of positive action for an ideal. The reaction from battle is overwhelming. Passions that the civilised man simply does not know, so colourless is his experience of them in ordinary days, are let loose, anger and terror and horror and lust to kill. So for a while, as nearly always happens, ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... had never until recently known. Small of hand and foot—too small even for such a slender man—clean shaven, colorless in hair, skin, lips, he challenged instant attention by the very monotony of his bloodless symmetry. There was nothing of positive evil in his face, nothing of impulse, good or bad, nothing even superficially human. His spotless linen, his neat sack-coat and trousers of gray seemed part of him—like a loose outer skin. There was in his ensemble nothing to disturb the negative harmony, save ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... (Frederick William II.), who, from the time of the treaty of Cherson, in 1787, between Russia and Austria, had become hostile to the former power, also encouraged the Poles in their proceedings; and even gave them the most positive assurances of assisting them, in case the changes they were effecting occasioned ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... first appearance. I was not there. Lady Jersey made a scene with Lord Durham. She got up and crossed the room to him and said, 'Lord Durham, I hear that you have said things about me which are not true, and I desire that you will call upon me to-morrow with a witness to hear my positive denial, and I beg that you will not repeat any such things about me,' or, as the Irishman said, 'words to that effect.' She was in a fury, and he, I suppose, in a still greater. He muttered that he should never set foot in her ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... face with Harvard, but is not even positive about that. The name, if he ever knew it, he has long since forgotten. However, with a fine sensitiveness and an equally commendable charity PARAMORE recognizes the fact and tactfully ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... "You're a positive dear, Miriam," Grace replied. "We have been wanting to have an old-time frolic, but didn't wish to seem ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... together until I had sent him my letter, an' then he guessed how it was, an' puttin' what I told him onto what she an' Whitman had told him, he saw it all. He didn't know what had made her leave Judson, or rather Jordan; but he said he was positive it was his fault, as she was some the finest woman he had ever met, exceptin' of course her ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... feeling is that one should teach positive truth, the plain message of Christianity, not attacking prejudices. Conviction as it finds its way into the heart by the truth recommending itself will do the work of casting out the old habits. I do not mean to say that the ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the opposite direction, or from left to right, and operations similar to those already described will follow, when the piston approaches the right-hand end of its cylinder. By this simple arrangement the pump is rendered positive in its action; that is, it will instantly start and continue working the moment steam is admitted to the steam-chest, while at the same time the piston is enabled to move as slowly as the nature of the duty may require. It will be noted that in Figure 305, the ports of ...
— Mechanical Drawing Self-Taught • Joshua Rose
... any rate, had ceased to expect much affection in his wife for him; but he thought she was sensible, and equal to any complexity of circumstances, or even to disaster. He thought this, not on any positive evidence; but he concluded, somewhat absurdly, that her coldness meant common sense and capacity for facing trouble courageously and with deliberation. He had now to find out his mistake, and to learn that the ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... of gratification for his own cynical disposition. Thus, therefore, converted and properly cautioned, he for the future suppressed all the virulence of his wit against the matrimonial state; and as he knew not how to open his mouth in the positive praise of any person whatever, took all opportunities of excepting Mrs. Grizzle, by name, from the censures he liberally bestowed upon the rest of her sex. "She is not a drunkard, like Nan Castick, of Deptford," he would say; "not a nincompoop, like Peg Simper, of Woolwich; not a brimstone, like ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... the "submerged tenth" is a very large class of people to whom land and a home would be a positive paradise, and who are simply forced into flats and tenements on account of present economic conditions: the land is monopolized, and held by men who neither improve it themselves nor will they allow others to. Then hold it awaiting ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... Catholic religion; but to deny the Irish this justice now, in the present state of Europe, and in the summer months, just as the season for destroying kingdoms is coming on, is (beloved Abraham), whatever you may think of it, little short of positive insanity. ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... manufactured on the American side. For the first time the American manufacturer became a free trader. Practically there was only one section in the United States opposed to reciprocity with Canada; that was the American farmer, and his opposition was more negative than positive. ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... It is positive that the encouragement given to man on account of his physical prowess, by both men and women, has had a psychological effect in helping him to evolve ideas and to carry them out in tangible form. Women will be helped to a large extent only by women; they must not wait for that help that ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... the dining-room. When he entered the drawing-room, however, there, to his equal annoyance, he saw in the light of one expiring candle the dim figure of a lady; he could not offer HER the keys of the wine-cellar! What was he to do? What could she be there for? He drew nearer, and, with a positive pang of relief, discovered that it was Dorothy. A word was enough between them. But the good doctor was just a little annoyed that a second should share in the ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... Petroleum accounts for nearly half of GDP, 95% of export revenues, and 80% of government income. High oil prices in recent years have helped build Kuwait's budget and trade surpluses and foreign reserves. As a result of this positive fiscal situation, the need for economic reforms is less urgent and the government has not earnestly pushed through new initiatives. Despite its vast oil reserves, Kuwait experienced power outages during the summer months in 2006 and 2007 because ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... of establishing such a system, in which geometrically opposite facts—namely, two lines (or areas) which are opposite IN SPACE give ALWAYS a positive product—ever come into anybody's head till I was led to it in October, 1843, by trying to extend my old theory of algebraic couples, and of algebra as the science of pure time? As to my regarding geometrical addition of lines as equivalent to composition ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... conversation." After giving various reasons for her action, she proceeds: "Now, I beseech you, weigh all these things in an impartial balance.... If you do, after all, think fit to dissolve this assembly, do not tell me that you desire me to do it, for that will not satisfy my conscience; but send me your positive command in such full and express terms as may absolve me from all guilt and punishment for the neglecting this opportunity of doing good, when you and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal of ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... was simple inertia. The most positive effort she made was avoiding saying or doing anything to displease him—no difficult matter, as she was silent and almost lifeless when he was near. Without any encouragement from her he gradually got a deep ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... present, would listen to these stories, sometimes listlessly turning the leaves of a book, and again smiling scornfully as she thought how impossible it was that the fastidious Arthur Carrolton should have been at all pleased with a girl like Anna Jeffrey; and positive as Maggie was that she hated him, she insensibly began to feel a very slight degree of interest in him; at least, she would like to know how he looked; and one day when her grandmother and Theo were riding she stole cautiously to the box where she knew his picture lay, and, taking ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... to the singular emotions which soon possessed me? As if some charm, some spell of magnetism, had been given to the paper, my whole consciousness was riveted upon it. I know not how to represent this bold, this startling attempt to establish a positive basis for metaphysical philosophy, an exact science of all things human and divine. Here was a man, perchance of more courage and conscience, perchance of more devilish recklessness, than any of his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... expedition of yours to the wildest misconceptions of your place in the world and of your duties and responsibilities. Even now, it seems to me, your present emotion is due not so much to a real and sincere penitence for your disobedience and folly as to a positive annoyance at ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... her to wife; that thus the way might be left clear for himself; and he resolved, if possible, to effect this in such a manner—namely, by jests, innuendos and sneers—that it should never be directly traced to a positive assertion on his part. And in the mean time he determined to so govern himself in his deportment toward Capitola as to arouse no suspicion, give no offense and, if possible, win ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... known, affected the title of Germanicus. [15] But the consent of the most ancient critics tends to restore Germanicus Drusus as the author, the title genitor applied to Tiberius not being proof positive the other way. ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... toward preventing the first steps into forbidden ways than those interested in great city problems have yet dreamed. The day will come when these women will make the arm of the law an efficient friend of the weak and unprotected girl and give all the positive, helpful agencies an opportunity ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... seasonable retreat. In this important debate, Alaric displayed the spirit of the conqueror of Rome; and after he had reminded his countrymen of their achievements and of their designs, he concluded his animating speech by the solemn and positive assurance that he was resolved to find in Italy either a kingdom ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... woman of 35, though she would try to make believe she could not write, and that she was subject to fits of insanity. There was then presumptive evidence that she wrote a good deal, and there is now positive evidence that she could write. She used often, in the presence of Mrs. L., to take the Bible and other books and read them, and would often say she thought the Protestants had a better religion than the Catholics, and were a better people. Afterwards she told Mrs. L. that she had doubts ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... time, during several weeks, her vituperations descended upon the head of Sidney Herbert himself. He had misinterpreted her wishes, he had traversed her positive instructions, and it was not until he had admitted his error and apologised in abject terms that he was allowed again into favour. While this misunderstanding was at its height, an aristocratic young ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... they began by bursting into tears, and begging Mrs. Crabtree for this once to excuse them and to give some cakes and tea to their little visitors; but they might as well have spoken to one of the Chinese mandarins, for she only shook her head with a positive look, declaring over and over again that nothing should appear upon the table except what was always brought up for their own supper—two biscuits and ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... (appear) 446. become &c. (be converted) 144; bring into existence &c. 161. abide, continue, endure, last, remain, stay. Adj. existing &c. v.; existent, under the sun; in existence &c. n.; extant; afloat, afoot, on foot, current, prevalent; undestroyed. real, actual, positive, absolute; true &c. 494; substantial, substantive; self-existing, self-existent; essential. well-founded, well-grounded; unideal[obs3], unimagined; not potential &c. 2; authentic. Adv. actually &c. adj.; in fact, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... of Omar Khayyam could have written The Kasidah, observes Mr. Justin McCarthy, junior; but the only Omar Khayyam that Burton knew previous to 1859, was Edward FitzGerald. I am positive that Burton never read Omar Khayyam before 1859, and I doubt whether he ever read the original ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... There were, of course, only four pins at the receiving instrument. Two were of iron and two of tellurium, it being the gist of Edison's plan to effect the marking of the chemical paper by one metal with a positive current, and by the other metal with a negative current. In the following diagram, which shows the theory of this arrangement, it will be seen that both the transmitting rollers and the receiving pins are arranged in pairs, one pair in each case being slightly in advance of the other. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the lady with the "Caul on her Face" that we had called to have our fortune told, and she said, "Hand out your money." This preliminary being settled, Madame B. (who is a tall, sharp-eyed, dark-featured and angular woman, dressed in painfully positive colors, and heavily loaded with gold chain and mammoth jewelry of various kinds) and Jupiter indicated powerful that we were a slim constitution, which came down on to us from our father's side. Wherein our constitution was not slim, so ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... from the gossips. It had been brought to a lonely house at the end of the village by a major of engineers. He had returned to the trenches the day before, and the place for the time being was empty. The thieves were never discovered. The sentry was positive that no one had passed him but two women, one of them carrying a baby. Madame Lelanne had dressed it up in a child's cloak and hood, and had carried it in her arms. As it must have weighed nearly a couple of hundred-weight suspicion ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... school has done more for the intellectual advancement, hence, elevation, of the Negro, than anything else. When I say press, I mean specifically the Negro press, which is an integral part of the American press of the country. It is his positive mouthpiece, effective when other audiences are denied him. Before Negro newspapers, the Negro had nothing to set forth his claims and true status. The race consequently speaks through the press ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... [Greek phrase]—and the intellect, electrified, surpasses as greatly its every-day condition, as does the vivid yet candid reason of Leibnitz, the mad and flimsy rhetoric of Gorgias. Merely to breathe was enjoyment; and I derived positive pleasure even from many of the legitimate sources of pain. I felt a calm but inquisitive interest in every thing. With a cigar in my mouth and a newspaper in my lap, I had been amusing myself for the greater part of the afternoon, now in poring over advertisements, now in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... as it should be. Mrs. Phelps, a bustling little figure in her handsome rich silks, with her crisp black hair severely arranged, and her crisp voice growing more and more pleasantly positive as years went by, fitted herself with dignity into the role of mother-in-law and grandmother. Cornelia had been married several years. When Austin came home from college, and while taking him proudly with her on a round of dinners and calls, ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... is of two kinds, positive and negative. The difference is, I presume, that one kind comes a little more expensive, but is more durable; the other is a cheaper thing, but the moths get ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... dollars into the saddler's pocket: that's a positive good. He may or may not take thereby ten dollars out of your pocket: that's a negative injury. In this case there was no injury, for you had already cost Lacasse—how much had you cost him, Dauphin?" continued the Seigneur, with a half-malicious smile. "I've been ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... him, has not improbably been blessed with some years of previous intercourse with the said John. Taking, then, the above advertisement to be true, or nearly so, down to the words "left leg" inclusive, (though I have some doubt if the blemish there implied amount to a positive lameness, or be perceivable by any but the nearest friends of John,) ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... lip, half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth. He made straight for an armchair on the opposite side of the table, sat down clumsily, and began to cough. The man with the withered hand gave the newcomer a short glance of positive dislike; the old woman took no notice of his arrival, but remained with her eyes ...
— The Red Room • H. G. Wells
... the water might be raised to the 300-foot contour, and if the dam across Pompton Lake were constructed a continuous lake would be formed extending 10-1/2 miles to Hillburn, N. Y. The improvement in either case would be positive, for as the country surrounding is hilly or mountainous it affords excellent opportunity for the location of summer homes and parks, the lake being a potent factor in beautifying the situation and increasing the value of the surrounding region. There ...
— The Passaic Flood of 1903 • Marshall Ora Leighton
... square of stringy calico, fumble in his pocket for a scrap of paper, put his name at the bottom of it, and sneak out again five, ten, or twenty dollars better off. Once, as late as eleven o'clock, a fattish gentleman with a hooked nose and a positive dialect, assisted another stout member of his race to slide a very large object from out the tail of a cart. Whereupon there had been an interchange of wisps of paper between Pawson and the fatter of the two men, the late visitors bowing and smiling until they reached a street lantern ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... reader. How, then, is it to be priced, and how is it to be fairly marketed? All people must be fed, and all people must be clothed, and all people must be housed; and so meat, raiment, and shelter are things of positive and obvious necessity, which may fitly have a market price put upon them. But there is no such positive and obvious necessity, I am sorry to say, for fiction, or not for the higher sort of fiction. The sort of fiction ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... I am sure, assert that I gave you any pledge that King James would be required to leave France. You are too honourable a man, you are too much my friend, to say any such thing." "It is true," answered Portland, "that I did not insist on a positive promise from you; but remember what passed. I proposed that King James should retire to Rome or Modena. Then you suggested Avignon; and I assented. Certainly my regard for you makes me very unwilling to do anything that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... so once or twice," he returned, musingly; "there is rather a disagreeable resemblance. But what of that? many men are almost counterparts of each other. But I tell you what I think. I am almost positive he is some long-lost relation of the family—Fabio's uncle for all we know, who does not wish to declare his actual relationship. He is a good old fellow enough, I believe, and is certainly rich as Croesus; he will be a ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... thin, worrying myself to death.—Even Lady Dasher saw the change in me, hinting one day to the vicar, in my hearing, that she was positive I was in a decline, or suffering from heart-disease, and that office-work was really ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... tore carefully up into small pieces and destroyed. He did not even glance towards Peter, but Peter understood very well what had happened. He had been about to send him a message, but had found the Baroness watching. Peter was fully awake now. His faint sense of suspicion had deepened into a positive foreboding. He had a reckless desire to stop the car, to descend upon the road and let the secrets of Bernadine go where they would. Then his natural love of adventure blazed up once more. His moment of weakness ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of all the Oracles of Doom, which it was his fate to inscribe as final. Now to Baruch in such a mood the older man, the Prophet, might have appealed from his own example, for none in that day was more stripped than Jeremiah himself, of family, friends, affections, or hopes of positive results from his ministry; nor was there any whose life had been more often snatched from the jaws of death. But instead of quoting his own case Jeremiah brought to his despairing servant and friend a still higher example. The ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... know they are here," said the young soldier positively, but with great politeness. "I have positive information to that effect. They arrived last evening and have not left since. Their horses are still in the stable. I am sorry to be forced to do violence to my feelings, but I must search the house. ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... this. There seems no end, really, to the fine weather. Remind me to look at the thermometer after breakfast, before the sun catches it, love. It must have been quite two degrees hotter yesterday than the day before; but I neglected to make the entry in my journal, and so cannot be quite positive. Only fancy! Is it not annoying? I am getting sadly forgetful about everything. And I so dislike guess-work and conjecture in a record of the kind. I should like to see the rose-trees at home this morning: the garden must be gay with flowers by this,—though the last time I went pottering about ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... not like eating and drinking and exercise, if he is not something positive in his tastes, it means he has a feeble body and should have some medicine; but children may be pure spirits, if they will, and take their enjoyment in a world of moon-shine. Sensation does not count ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... up a paragraph from a topic-sentence consists in telling what it is not; that is, giving the obverse. This is very effective in argument, and is employed in exposition and description. The obverse usually follows a positive statement, and again is followed by the affirmative; that is, first what it is, then what it is not, and last, what it is again. In the following description by Ruskin, the method appears and reappears. ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... was correctly informed. 'Eugene,' said M. de Veron, addressing his son in his usual cold positive manner, and at the same time locking his private ecritoire, the hand of the clock being just on the stroke of five, the hour for closing—'I have a matter of importance to inform you of. All differences between me and the Chevalier de Merode relative to your marriage with his daughter, Mademoiselle ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... Fitzherbert was President of the Board of Trade in the new government, but he is more likely to be remembered as Dr. Johnson's famous example of the truth of the observation, that a man will please more upon the whole by negative qualities than by positive, because he was the most acceptable man in London, and yet overpowered nobody by the superiority of his talents, made no man think worse of himself by being his rival, seemed always to listen, did not oblige you to hear much from ...
— Burke • John Morley
... its ramifications, to play with it, to embroider it with pathos or with wit, to penetrate to its roots, to trace its connexions and affinities. Question and answer, anecdote and jest are the staple of American conversation; and, above all, information. They have a hunger for positive facts. And you may hear them hour after hour rehearsing to one another their travels, their business transactions, their experiences in trains, in hotels, on steamers, till you begin to feel you have no ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... is the place," the first voice declared, and his statement was seconded by another and as positive a voice. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... may be assured, where discrepancies occur, that the writer of this memoir has obtained his data from direct and positive sources: letters, diaries, account-books, or other immediate memoranda; also from the concurring testimony of eye-witnesses, supported by a unity of circumstance and conditions, and not from hearsay or vagrant ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... influence, and, in its way, nothing is so important. It is significant that foreign students rarely speak of Oxford without commenting on its atmosphere; something in the air of the old town which, although intangible in its operation, is a positive factor in the educational result. Specific courses of instruction are less numerous than in many other places, and such instruction as is offered is often defective in methods and spirit; but the life of the place is adjusted to intellectual work; the library facilities ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... railroad officer, and is also the most devoted student of geography and military history, with the most accurate and extraordinary memory for every detail, however minute, of battles and all other military operations that I have ever met with. He is positive in his recollection that not less than 100,000 and probably more, of that army were gradually concentrated at Toulon and sent thence by sea to Genoa, and the rest were during some weeks being concentrated ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... "That I'm positive of," answered Zillah. "I never saw it in my life until my attention was drawn to it after he was dead. That book was brought in here during my absence, and it was neither bought nor pawned—that's absolutely certain! Of course, you know whose ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... be in a much happier condition; and problems of social reform can then be tackled with some hope of success. Honourable emulation in the arts of life may then take the place of desperate competition and antagonism. Human lives will begin to have a positive value, and we may even think it fair to honour our saviours more than our destroyers. The effects of past follies will then soon be effaced; for nations recover much more quickly from wars than from internal disorders. External injuries are rapidly cured; but 'those ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... Mr. Jones, the reflective man in spectacles, 'positive virtues are getting moved off the stage: negative ones are moved on to the place of positives; we thank bare justice as we used only to thank generosity; call a man honest who steals only by law, and consider him a benefactor if he does not ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... from their native country by positive evils, and disgusted by ill-treatment, real or imaginary, it were fit to remove their grievances, and quiet their resentment; since, if they have been hitherto undutiful subjects, they will not much mend their ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... they whom we are condemning: but such as knowing and even acknowledging this to be their case, yet proceed in a way directly contrary: who, scarcely seeming to suspect that any thing is wrong with them, voluntarily acquiesce in a state of mind which is directly contrary to the positive commands of God, which forms a perfect contrast to the representations given us in Scripture of the Christian character, and accords but too faithfully in one leading feature with the character of those, who are stated to be the objects of Divine ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... to journalist. Voltaire taught him to scoff and disbelieve, to demand "a quoi bon?" and that took the heart out of him. He was rather fond of exposing abuses, a habit that appears in those witty letters to the Gaulois which in 1878 obliged him to suspend that journal. His was a positive mind, interested in political affairs, and with something always ready to say upon them. In 1872 he founded a radical newspaper, Le XIXme Siecle (The Nineteenth Century), in association with another aggressive spirit, that of Francisque Sarcey. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... requested that it be officially announced to him 'that the instructions were intended to guide but not absolutely to bind him.' He was not afraid of incurring responsibility where discretion was allowed, but he would not do it in the face of strict and positive injunctions. Mr. Gallatin sailed from New York with his wife and daughter July 1, 1826. Mr. William Beach Lawrence, then a youth, accompanied him as his secretary. They reached London ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... our friend Gammon, who never got heated in discussion, and was very accurate in whatever he knew, had glaringly the best of it. His calm, smiling self-possession almost drove poor Bluster frantic. The less he knew, of course the louder he talked, the more vehement and positive he became; at length offering a bet that there was no such thing as a writ of Habeas Corpus before the time of Charles II.;[20] at which Gammon bowed, smiled, and closed the discussion. While engaged in it, he had of course been unable to keep his eye upon Titmouse, who drank, consequently, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... the ticket!" shouted Bandy-legs, seeing the game now for the first time. "Steve, you're as good as landed. Bless that old rope, it's already proved worth its weight in gold." Steve watched operations anxiously. Despite the positive assurance conveyed in these words from his chums, the terrible grip of that clinging sand made him cold with apprehension. He imagined all sorts of things, from the rope breaking under the sudden and terrible strain, to his arms being drawn from their sockets in the battle between ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... big. The States also are taking in ballast at a rather rapid rate; and we too took it in quickly when we were about it. But I cannot understand why their ship should not carry, without shipwreck, that which our ship has carried without damage, and, as I believe, with positive advantage to its sailing. The ballast, if carried honestly, will not, I think, bring the vessel to grief. The fear is lest the ballast should ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... been attached none had thought to inquire, for the followers of a Martian noble are many, coming and going at the whim of their master, so that a new face is scarcely ever questioned, as the fact that a man has passed within the palace walls is considered proof positive that his loyalty to the jeddak is beyond question, so rigid is the examination of each who seeks service with the nobles of ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Cyrilla's usually positive gray eyes looked vague. She smiled. "I never asked," said she. "I've known him nearly three years, and it never occurred to me to ask, or to wonder. Isn't that strange? Usually about the first inquiry we make is what a ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... Arend, and Hans were inclined to place but little reliance on this boast of the Bushman, they gave to the rest of his story more than a fair share of credence. To them it was positive evidence that any longer stay in the neighbourhood would be ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... I was following Kongoni, this faculty had full play, and it assured me vehemently that we were wrong. I called C. up from the rear for consultation. Kongoni was very positive he was right; but as we had now been walking over an hour, and camp should not have been more than three miles from where we had killed the roan, we were inclined towards my instinct. So we took the compass direction, in order to assure ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... late events have given a more decided turn to Mr. Jeffrey's mind, and that he feels that as in the struggle between liberty and slavery, the views of the one party have been laid bare with their success, so the exertions on the other side should become more strenuous, and a more positive stand be made against the avowed and appalling encroachments of priestcraft ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... "I'm positive of it, but I can't prove anything. They threatened to get the best of me when I would not sell them, for a ridiculously low sum, an interest in the secrets. And I believe they did get the best ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... we have a different case. He was brought up in the most secluded fashion, and though he was sharply enough disciplined into decorous behaviour by his very grim and positive mother, he was guarded like a precious jewel, and as he grew up he was endlessly petted and indulged. The Ruskins lived a very comfortable life in a big villa with ample grounds at Denmark Hill. ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "Positive. Why, I was standing at the door watching the dance, when I saw the two together upon the floor. Later they came over and sat down quite close to me. Curly did most of the talking, and the girl seemed quite uneasy. She left shortly after with a fine-looking ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... Transfiguration." Patricia gave a slight start, but he continued, unheedingly: "A certain newspaper man, Radnor by name, has already sought to interview me, and he went so far as to insist that he was positive in his assertions as to such a ceremony having taken place. Of course, Beatrice and I both know it to be untrue, and I now make this statement in order to warn you all of what may possibly appear in the morning papers; that is all I have ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... there, and I conceived a sudden desire to repair the damage I had done, to close up the hole through which I had crept, so as to conceal all traces of my resurrection. I do not believe that I had any positive motive in doing so. I only deemed it useless to proclaim my adventure aloud, feeling ashamed to find myself alive when the whole world thought me dead. In half an hour every trace of my escape was obliterated, and then I climbed out of ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... bit of a heretic himself and, consequently, carried a tender heart toward them. "Let a man doubt till he finds his faith. And that was Boyle's line. He let them doubt, but he insisted that they should have something positive to ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... l. 21. It is the opinion of some philosophers, that the electric ether consists of two kinds of fluids diffused together or combined; which are commonly known by the terms of positive and negative electricity, but are by these electricians called vitreous and resinous electricity. The electric shocks given by the torpedo and by the gymnotus, are supposed to be similar to those of the Galvanic pile, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... thousand marines had been cut off between Placentia and Ticinum.[250] After this success the river and its steep banks were no barrier to the Vitellian troops: indeed the Batavians and other Germans found the Po a positive temptation. Crossing suddenly opposite Placentia, they captured a handful of scouts and created such a panic that the others in terror spread the false report that Caecina's whole army ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... said or done to reassure her. She was still grievously disturbed, and he naturally ascribed her agitation to the horror of her capture. He dreaded a complete collapse if any further alarms threatened at once. Yet he was almost positive—though search alone would set at rest the last misgiving—that only one sampan had visited the island. Evidently the Dyaks were unprepared as he for the events of the preceding half-hour. They were either visiting the island to procure turtle and beche-de-mer or had merely called ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... Under the double fluid theory of electricity the action of electrification in accumulating positive electricity in one conductor and negative on the other of the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... his infidel opponents, he goes upon deck, reminds the sailors, in a very bitter harangue, that they are of different religions; exhorts the Episcopal gunner not to trust to the Presbyterian quartermaster, issues positive orders that the Catholics should be fired at upon the first appearance of discontent; rushes through blood and brains, examining his men in the Catechism and xxxix. articles, and positively forbids every one to sponge or ram who ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... chance for him. Mr. Nelson was positive in his instructions. I don't think you need take the trouble to ask him, as I am almost sure ...
— A Child's Anti-Slavery Book - Containing a Few Words About American Slave Children and Stories - of Slave-Life. • Various
... disagreement. "Let us hope that so happy an ending to all your sufferings is not far off, my dear Mr. O'Day. And now another question before we part for the night, one I perhaps ought to have asked you before. Are you quite positive that Kitty's ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... grew less and less frequent; for Hesper was on the downward incline; but, when the next came, after this interview, she found herself haunted, at a little distance, as it were, by a strange sense of dumb, invisible tending. It did not once come close to her; it did not once offer her the smallest positive consolation; the thing was only this, that the essence of Mary's being was so purely ministration, that her form could not recur to any memory without bringing with it a dreamy sense of help. Most powerful of all powers in its holy insinuation is being. To be is more powerful than even to ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... or imprisonment, such persons as we could not depend upon. He added that Longueville, too, was of opinion that there was no remedy left but to purge the Houses. This was exactly like him, for never was there a man so positive and violent in his opinion, and yet no man living could palliate it with smoother language. Though I thought of this expedient before M. de Bouillon, and perhaps could have said more for it, because I saw the possibility of it much clearer than he, yet I would not give him ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... pleasure, pain, etc. upon the self; and this with S'a@nkara is a beginningless illusion. All this had been said by Gau@dapada. S'a@nkara accepted Gau@dapada's conclusions, but did not develop his dialectic for a positive proof of his thesis. He made use of the dialectic only for the refutation of other systems of thought. This being done he thought that he had nothing more to do than to show that his idea was in agreement ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... of all is in Dante. He had known all manner of traveling; had been borne through vacancy on the shoulders of chimeras, and lifted through upper heaven in the grasp of its spirits; but yet I do not remember that he ever expresses any positive wish on such matters, ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... about the same with Jimmy Holden; the "missing person" report stated that one of the most prominent factors in the lad's positive identification was his high quality of speech and his superior intelligence. (This far Paul Brennan had to go, and he had divulged ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... caravan, why should he aid it?" When we asked the applauding hearers what they had done for us, they rejoined by inquiring whose the land was? Another, smitten by the fair Shehrazade's bulky charms, had proposed matrimony, and offered as dowry a milch camel: she "temporised," not daring to return a positive refusal, and the suitor betrayed a certain Hibernian velleite to consider consent an unimportant part of the ceremony. The mules had been sent to the well, with orders to return before noon: at ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... that tubes of clay were used at Awatubi in olden times for roof drains, but there remains no positive evidence of this. Three forms of this device are attributed to the people of that village. Some are said to have been made of wood, others of stone, and some again of sun-dried clay. The native explanation of the use in this connection of sun-dried clay, instead of the more durable baked product, ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... sensitive girl appreciated only too well that her opportunities were fine and unusual, but she also knew that in spite of some facility and much good teaching she had no genuine talent and never would fulfill the expectations of her friends. She looked back upon her mother's girlhood with positive envy because it was so full of happy industry and extenuating obstacles, with undisturbed opportunity to believe that her talents were unusual. The girl looked wistfully at her mother, but had not the courage to cry out what was in her heart: "I might believe I had unusual talent if I did not know ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... permitted the Obligation to be attracted to the Pact. I used this language on account of the advantage of a general expression, but it is not strictly correct unless it be understood to include the negative as well as the positive. For, in truth, the peculiarity of these Consensual Contracts is that no formalities, are required to create them out of the Pact. Much that is indefensible, and much more that is obscure, has been written about the Consensual Contracts, and it has even been asserted ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... This, of course, had been no fault of Margaret's, but it had made him feel justified in leaving his daughter as a burden upon his younger son. For the last fifteen years she had eaten bread to which she had no positive claim; but if ever woman earned the morsel which she required, Margaret Mackenzie had earned her morsel during her untiring attendance upon her brother. Now she was left to her own resources, and as she went silently about the house during those sad hours which intervened ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... dark, and, the monks of Arboga being accused of secreting certain treasures, the royal officer was instructed to make a diligent investigation, but to lay his hands on nothing until he received more positive commands. He was careful, also, that his practice of confiscating Church property should not be taken as an excuse for private individuals to do the same. In one case, where such a thing was done, ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... proof of their having been worked by Elizabeth will now ever be forthcoming, but it is equally unlikely that any positive disproof ...
— English Embroidered Bookbindings • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
... notwithstanding, his unfortunately rather too short stay with some adepts, he has by actual experiment and observation verified some of the less transcendental or incipient parts of the "Course." And, though it will be impossible for him to give positive testimony as to what lies beyond, he may yet mention that all his own course of study, training and experience, long, severe and dangerous as it has often been, leads him to the conviction that everything ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... their afflictions are considered with commiseration; if calamities be measured by the numbers and the qualities of men they involve; and if every suffering of a fellow creature draws a crowd of attentive spectators; if, even in the case of those to whom we do not habitually wish any positive good, we are still averse to be the instruments of harm; it should seem, that in these various appearances of an amicable disposition, the foundations of a moral apprehension are sufficiently laid, and the sense of a right which we maintain for ourselves, is by a movement ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... would Jerry have held the deck, for every lessened mile between the return boys and Malaita contributed a rising of their spirits, and under the imminence of their old-time independence, Lerumie, as an instance of many of them, with strong gustatory sensations and a positive drooling at the mouth, regarded Jerry in terms of food and ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... and inoffensive, through dun-coloured spectacles. He paid his bill and walked thoughtfully homeward, thankful for the cool night air which fanned his forehead. He even entered his bare sitting-room and threw up the window with a positive feeling of relief. ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... necessary that the biographer should have personally known him. But this condition has been wanting in some of the best writers of biographies extant. [199] In the case of Lord Campbell, his personal intimacy with Lords Lyndhurst and Brougham seems to have been a positive disadvantage, leading him to dwarf the excellences and to magnify the blots in their characters. Again, Johnson says: "If a man profess to write a life, he must write it really as it was. A man's peculiarities, and even his vices, should be mentioned, because they mark his character." ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... cousin Harriet is quite another story," he went on softly, saucily. "Any conceit our dear Felicia rubs in to you, Harriet most effectually rubs out. Isn't it so? I am as a worm, a positive worm before her—can only 'tremble and obey' like the historic lady in the glee. She flattens me. I haven't an ounce of kick left in me. And then why, oh why, tell me, Damaris, does she invariably and persistently clothe ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... to join the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The Prime Minister has pledged to hold a public referendum if membership meets Chancellor of the Exchequer BROWN's five economic "tests." Scheduled for assessment by mid-2003, the tests will determine whether joining EMU would have a positive effect on British investment, employment, and growth. Critics point out, however, that the economy is thriving outside of EMU, and they point to public opinion polls that continue to show a majority of Britons ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government
... of figures of men, etc. At a distance, the words composed by the letters are alone distinguishable. Close at hand, the figures alone are seen, and not distinguished as letters. Thus things may have a positive, a relative, and a composite meaning, according to the point ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... usually another man's back; and who sketch out a much better speech between an orator's shoulder blades than he is making in front;—whose written language is a perplexity compared with which Greek is a relaxation and Sanscrit a positive amusement;—who deal in adjectives, and know their precise value, and how to administer them, as an apothecary knows the drugs that are boxed and bottled on his shelves;—who are less men than parts of an enormous mill grinding out grist to be branned and bolted in the editorial ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Islands as a position powerfully influencing the commercial and military control of the Pacific, and especially of the Northern Pacific, in which the United States, geographically, has the strongest right to assert herself. These are the main advantages, which can be termed positive: those, namely, which directly advance commercial security and naval control. To the negative advantages of possession, by removing conditions which, if the islands were in the hands of any other power, ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... red flags along the street and heard men calling upon the people in loud, strident voices to come and buy. At other places the grateful glow of coal fires shone from half-opened doorways, and the faint but positive click of ivory chips told that games of chance ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... quarrel is not so easy to find out. But of inducing the refusal to annul the decree, all alike charge Pericles. Some say he met the request with a positive refusal, out of high spirit and a view of the state's best interests, accounting that the demand made in those embassies was designed for a trial of their compliance, and that a concession would be taken for a confession of weakness, as if they durst not do ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... make I shall confine myself to four points: —1. That the committee find themselves in the painful condition of not spending enough money, and will presently apply themselves to the great reform of spending more. 2. That with regard to the house, it is a positive matter of history, that the house for which Mr. Williams was so anxious was to be applied to uses to which it never has been applied, and which the administrators of the fund decline to recognise. 3. That, in Mr. Bell's endeavours to remove the Artists' Fund from the ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... distinction between outside and inside, I beg of you, my dear sir. I hold that the ship is, at this identical moment, in the United States of America in a positive sense, as well as by a legal fiction; and I think Vattel will bear ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... hoped for. In Him the blessings and powers of the eternal life are our actual possession and experience. Jesus is full of grace and truth; the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth; through Him the grace that is in Jesus is ours indeed, and truth a positive communication out of the Divine life. And so worship in spirit is worship in truth; actual living fellowship with God, a real correspondence and harmony between the Father, who is a Spirit, and the child praying in ...
— Lord, Teach Us To Pray • Andrew Murray
... to all this with the greatest interest. While he might to some extent share the confidence of his chum, still he did not feel quite so positive about the warmth of their welcome by the lawless band of shingle-makers peopling the lower reaches of the river that emptied into ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... Exhibition began early and have been arduous, persistent and effective. Any Inauguration of the Fair in which he did not prominently figure would have done him injustice. The Queen appears to be personally popular in a more direct and positive sense. I cannot remember that any one act of her public life has ever been condemned by the public sentiment of the Country. Almost every body here appears to esteem it a condescension for her to open ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... of his Majority, now darkly moped in his rooms, undecided to apply for a long home leave, unwilling to leave Delhi, and even afraid to ask his general for any positive favor as to a future station. Club and mess bandied the freest tattle as to old Hugh Johnstone's lovely "importation." Men eyed the prosperous Major Alan Hawke on his rising pathway with a growing envy. There was a smart coterie who now firmly believed ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... d'Enghien. This unfortunate and unjust impression had preceded Caulaincourt to St. Petersburg, and it was feared that he would not experience the reception due to the French Ambassador and to his own personal qualities. I knew at the time, from positive information, that after a short explanation with Alexander that monarch retained no suspicion unfavourable to our Ambassador, for whom he conceived and maintained great ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... "Story of Bhazad (!) the Impatient." The name is Persian, Bih (well, good) Zad (born). In the adj. bih we recognize a positive lost in English and German which retain the comparative (bih-tar better) and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... one another, or with the world, compare it with your own conduct. If you find yourself condemned, you have the same course to pursue, with a steadfast determination to exhibit more of the spirit of Christ. If it relates to some positive duty, inquire whether you have done it. If not, you have to go through the same work of repentance and application to the blood of Christ. But do not stop here. Do ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... distilled water, filling two glass tubes, connected by moist bladders, or any moist animal or vegetable substances, were submitted to the electrical action of the pile of Volta by means of gold wires, a nitro-muriatic solution of gold appeared in the tube containing the positive wire, or the wire transmitting the electricity, and a solution of soda in the opposite tube; but I soon ascertained that the muriatic acid owed its existence to the animal or vegetable matters employed; ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... give it to me," said Mrs. Kildair. She held out her hand without trembling, a smile of triumph on her face, which had in it for a moment an expression of positive cruelty. ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... be given which would give him unbounded joy or doom him to perpetual misery. To him, at least, the time dragged wearily along, the tunes were lifeless, the courses were inordinately long, and it was a positive relief to him when Nicholas rose up again and pronounced a benediction, equally as long and dreary as the ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... George up in one of the bear robes taken from the wall of the cavern, "I've been thinking that the cabin is a great deal nearer the camp. Of course I haven't been to the camp, but I've heard the location described and I'm positive that it is four or five miles further away ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... but did not comprehend the situation. In spite of the positive testimony he had given he did not even know Edward Granger ...
— Chester Rand - or The New Path to Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr
... School," on page 18 says: "Neither Latin nor Greek would be contained in the curriculum of the Modern School—not, of course, because their literatures are less wonderful than they are reputed to be, but because their present position in the curriculum rests upon tradition and assumption. A positive case can be made out for neither." The president of Columbia University, in his Annual Report for 1915-1916, page 15, speaking of the "teachers of the ancient classics," says: "They have heretofore been all too successful in concealing from their pupils ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... what's going to happen? She'll ask twice as much now as she did before; and the moment it's clear that she isn't going to get it, she'll call in an agent of police. She'll get her money in a separate suit and send him to prison to do it. The case against him is positive; there isn't a shadow of hope for him. You talk of being with him; don't you see how preposterous that is? Do you imagine they encourage family housekeeping ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... grown up together from childhood. He was an only son and she an only daughter. It had always been an understood thing between the two families that the boy and girl should marry. But Marian's father had decreed that no positive pledge should pass between them until Marian ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... and secondarily of the circulation, and that was all. To fulfil this object, and to answer the endless craving for habitual excitants of the cerebral functions, they had been admitted reluctantly to the diet of their patients, rather as necessary evils than as positive goods. It was reserved for the all-searching German mind to discover their better qualities; and it is only within the last five years, that the self-sacrificing experiments of Dr. Boecker of Bonn, and of Dr. Julius Lehmann, have raised them to their proper place in dietetics, as "Accessory ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... on. "You know, of course, that the force of magnetic attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distances separating the magnet and the attracted particles, and also that each magnetized particle had two poles, a positive and a negative pole, or a north pole and a south pole, as they ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... terminating in the syllable -lyche form the comparative in -loker and the superlative in -lokest; as, positive uglyche ( ugly), comp. ugloker, superl. uglokest. The long vowel of the positive is often shortened in the comp. and superl., as in the modern ...
— Early English Alliterative Poems - in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century • Various
... and conjectures such an introductory conversation as follows: "Is it dawning in the east, or is a fiery dragon flying about, or are the turrets of some castle burning?" questions which the king negatives in the same order. Then comes the positive declaration, "rather they are warriors marching whose armor gleams in the moonlight." —Alt- und Angels. Lesebuch, 1861. Heinzel and B. conjecture, [beorhtor hor]nas byrnað nǣfre. So. G.—Beit. xii. 22; Anzeiger f. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... Germany. While Julian used the laborious hours of his winter quarters at Paris in the administration of power, which, in his hands, was the exercise of virtue, he was surprised by the hasty arrival of a tribune and a notary, with positive orders from the Emperor, which they were directed to execute and he was commanded ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... more loudly, like some great cat purring. Louder snapped the electrical waves. The air vibrated with the enormous speed of the valve wheels, and there was a prickling sensation as the power flowed into the positive and negative plates, by which the projectile was ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood
... Temps of to-day, enters into a lengthy argument to prove that the Parisians are heroic. "Heroism is positive and negative," he says, "and we have, for the sake of our country, deprived ourselves during several months of the power to make money, and during this time we have existed without many of the comforts to which we are accustomed." ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... destiny is in your own hands. I come not to declare war against the fortunes and persons of individuals. The enemy of the liberty and independence of America alone is the object of the vengeance of the arms of the PATRIA. I promise you in the most positive manner, that your property and persons shall be inviolable, and that you shall be treated as respectable citizens, if you co-operate in the great ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... angel! you little dear!" he cried, with a positive dew of pleasure in his eyes. "Elsie, what have we ever done ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... conscience, as is known throughout the realm of Leaphigh. A memory is the faculty of the least account to a personage who has no conscience; and, while it is not contended that the sovereign is relieved from the possession of his memory by any positive statute law, or direct constitutional provision, it follows, by unavoidable implication, and by all legitimate construction, that, having no occasion to possess such a faculty, it is the legal presumption he ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... could by any possibility possess the intellectual and esthetic qualifications necessary to enthusiastic appreciation of the qualities, not to say merits, of the work. These qualifications are quite as much negative as they are positive. It is not enough to the appreciation of "Pellas et Mlisande" that the listener shall understand French. He must have a taste—and this must be an acquired one, since it cannot be born in him—for the French of M. Maeterlinck's infantile plays, "Pellas et Mlisande" ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... not sustain a man in his solitude, when he has nobody to scoff at; and disbelief is only a bottomless tub, which will not float me across the dark river. If Infidels intend to convert the world, they must give us some positive system of truth which we can believe, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Bartlett ought really to be able to help you. At any rate he's very positive himself about what's good and what's bad. Curiously enough, he and I have been touching upon the same point as you, and I find, among other things, that he is ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... Spinney promptly counselled him to remain where he was, but the candidate was impressed by the young man's determined appearance. Harlan strode to him, and took him by the arm. He had been used to the command of men since boyhood. "I have some very positive instructions. It will be a serious matter for you, Mr. Spinney, if you don't come—and you can't afford to take the advice ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... positive is the height of folly, but fools will deny anything and everything save their own wit. It does not follow that because one palmist has been at fault, all palmists are at fault. I believe in palmistry, because I have seen it verified in ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... morbid and cruel: that of attending the execution of those condemned to capital punishment. Even to his friends and immediate successors, no less than to those who have written of him, the fact that a man so full of kindness, who took pleasure in the innocent companionship of children, could with positive eagerness witness the hanging of a thief at Tyburn, has been a cause of surprise. When one is conversant with the history of the time the astonishment is ridiculous. The sight of a man on the gallows ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... a considerable extent controlling our destinies, and in conjunction with the Boer leaders endeavouring to cast them in a mould which is wholly foreign to the genius of the people. Every public act betrays the most positive hostility, not only to everything English, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... indecent song, Barney's drab clothes were immediately missing from the group. His taste was for the society of gentlemen, of whom, with the reader's permission, there was no lack in our five steerages and second cabin; and he avoided the rough and positive with a girlish shrinking. Mackay, partly from his superior powers of mind, which rendered him incomprehensible, partly from his extreme opinions, was especially distasteful to the Irishman. I have seen him slink off, with backward ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gave way to sorrow, but soon fired up and resolved to destroy the whole creation. Then that illustrious and great ascetic Vasishtha, that foremost of all persons conversant with Brahma, that son of Mitravaruna, that Rishi acquainted with positive truth, addressed his grandson who had set his heart upon the destruction of the world. Hear, O Arjuna, the arguments by which Vasishtha succeeded in driving out that ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... me of Redskins, and Redskins take my thoughts straight back to Iroquois Annie, who day by day becomes sullener and stupider and more impossible. I can see positive dislike for my Dinkie in her eyes, and I'm at present applying zinc ointment to Pee-Wee's chafed and scalded little body because of her neglect. I'll ring-welt and quarter that breed yet, mark my words! As it is, there's a constant ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... Johnson, who used to boast that he had, from the first, resisted both Ossian and the giants of Patagonia, averred his positive disbelief of its authenticity. Lord Elibank said, 'I am sure it is not McPherson's. Mr Johnson, I keep company a great deal with you; it is known I do. I may borrow from you better things than I can say myself, and give them as my own; but, if I should, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... this made me positive that the doctor had been hitting a bottle pretty hard, and I was angry and sorry that Helen should see it too, because she's taken a huge liking to that chap, and hitherto I could hardly blame her. When I turned to her she was staring at him, and looked as if ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... humiliating condition of a mere pauper or dependent, and sets him in a channel of manly exertion, self-development, and self-support; which not only does the negative work of removing a mass of evil from society, but makes for it the positive contribution of an improved and educated humanity. I do not say that all the relief lies here, that it will do all that is needed, or that nothing better will be devised. But I think the tendency of these ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... waves, or streaks, or blotches, and will be saved the trouble of the damping process which he uses and recommends to others. ("N. & Q.," Vol. ix., p. 254.) I have done a considerable quantity of paper of Canson, both positive and negative, and also of other makers, Whatman, Turner, Sandford, and Nash, and in all I have succeeded perfectly in obtaining an even coating of albumen. I am convinced from my own experience that ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 232, April 8, 1854 • Various
... shape, with long, thin legs and delicately moulded arms; she was dressed in the fillet and chiton of Greece. During her long poses she was as immovable as an antique marble; her natural grace and prettiness were transfigured into positive beauty by the flowing lines and the pink draperies of her Attic costume. Seated thus, she was a breathing embodiment of the best Greek period. When the rests came, her jump from the wall landed her square on her feet and at the latter end of the nineteenth century. Once free, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... here by himself yesterday and the day before, and took the same grills and stout." Von Wissman was staying at the German Embassy, but was drawn all the way to South Kensington by the sweet savour of the grill-room—an instance of what the physiologists call "positive chemotaxis." ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... In five minutes more he knew where the Nez Perces had made their hasty "cache" for their lodges and other treasures, and he went at once to report it to his father and to Yellow Pine. The latter looked at Sile with positive respect, and exclaimed, ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... the weakness which made it a positive pain for him to come in contact with strangers with whom he had no power to make friends. He began to regard the hopes that had sustained him during the time of preparation, the pleasure he had taken in such remnants of other people's work in ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... instinctive feeling, that while the rosary and the candle might be a doubtful good, the rough tenderness of her father was a positive one. Little as Sir Gilbert could enter into her ideas, his affection was truer and more unselfish than that of her mother. Neither of them was very deeply attached to her; but Sir Gilbert's love could have borne ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt
... wince under the blow; but they did not. The younger woman went slowly to the window and stood there sobbing quietly; the other's face lit up with a positive blaze of joy. ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... "I'm not positive, but when I met him and the thief in the woods, the thief, who was called Buddy, started to call that fellow Baxter, but the tall man wouldn't have it, and made him call him Nolly. His right name, I feel certain, is ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... looked all through that?" asked Madeline, pointing to the miscellaneous assortment of books, papers, dance-cards and bric-a-brac that littered Betty's small desk to the point of positive inundation. ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... method, the great utility of which is apparent in the antinomy, where the arguments of reason were allowed to confront each other in undiminished force. And although the result of these conflicts of reason is not what we expected—although we have obtained no positive dogmatical addition to metaphysical science—we have still reaped a great advantage in the correction of our judgements on these ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... on "Divination," perhaps a third might be added, on POLITICAL and MORAL PREDICTION. The principles which may even raise it into a science are self-evident; they are drawn from the heart of man, and they depend on the nature and connexion of human events! We presume we shall demonstrate the positive existence of such a faculty; a faculty which Lord Bacon describes of "making things FUTURE and REMOTE AS PRESENT." The aruspex, the augur, and the astrologer have vanished with their own superstitions; but the moral and the political ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... a positive form which we have of Vespucci, as resident in Spain, is early in 1496. He appears, from documents in the royal archives at Seville, to have acted as agent or factor for the house of Juanoto Berardi, a rich Florentine merchant, resident ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... as a poor lad; but through great strength of purpose and positive genius for business, he had steadily risen step by step, until by the time our story opens, he had become exceedingly wealthy and was the acknowledged leader in all the great undertakings for which the ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... his refusal to believe, but when a week had gone he found his way with the others to their meeting. Perhaps their belief in the Lord's resurrection made such a change in them, so brightened and transformed them, that Thomas grew less positive in his unbelief as he saw them day after day. At least he was ready now to be convinced. ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... the numerous problems in which he is interested. The table is usually pretty well filled with specimens or data of experimental results which have been put there for his examination. At the time of this writing these specimens consist largely of sections of positive elements of the storage battery, together with many samples of nickel hydrate, to which Edison devotes deep study. Close at hand is a microscope which is in frequent use by him in these investigations. Around the room, on shelves, are hundreds of ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the eve of his departure for Vichy, had just had a severe attack of liver-complaint, the first since his illness after our terrible conversation in the month of January. I know that I counted for nothing—at least in any direct or positive way—in this acute revival of his malady. The fight between us, which went on without the utterance of a word on either side, and with no witnesses except ourselves, had not been marked by any fresh episode; I therefore attributed this complication to the ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... their friends. In fact, they knew that would be an impossibility to do by crossing the Sierra, and their object at that time was to find a settlement where they might know their whereabouts, and in what direction to go in order to return. The old Indian was positive there were people like themselves over the mountain of snow, and knowing they must have wandered a great way to come to it, they determined to make the most direct route to the nearest European habitation; ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... Aaron Grafton hasn't been there since I was forced into this thing, I'm positive. For I was forced into it," grumbled the old detective. "I just couldn't resist the pleading of her eyes. It isn't the first time a man has made a fool of himself over a woman, and it won't be ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... I'm not in it, but my learned brethren here hold briefs on either side, and they say they are bound, in the interests of their clients, to master the intricacies of the game. I must say they have managed very successfully to subordinate their horror of gambling. RUSSELL, you know, has a positive distaste for any game of chance. But as he says, a Barrister must sometimes put his prejudices in his pocket. ASQUITH brings to the game a serious aspect that positively sanctifies it. As for EDWARD CLARKE, he's wonderfully nimble. He was trying la poucette just now when I called out to him. As ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... to think that no one could keep her in any house against her own will without positive ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... upon them, in recognition of the special dangers to which they were exposed and the eminent services they performed as facing the hostile shores of France. Owing to their privileges and their position, the 'Cinque Ports' came to be cities of great strength, till, as time went on, they became a positive weakness rather than a strength to the land that lay behind them. Privilege bred pride, and in their pride the Cinque Ports proclaimed wars and formed alliances on their own account: piracies by sea and robberies ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... to refute the arguments of the deists, the lecturers were bound to produce those arguments fairly and forcibly. But to this young boy's piercing mind, the arguments against Christianity seemed stronger than those which were brought forward to refute them. Thus the lad became, not a positive unbeliever, but an honest doubter. He now sought earnestly for other ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... in the roofs of Dublin, and the seaward marked by the lion-like head of Howth. The meadow land between sloped gently upward and inward from the beach, and for the myriad duels which formed the ancient battle, no field could present less positive vantage-ground to combatants on either side. The invading force had possession of both wings, so that Brian's army, which had first encamped at Kilmainham, must have crossed the Liffey higher up, and marched round by the present Drumcondra in order to reach the appointed field. The ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... she has caught aman and need concern herself about them no more, for he has to eat, in the last analysis, whatever she sets before him, and his lack of intelligence makes it easy for her to shut off his academic criticisms by bald appeals to his emotions. By an easy process he finally attaches a positive value to her indolence. It is a proof, he concludes, of her fineness of soul. In the presence of her lofty incompetence ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... of Arts was as notable a man in his outside presentment as one will find among five hundred college alumni as they file in procession. His strong, squared features, his formidable scowl, his solid-looking head, his iron-gray hair, his positive and as it were categorical stride, his slow, precise way of putting a statement, the strange union of trampling radicalism in some directions and high-stepping conservatism in others, which made it impossible to calculate on his unexpressed opinions, ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the only news that is posted is of a confirmatory nature. It tells of the development of the national wave of death. Then, too, it begins to give the first positive information that the majority of the deaths have been ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... character here is well known. He is a bad man. For you to keep up any acquaintance with him is positive madness." ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... three hundred and fifty thousand acres. The example of France prompted experiments in the planting of trees, especially the maritime pine, upon this barren waste, and the results have now been such as to show that its sands may both be fixed and made productive, not only without loss, but with positive pecuniary advantage. [Footnote: Economie Rurale de la Belgique, par Emile De Laveleye, Revue des Deux Mondes, Juin, 1861, pp. 6l7-644. The quantity of land annually reclaimed on the Campine is stated at about 4,000 acres. Canals for ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... place, this appears to me to be a family affair concerning the marriage of your sister, with which I have nothing to do. You went on board of your own free will in woman's clothes. Mr Easy's orders were positive, and he obeyed them. It was his duty to sail as soon as the transport was ready. You may forward your complaint if you please, but, as a friend, I tell you that it will probably occasion your dismissal, for these kind of pranks are not understood at the Foreign Office. You may return to the transport, ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... I have overdrawn. It's impossible,— there was a decent balance only a few months back! They have made some mistake. I am positive it ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... visited the water-fowl, ducks of many kinds, sheldrakes, geese from many lands, swans black, and swans white. To see birds in prison during the spring mood of which I have spoken is not only no satisfaction but a positive pain; here—albeit without that large liberty that nature gives, they are free in a measure; and swimming and diving or dozing in the sunshine, with the blue sky above them, they are perhaps unconscious of any restraint. Walking along ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... great detective after a moment. "Either guess may be true, although I am almost positive that Dr. DuQuesne had nothing to do with it, either way. It was no ordinary burglary, that is certain from Shiro's story. It was done by someone who had exact information of your movements and habits. He chose a time when you were away, probably not so much from fear of you as because ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... future movements of the liberals, principally in the provincial diets. The Viennese Act of 1820 contains closer definitions of the Federative Act, of which the more essential object was the exclusion of the various provincial diets from all positive interference in the general affairs of Germany, and the increase of the power of the different princes vis-a-vis to their provincial diets by a guarantee of aid on the part of ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... he queried uneasily, and Helen sat straighter in the saddle and looked him full in the face. For now she was positive that Alan had had trouble and that her father knew ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... probably his most world-famed novel, "The Continuous Fall of Harriet Ramsbotham." To say that this daring attack upon existing social conditions caused a sensation is to put the case mildly—it was a positive literary tour de force. Take for example the extraordinarily vital passage in volume two—when Harriet is insulted by Donald at a soda fountain, or the sordidly realistic moment in volume three when she is horsewhipped by Frederick on Long Beach—and above all perhaps those few tense seconds in ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... people off by words, then by promises, of which he was monstrously prodigal, but which he only kept when made to people who had good firm claws. In this manner he broke so many engagements that the most positive became counted as nothing; and he promised moreover to so many different people, what could only be given to one, that he thus opened out a copious source of discredit to himself and caused much discontent. Nothing deceived ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... I have learned from Engineer Serko, who is very proud of his handiwork,—and also very positive that the prisoner of Back Cup will never be able to disclose ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... Viscountess, with a look of surprise. "It seems, cousin, that you saw Sabine that afternoon, but what became of her afterward no one appears to know; but there is positive proof that she did not leave the house, and received no letters. At all events, it was more than an hour after her maid saw her enter her own room. Sabine said a few unintelligible words to the girl, who, seeing the pallor upon her mistress's face, ran up to her. Just as she did so, Sabine uttered ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... probably plenty of gold, in the country, and that out of the many companies formed to work the claims a fair, but by no means a large, proportion will turn out sound undertakings. I doubt if it will be possible to say anything more positive until stamping batteries have been erected and a considerable quantity of quartz has been treated. This process can hardly begin till the railways to Bulawayo and Mtali have been opened, and those interested may therefore ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... seemed suddenly to have grown out of boyishness into manly determination, and gradually he extracted the whole story from her. He would not listen to the delusion in which she had worked herself into believing, founded upon the negations for which she had sedulously avoided seeking positive refutation, and which had been bolstered up by her imagination and wishes, working on the unsubstantial precedents of novels. She had brought herself absolutely to believe in the imposture, and at a moment when her uncle's condition seemed absolutely to place within her grasp the ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 1743, and in these works may be seen the aesthetic taste inherited from his father, author of the biography of Dutch artists, and improved by study of the French masters. Although without great force or originality of manner, many of these have positive beauty. I would name especially the SIR WALTER RALEIGH ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... throw equal to the man that had beat me out of my money. They all took a great interest in the game, and could turn the right card every time for fun. About this time the "capper" came up, and said he was positive he could guess the card, and kept insisting on betting me $100; so at last I concluded to bet him, and he lost the $100. Then the fun commenced. One of the chicken men saw the corner of the "right" card turned up; so he jumped up, and wanted to bet me $500 that he could pick out the "right" card. ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... exclaimed Ruth, with a look of triumph. I have found that out—only I fear that is not proof positive, because, you know, although not a common name, Bream is by ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... will often pity that weakness most, who in their own persons would yield to it least. Meantime there never was a calumny uttered that drew less support from the recorded circumstances. It rests upon no positive testimony, and it has a weight of contradicting testimony to stem.... What else but her meek, saintly demeanor won, from the enemies that till now had believed her a witch, tears of rapturous admiration? "Ten thousand men," says M. Michelet himself, "ten thousand men ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... said with a chuckle. He looked right past them into the shadows of the trees, on his face the joyful expression of a man who sees the long-locked gates of his prison swing open before him. Both men whirled round with a chorus of oaths. They were quite positive that Bryce's mate had stolen a march on them and crept up behind their backs. They had their heads turned away but for the fraction of a second, but the time, short though it was, was plenty long enough ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... of the troops to the Del Norte was made by the commanding general under positive instructions to abstain from all aggressive acts toward Mexico or Mexican citizens and to regard the relations between that Republic and the United States as peaceful unless she should declare war or commit acts of hostility indicative of a state of war. He was specially directed to protect ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... rudimentary and vestigial structures of animals are in themselves proof positive of a natural history of change. The few illustrations can be reinforced by countless examples offered by every group of living animals. If such structures have not evolved naturally by degenerating from more efficient counterparts in ancestors of earlier times, and if they have been ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... father's well-known tenderness, and used all the arguments I could recollect to divert him from his revenge upon Lord H—. He was deaf to all my representations, and nothing, I found, would prevail upon him to suppress his resentment, but a positive promise to comply with his former desire. I told him I would hazard everything to make him happy; but could not, with any regard to my duty, take such a step without the knowledge of my parent; or, if I ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... perseverance to bend circumstances to its will. In the case containing this relic, and beside it, reposes a horn-book, used for many generations in the Troy Infant School, conducted A.D. 1739-1782 by Miss Sleeman, schoolmistress. Although we have no positive evidence, there is every reason to believe that ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fabliau, and lai, are so often used indifferently by the old French writers, that it is difficult to lay down any positive rule for discriminating between them. But I believe the word roman particularly applies to such works as were to be supposed strictly historical: such are the romances of Arthur, Charlemagne, the Trojan War, &c. The fabliaux ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... simplicity, or elegance, by the taste of Raphael himself. The three heads of God the Father, the Virgin, and St. John the Baptist, are not inferior in roundness, force, or sweetness to the heads of L. da Vinci, and possess a more positive principle of colour."—Life of Fuseli, i. p. 267. This is a very remarkable opinion for the period ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... ugly as dem I applies 'em to, begging your pardon, ole marse," said the woman, with a positive nod of ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... and phenomena they are valuable. Many of the observations and classifications are subtle and instructive. But in his hands nothing comes of them. They lead at the utmost to mere negative conclusions; they show what a thing is not. But his attempt to elicit anything positive out of them breaks down, or ends at best in divinations and guesses, sometimes—as in connecting Heat and Motion—very near to later and more carefully-grounded theories, but always unverified. He had a radically ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... first, my feeling, physically, toward the female sex was one of indifference, and later on, with the more special development of sex desires, one of positive repulsion. Though having several female friends, whose society I like and to whom I am sincerely attached, the thought of marriage or cohabitation with any such has ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... second-rate demagogues passing for "distinguished statesmen," literary empirics, under the name of "men of power," will claim his suffrages at every turn; and in vain will he draw upon his politeness to the utmost, in vain assent, ejaculate, and admire—no amount of positive praise will suffice, till America Felix is admitted to be the chosen home of every grace and every muse. "Did Mr Bull meet with any of our literary characters at Boston?" Mr Bull had that happiness. "Well, he was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... are also branded very distinctly on his forehead," interrupted a second equerry, "I supposed them, of course, to be the initials of Wilhelm Von Berlifitzing—but all at the castle are positive in denying ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... found an enormous moose-track; he thought it looked like a bull's track, though he wasn't quite positive. But then, you know, a Scotchman never likes to commit himself, except about ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... bitterly for giving our cousin the benefit of his detective work, although both Daphne and I were positive that Vandy had identified the pedestal from Adele's description before Jonah had volunteered the suggestion that it ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... would not find, could not expect to find. This use of the perf. subj., for a softened fut., occurs in negative sentences oftener than in positive ones. Cf. Arnold's ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... was really no doubt of Henry's sincerity, but his isolation was terrible. There was none true to him at home but Sully. Abroad, the States-General alone were really friendly, so far as positive agreements existed. Above all, the intolerable tergiversations and suspicions of those most interested, the princes in possession, and their bickerings among themselves, hampered ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... already at any similar conclusion, the whole will of course appear stale to you. I heard yesterday from Wallace, who says (excuse horrid vanity), "I can hardly tell you how much I admire the chapter on 'Pangenesis.' It is a POSITIVE COMFORT to me to have any feasible explanation of a difficulty that has always been haunting me, and I shall never be able to give it up till a better one supplies its place, and that I think hardly possible, etc." Now his foregoing [italicised] words ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... given, is drawn from an analogy, which expresses the most obscure of all questions in physics—i.e. the union of mind and matter, the what constitutes one mortal being—all very well to use in explanation or illustration, but as a positive article of faith in itself, monstrous. Then the Filioque to be insisted on as ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... she could be a positive hyena to strangers, to those who were akin to her, and those of whom she was fond, her affectionate kindness was remarkable. One observes this peculiarity often enough; it reminds one how savage the social conflict is, in which those little groups of people ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... were merely inoffensive to each other, it seems as if society and conversation would be merely indifferent; and that, in order to make it desirable by a sensible being, it is necessary we should go farther and propose some positive good to ourselves from it; and this presupposes, not only negatively, our not receiving any hurt, but positively, our receiving some good, some pleasure or advantage, from each other in it, something ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... evidently extremely rich; but I must confess I rarely troubled to explore them. In other regions the gold-bearing quartz was actually a curse, our path being covered with sharp pebbles of quartz and slate, which made ever step forward a positive agony. Wild ranges adjoined that conglomerate country, which, as you have probably gathered, is extremely difficult to traverse. Certainly it ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... Harietta. Her rival reigned now indeed! This was positive proof to her, not of spiritual meaning—not of the mystic, abstract aloofness of worship which lay deep in Stepan's nature and had caused him to have Amaryllis transfigured into the symbol of purity, a daily reminder ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... virtue consists not only in doing good but also in avoiding evil. Now we are led by the positive precepts to do good, and by the negative precepts to avoid evil. Therefore there ought to have been not only positive, but also negative precepts about charity; and so two precepts of charity are ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... proved the cause of the victory of Salamanca for it was intercepted by the French, and Marmont, fearing that Wellington would escape him, prepared at once to throw himself upon the road to Ciudad Rodrigo, and thus cut the British line of retreat, in spite of the positive order which he had received from King Joseph not to fight until he himself ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... thought differently. He had known the young girl ever since she was a very little one; he knew there was no positive evil in her, and though he had not heretofore suspected her of any serious thought, he looked upon her request as an indication of good, and said that perhaps the very familiarity with sacred things which ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... anything had been seen or heard of the Pirate. There was no need for me to describe the appearance of the pirate car. It was as well-known throughout the land, as the Lord Mayor's coach, but he had seen nothing of it, and was quite positive that it had not passed through the town. An ordinary car had passed about half an hour before my arrival, and though the constable's description of the car was not very lucid, it was sufficiently near the mark to make me think ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... twice as many,—four times,—old Fezziwig would have been a match for them and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part of the dance. You couldn't have predicted, at any given time, what would become of 'em next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... an eminent person, and he was superlative only in so far as he passed for "the biggest bore in the county"; but he had the positive merit of being a gentleman, which in these days of a talented democracy amounts almost to genius. Since that night when, as a guileless undergraduate, he had interfered with Audrey's first introduction to Langley Wyndham, Mr. Jackson's career had been simplicity ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... around in every direction, but saw nothing of the camp, although positive that his olfactories could not ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... that all this is not necessary to be proved: conspiracy, like every other offence, may be brought home by circumstantial proof. Indeed, circumstantial proof is, in many cases, more satisfactory than that which is direct and positive, because it is free from the suspicion of falsehood. But I deny, upon this occasion, that there are any circumstances that bring home the crime of conspiracy to any of the three persons whom I represent. All that is proved may be true, and yet the defendants may be innocent. The circumstantial evidence ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... were to any other creature inaudible. Yet listen he did—sharply and intently. Raising his massive head he snuffed the air—then suddenly began to tremble as with cold, and gave vent to a long, low, dismal moan. It was a weird noise—worse than positive howling, and the dog himself seemed distressfully conscious that he was expressing something strange and unnatural. Two or three times he repeated this eerie muffled cry—then, lying down again, he put his nose between his great paws, and, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... father was not disposed to interfere unnecessarily with the choice of his daughter, even the hint that she might be entangled more than a thousand miles from her home had given him a positive shock. Now that he had seen the young man, and observed his conduct on board of the Bellevite, he most earnestly hoped that she was not in any degree committed to him. He had an additional inducement to get her away from the home of his brother, and the thought of it nerved him to ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... some man upon whom he may bestow a mother's love (of which the "bestower" is entirely incapable), and who will, in payment, respond with a mother's love (of which that man would, of course, be also incapable). In the jargon of electricity a positive and a negative are absolutely necessary ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... the world, except Ireland, has prevented the extortion of the landlords, by institutions, either springing from the nature of society, or established by positive legal enactments. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 397, Saturday, November 7, 1829. • Various
... most logical thinkers in the world, are frequently considered frivolous and shallow, simply because they excel all other nations in the difficult art of giving literary interest to philosophy; while, on the other hand, the ponderous Germans, who living in clouds of smoke have a positive genius for making the obscure obscurer, are thought to be original, because they are so chaotic and clumsy. But we have yet to learn that lead is priceless because it is weighty, or that gold is valueless because it glitters. The Damascus blade ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... mentioned, 'the despatch was in no wise positive as to the outlook in India. Trouble there had been and would be; that was certain. But was India merely face to face with a disturbance which she could manage herself, or was it a widespread mutiny? I was really left to form my own view upon ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... nevertheless, widely published opinions of tourists and newspaper correspondents. Could such writers realize the inevitable limitations under which they see and try to generalize, the world would be spared many crudities and exaggerations, not to say positive errors. The impression so common to-day that Japan's recent developments are anomalous, even contrary to the laws of national growth, is chiefly due to the superficial writings of hasty observers. Few of those who have dilated ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... old endeavored to overthrow evil by "force and arms." The NEW CRUSADE proposes to emphasize the positive side of life, and waging a peaceful war, aims to supplant Ignorance by Knowledge; to eradicate Vice by Virtue; to displace Disease by Health, and to dispel ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen
... to a congregation of cold—every combination introduced conducing to the great principles of breadth. When such is the plan upon which a work is laid down, we can easily perceive how powerfully the smallest touch of positive colour will tell—as in the midst of stillness a pin falling to the ground will be heard. Cuyp has this quality in a high degree, only on another scale—a uniformity of unbroken tone, and in masses of half-tint only, like a ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... those who regarded Thornton Rush with positive fear. They quailed beneath the flash of his eye. Such dared not openly oppose him and were outwardly his friends. Some, lacking powers of penetration, deemed him better than he was, and thought there must be much hidden good in one who had ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... To horse, you gallant princes! straight to horse! Do but behold yon poor and starved band. There is not work enough for all our hands; Scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins, To give each naked curtle-ax a stain. 'Tis positive 'gainst all exceptions, lords, That our superfluous lackeys, are enough To purge this field of such a hilding foe.[14] A very little little let us do, And all is done. Then let the trumpets sound: For our approach shall ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... and useful, if subordinate career. King Leopold, the good genius of the two families, had not suffered his cousin to forget him, but though she declared she cared for no one else, she was not disposed to enter into any positive engagement, even with Albert. She enjoyed intensely her proud, independent position as Queen Regnant. She was having such a glorious swing at life, and very naturally feared the possible restraints, and the inevitable subordination of marriage. She was "too young to marry," ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... scientists, Professor Tarchanoff does not claim to give any positive explanation of these facts. He believes, however, that the voluntary muscles act in the same relation to the music as the heart—that is, that cheerful, happy music affects the excito-motor nerves, ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... spacing, speed, arrangement, and punctuation all may also tend to show that a particular piece of writing was or was not done by one operator. In other words, typewriting individuality in many cases is of the most positive and convincing character and reaches a degree of certainty which may almost be described as absolute proof. The identification of a typewritten document in many cases is exactly parallel to the identification of an individual who precisely answers a general description as ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... habit of aiding nature by eating predigested food is bad, so too rigid a habit, too great a need of cleanliness is a positive disadvantage in the struggle for existence. Harry Stidston says fleas are loveable little creatures. I have had to learn to put up with one or two sometimes. Tommy makes his mother undress him in the middle of dinner to find one. In other words, Harry Stidston can do his work and live under conditions ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... she wasn't. Of course, she must have heard a good many things about him and other women; and when a woman gets downright jealous there ain't much sayin' what she wouldn't do. Not that I'm sayin' Miss Gresham croaked him. I ain't sayin' nothin' positive; but if you're askin' me who he'd most naturally elope with, why I'd say it was the girl he was engaged to marry. If he wasn't going to marry her, what did he ever get engaged ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... on the other hand, was one of those girls who, though they have high spirit, take an almost voluptuous delight in yielding to a spirit that is stronger still. This beautiful creature felt a positive fascination in Swift's presence and his imperious manner. When his eyes flashed, and his voice thundered out words of anger, she looked at him with adoration, and bowed in a sort of ecstasy before him. If he chose to accost a great lady with "Well, madam, ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... Think of that! Observe how much a reputation was worth in such a country. These people had seen me do the very showiest bit of magic in history, and the only one within their memory that had a positive value, and yet here they were, ready to take up with an adventurer who could offer no evidence of his powers but his ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... an exciting day, and Norah was positive that she could not go to sleep when her father sent her off to bed at an unusually early hour, meeting her remonstrances with the reminder that she had to be up with, or before, the lark. However, she ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... real truth, Doctor, you speak like a supernatural being, and there's verily no need for us to say anything! We have now, ready at hand, in our household, a good number of medical gentlemen, who are in attendance upon her, but none of these are proficient enough to speak in this positive manner. Some there are who say that it's a genital complaint; others maintain that it's an organic disease. This doctor explains that there is no danger: while another, again, holds that there's fear of a crisis either before or after the winter ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Spirit[45] we had thrown in carelessly several inferior verses and some positive trash, and neither paper nor printing was any great honour to the Dublin press. Every improvement in the power of the most enterprising publisher in Ireland has been made, and every fault, within our reach ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... in the high-life sense of the word, which was a greater evil. And then, though her eyes had sparkled when she confessed her love, Lady Lufton was not prepared to admit that she was possessed of positive beauty. Such were the unfortunate concomitant circumstances which still induced Lady Lufton to resolve that the match ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... they assert, is all that is needed to prepare the way for the selection of the tall giraffe. It happened to be born that way. In other words, its parents had it in them to breed it so. This is not a theory that tells one anything positive. It is merely a caution to look away from use and disuse to another explanation of variation that ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... then they all pressed Robertson to remain with them and partake of their hospitality. Though extremely anxious to return at once with the peaceful tidings, he did so, and thus converted possible enemies into positive friends; and the friendship thus formed was not broken till the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... thus sick of the languid manner of their contemporaries ruggedness seemed a venial fault, or rather a positive merit. In their hatred of meretricious ornament, and of what Cowper calls "creamy smoothness," they erred on the opposite side. Their style was too austere, their versification too harsh. It is not easy, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... if under any other conditions there is a positive gain of soil-nitrogen. In other cases the amount in the soil is only maintained under liberal manuring. In connection with this point a very striking fact has been observed with regard to the effect of continuous large applications ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... endured the southern sun well, and that the Captain Jack and Sharpless were fine with them; all the purple cane and black-cap raspberries did well, but none of the foreign kinds thrived. Mr. Berkmans remarked that, even after ten years of bearing, he hesitated to express a positive opinion concerning a fruit, so great are the differences caused by location and soil. It is your young men that have been two or three years in the business, who have positive opinions on ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... inner aspect, to his fly's mind, is of a quite natural and unimportant occurrence—one of the momentary conditions of his active life. He steps out of the way of your hand, and alights on the back of it. You cannot terrify him, nor govern him, nor persuade him, nor convince him. He has his own positive opinion on all matters; not an unwise one, usually, for his own ends; and will ask no advice of yours. He has no work to do—no tyrannical instinct to obey. The earthworm has his digging; the bee her gathering and building; the ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin
... water, forming a quiet, cool nook, Tom sent the boat in there, and, tying it to a leaning tree, he began his simple meal. Various thoughts filled his mind, but chief among them was the desire to overtake the thieves who had his boat. That it was Happy Harry's gang he was positive. ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... punishments on weak or depraved persons in the shape of transportation from one place to another, or of imprisonment in a fortress where, living in security and indolence, they only become weaker and more depraved; or the worse than uselessness and injustice, the positive insanity and barbarity of preparations for war and of wars, causing devastation and ruin, and having no kind of justification. Yet these forms of violence continue and are supported by the very people who see their uselessness, injustice, and ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... easily understood. We can well see bow a sodden psychic condition, flagrantly opposed to the pure and positive joy of spiritual life, would be a barrier. The next, bodily restlessness, is in a special way the fault of our day and generation. When it is conquered, mental restlessness will be ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... fundamental—indeed, the real—explanation of the fact, and this chemists and physiologists are not at present able to give us. Researches must be carried farther on the effect of temperature, light, and water on variation, before we may hope to reach a positive conclusion. We can only assume that the chemical constitution of the organism at a given moment conditions the sex of the offspring, and is itself conditioned by various factors—light, heat, water, electricity, etc.—and that food is one of these variables.[15] ...
— Sex and Society • William I. Thomas
... assault of fortune, than the best of pilots a violent tempest. You have been granted profound peace, a dead calm: yet if the pilot falls asleep, it may even so overwhelm him, though if he keeps awake it may give him positive pleasure. For your province consists, in the first place, of allies of a race which, of all the world, is the most civilized; and, in the second place, of citizens, who, either as being publicani, are very closely connected with me, or, as being traders who have made money, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... really authentic data concerning them. Professor Bailey of the University of California told me he had years before made two trips to the Gulf, and found the Seris to be the lowest order of savages he knew of. He was positive that under favorable circumstances they would practice cannibalism. Nielsen made four trips down there. He claimed the Seris were an ugly tribe. In winter they lived on Tiburon Island, off which boats anchored on occasions, and crews and fishermen and adventurers went ashore to barter with the ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... much pleasure a Proclamation of the Governor of the State of New York, to prevent sending provisions to the enemy. The accounts I have recently received on that subject from the States of Jersey and Connecticut, give me more pain than I can express. They are positive, and from people who had ocular demonstration; they prove, that the enemy's fleet could not have quitted New York for some time, if they had not received immense quantities of provisions, living and dead. This commerce is carried on regularly and openly, as if it were peace, ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. XI • Various
... throw up the yellow tints. It threw everything up to her. If she had owned to a little fear of it before, it affected her now with positive terror. The thing was young, much too young; and it was brutal and violent in its youth. It was possessed by a perfect demon of juvenility; it clashed and fought with every object in the room; it made them all look old, ever so old, and shabby. ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
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