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Affinity   Listen
noun
Affinity  n.  (pl. affinities)  
1.
Relationship by marriage (as between a husband and his wife's blood relations, or between a wife and her husband's blood relations); in contradistinction to consanguinity, or relationship by blood; followed by with, to, or between. "Solomon made affinity with Pharaoh."
2.
Kinship generally; close agreement; relation; conformity; resemblance; connection; as, the affinity of sounds, of colors, or of languages. "There is a close affinity between imposture and credulity."
3.
Companionship; acquaintance. (Obs.) "About forty years past, I began a happy affinity with William Cranmer."
4.
(Chem.) That attraction which takes place, at an insensible distance, between the heterogeneous particles of bodies, and unites them to form chemical compounds; chemism; chemical or elective affinity or attraction.
5.
(Nat. Hist.) A relation between species or higher groups dependent on resemblance in the whole plan of structure, and indicating community of origin.
6.
(Spiritualism) A superior spiritual relationship or attraction held to exist sometimes between persons, esp. persons of the opposite sex; also, the man or woman who exerts such psychical or spiritual attraction.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Affinity" Quotes from Famous Books



... In 1658, Sir Erland the Priest had in his possession a chart, even then thought ancient, of "The Land of the White Men, or Hibernia Major, situated opposite Vinland the Good," and Gaelic philologists pretend to trace a remarkable affinity between many of the American-Indian dialects ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)

... of fun and frolic is the ruling passion of her life. How false, how artificial is that system where there is no redress for encroachments of this kind! Were I to act honestly and as I ought, I should say to her at once, 'leave us,—your presence is intolerable,—there is no more affinity between us than between glass and brass.' But what would my mother say? What would the world say? What would you say, my own dear wife, who desire her departure even ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz

... it is well known, was divided betwixt the Norman and Teutonic race, who spoke the language in which the word Yes is pronounced as "oui", and the inhabitants of the southern regions, whose speech bearing some affinity to the Italian, pronounced the same word "oc". The poets of the former race were called "Minstrels", and their poems "Lays": those of the latter were termed "Troubadours", and their compositions called "sirventes", and other names. Richard, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... politicians are determined to make a Siamese question of this also—if they insist that the Union shall not exist without slavery—it can only be said that they join two things, which have no affinity with each other, and which cannot permanently exist together. They chain the living and vigorous to the diseased and dying; and the former will assuredly perish in the ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... and some of them, whose hatred was owing rather to envy than any injury I had done them, began to be angry that I should always escape when they were always catched and hurried to Newgate. These were they that gave me the name of Moll Flanders; for it was no more of affinity with my real name or with any of the name I had ever gone by, than black is of kin to white, except that once, as before, I called myself Mrs. Flanders; when I sheltered myself in the Mint; but that these rogues never knew, nor ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe

... too flat to be kindled into phrenzy.' ''Tis no bad p-p-puff, how-owever,' observed a person in a tarnished laced coat: 'aff-ffected m-madness w-will p-pass for w-wit w-with nine-nineteen out of t-twenty.' 'And affected stuttering for humour,' replied our landlord; 'though, God knows! there is no affinity betwixt them.' It seems this wag, after having made some abortive attempts in plain speaking, had recourse to this defect, by means of which he frequently extorted the laugh of the company, without the least expense of genius; and that imperfection, which he had at first counterfeited, ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Gods Have ever from of old reveal'd themselves At our solemnities, have on our seats 250 Sat with us evident, and shared the feast; And even if a single traveller Of the Phaeacians meet them, all reserve They lay aside; for with the Gods we boast As near affinity as do themselves The Cyclops, or the Giant race profane.[26] To whom Ulysses, ever-wise, replied. Alcinoues! think not so. Resemblance none In figure or in lineaments I bear To the immortal tenants of the skies, 260 But to the sons of earth; if ye have known ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... so as to make them a part of themselves, freshening and supplying the life-blood of their very being. Truth must be believed by the mind's own act; our souls must be drawn towards it with a reasonable love; some affinity there must be between it and them, or else they can never really comprehend it. The sceptic may desperately become a fanatic also, but he is not become, therefore, ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... engage me, and of the futility of which I am for ever reminded. I am struck with the coincidence of the tastes and dispositions of Burke and Mackintosh, and of something in the mind of the one which bears an affinity to that of the other; but their characters—how different! their abilities—how unequal! yet both, how superior, even the weakest of the two, to almost all other men, and the success of each so little corresponding with his powers, neither having ever attained any object of ambition beyond ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... the Greeks, who were so famous for this art, as indeed for most others, which is no wonder, since all the arts have so acknowledged an affinity with each other, studied especially grace and dignity in the execution of their dances. That levity of capering, that nimbleness of the legs, which we so much admire, held no rank in their opinion. They ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini

... contemplation all flows together in life. They, to be sure, who on one of these points bear the greatest resemblance to one another, will present the strongest mutual attraction, but they cannot, on that account, compose an independent whole; for the degrees of this affinity imperceptibly diminish and increase, and in the midst of so many transitions there is no absolute repulsion, no total separation, even between the most discordant elements. Take which you will of these masses which have assumed an organic form according to their own inherent energy; if ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... that the forces of the earth are electrical, whilst those of the sun are magnetic. In support of this assertion the proof may be advanced that a magnet can raise a heavier load after lying in the sunlight; for the close affinity, between magnetism and sunlight are, ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... they were good; namely, the good would not trust them because they were bad in their lives, and the bad would not trust them because they were good in their words. So they were forced with Esau to join in affinity with Ishmael; to wit, to look out a people that were hypocrites like themselves, and with them they matched, and lived, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the electrical charges which Bennett had shown resulted from the contact of different metals. Bennett attempted to account for the phenomena which he had observed on the hypothesis that different substances "have a greater or less affinity with the electric ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... power of attention to listen to the King. The large table, the velvet cloth, seats which ought to have been filled by none but the King's chief councillors; what that chamber had been, and what it was at that moment, when the King was employing a woman in an office which had so little affinity with her ordinary functions; the misfortunes which had brought him to the necessity of doing so,—all these ideas made such an impression upon me that when I had returned to the Queen's apartments I could not sleep for the remainder of the night, nor could I remember ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... making no pretences; avowing the low estimate of everything, that I was half afraid to form in secret; conveying to me almost immediately, though I don't know how or by what degrees, that he understood me, and read my thoughts. I could not find that he was worse than I. There seemed to be a near affinity between us. I only wondered it should be worth his while, who cared for nothing else, to ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... seven years past, with some others of affinity thereto, for my private exercise and satisfaction, I had at leisurable hours composed; which being communicated unto one, it became common unto many, and was by transcription successively corrupted, until it arrived in a most depraved copy at the press. He that shall peruse that work, ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne

... painstaking introspective manner he exposed it. He found a happiness that, at the same time, was a pain; he found an actual catch in his throat that was a nebulous desire; he found an utter loneliness together with the conviction that this earth was a place of glorious possibilities of affinity. Principally he was conscious of an urging of his entire being toward the slight figure in black, staring with wide bereft eyes into the gathering evening. On the other side of the mast, Indy was sleeping with her head upon her breast. The feeling in Elim steadily ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer

... from which the Fathers drew that certainty which they could not find in the demonstrations of philosophy was in the teaching of the Word, Jesus Christ. God, indeed, as we have seen, is not an object of science, "but the Son is wisdom and knowledge and truth, and all else that has affinity thereto. He is also susceptible of demonstration and of description."[51] It is in the incarnate Word of God that the patristic writers find expressed all that man is able to comprehend, and all that he needs ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole

... and came was posted, and around whom some fifty representatives of half as many nations were now clustered in a clamorous throng, filling the air with a confusion of tongues that had some probable affinity to the noises which deranged the workmen of Babel. It appeared, by parts of sentences and broken remonstrances, equally addressed to the patron, whose name was Baptiste, and to the guardian of the Genevese ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... religious reaction; and reaction often assumes the aspect of progress, nay, in some cases is identical with progress. Most of the poets, dramatists, and other writers of the Romantic School were, either by affinity or predilection, legitimists and neo-Catholics. Gothic art, mediaeval sentiment, the ancient monarchy and the ancient creed, were blended in their programme with the abrogation of the "unities," and a greater ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... of wings consists of twelve verses, or rather feathers, every verse decreasing gradually in its measure according to its situation in the wing. The subject of it, as in the rest of the poems which follow, bears some remote affinity with the figure, for it describes a god of love, who is ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison

... the scene itself, and imprisoned gods and heroes in a dark and gloomy apartment, artificially lighted up, would have appeared still more ridiculous to them. An action which so gloriously attested their affinity with heaven, could fitly be exhibited only beneath the free heaven, and, as it were, under the very eyes of the gods, for whom, according to Seneca, the sight of a brave man struggling with adversity is a suitable spectacle. With respect to the supposed ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... America. They had the Red Indians to the north of them, the savage Caribs to the south-east. From both these races they were profoundly different, though not in equal degrees. To the Red Indian they have scarcely any affinity, excepting such as had been brought about by the nomads, who came down from the north-west, taking the women of the Nahuatls, whom they conquered, for their wives, and thus bringing about some points of structural resemblance, such as are to be seen in a lesser degree in the ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... the following: "What a prodigious influence must our thirteen times larger globe have exercised upon this satellite when an embryo in the womb of time, the passive subject of chemical affinity!" This is very fine; but it should be observed that no astronomer would have made such remark, especially to any journal of Science; for the earth, in the sense intended, is not only thirteen, but forty-nine times ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... re-translating the Arabian Nights' Entertainments into their original language, whilst he wrote out the version himself as the other dictated, and corrected the inaccuracies by the help of a grammar and lexicon. The affinity which he discovered between this language and the modern Persian, induced him to extend his researches to the latter dialect; and he thus laid the foundation of his extraordinary knowledge in ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... unknown earth. And in speculating on the manner in which saltpetre is formed, he enunciates the hypothesis, "that nitre is, formed by a real decomposition of the air itself, the bases that are presented to it having, in such circumstances, a nearer affinity with the spirit of nitre than that kind of earth with which it is united ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... presently, you feel that it is red; next that there is, somehow, yellow in it; presently afterwards that there is blue in it. If you try to copy it you will always find your colour too warm or too cold—no colour in the box will seem to have any affinity with it; and yet it will be as pure as if it were laid at a single touch with a ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... nature is governed by the laws of attraction and repulsion, or in other words, by positive and negative forces. These subtle forces or laws in nature which we call attraction or repulsion, are governed by the affinity—or sameness—or the lack of affinity—or sameness—which exists between what may be termed the combination of atoms or molecules which goes ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... other, that he can get for money. Well, well, I must pray heartily for peace," said Howard with increasing spleen, "for I see the support of an honourable, war will never appear. Sparing and war have no affinity together." ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... poetry, far from injuring society, is one of the great instruments of its refinement and exaltation. It lifts the mind above ordinary life, gives it a respite from depressing cares, and awakens the consciousness of its affinity with what is pure and noble. In its legitimate and highest efforts it has the same tendency and aim with Christianity,—that is, to spiritualize our nature.... The present life, which is the first stage of the immortal mind, abounds in the materials of poetry, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various

... This, of course, is chosen as a very simple illustration. Were all cases as obvious, there would be but little distinction between natural and artificial systems of classification. But it is because the lines of natural affinity are, as it were, so interwoven throughout the organic world, and because there is, in consequence, so much difficulty in following them, that artificial systems have to be made in the first instance as feelers towards eventual discovery of the natural system. In other words, ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... "Affinity is right— You see she was the leader in the choir, And she had run away with him, or rather Had gone abroad upon another boat And met him in Montreaux. Now from this time For forty hours or so all is a ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters

... things," thought Hubert, "that unregenerated men can do quite as well as any. Indeed, they have an affinity with earthly things that is lacking in the heaven-born man. To trade in iron and amass wealth does not require a living man. I will let others do it. The supreme business of my Father calls, and I must be about ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock

... against the liturgy of the Church of England. No two things, according to him, had less affinity than the form of prayer and the spirit of prayer. Those, he said with much point, who have most of the spirit of prayer are all to be found in jail; and those who have most zeal for the form of prayer are all to be found at the ale-house. The doctrinal articles, on the other hand, he ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... English. It was wonderful how apt and how elect his diction was in those days; it seemed as if his thought clothed itself in the fittest phrase without his choosing. In his poetry he had extraordinary good fortune from the first; his mind had an apparent affinity with what was most native, most racy in our speech; and I have just been looking over Gunnar and marvelling anew at the felicity and the beauty ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... squawman. He was familiarly known as "Siwash" George—a derogatory term which had arisen out of his affinity for the Indians. At the time Henderson encountered him he was catching salmon with his Indian wife and relatives on the site of what was to become Dawson, the Golden City of the Snows. Henderson, bubbling over with good-will, open-handed, told Carmack of his discovery. ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... was more than a student, however scholarly, of Greek. She had a temperamental affinity for the Greek poets, and such translations as hers of "Prometheus Bound" and Bion's "Lament for Adonis," identify her with the very life itself of Aeschylus and Bion. In her essay on "The Greek Christian Poets" we find ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... Asian origin. Further, on the authority of Murray, Sax. sarmentosa is identical with S. ligulata; so that, if we may suppose S. ciliata to be a distinct variety of S. ligulata, and the latter to have such affinity to S. sarmentosa that Murray puts it as identical, the chief difference between our subject and the form generally accepted as S. ligulata is accounted for, viz., the hairy and rougher surfaces ...
— Hardy Perennials and Old Fashioned Flowers - Describing the Most Desirable Plants, for Borders, - Rockeries, and Shrubberies. • John Wood

... degraded and made reckless by it. There is little modesty where dirt is,—for dirty is indecency. There can be little purity of mind where the person is impure; for the body is the temple of the soul, and must be cleansed and purified to be worthy of the shrine within. Dirt has an affinity with self-indulgence and drunkenness. The sanitary inquirers have clearly made out that the dirty classes are the drunken classes; and that they are prone to seek, in the stupefaction of beer, gin, and opium, a refuge from the ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles

... find those isolated mountains to which the volcanic effects are confined. The basaltic crust, formed by ancient volcanoes, seems everywhere undermined; and the currents of lava, seen at Lancerota and Palma, remind us, by every geological affinity, of the eruption which took place in 1301 at the island of Ischia, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt

... for I am going to stay with you. Perhaps you will show me the way yourself," she said, pausing. "Bring Dolly, too;" and we walked off hand-in-hand together to the large, commodious chamber Mrs. Austin pointed out as that prepared for our governess. I recognized my affinity from that hour. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... kissed them, shading her kiss subtly so that each one became a secret little joke out of the past or lying in wait in the future, at which the rest could guess as they chose. Some of the women whom she knew best joined in the stream. They bore her, for the most part, an odd affinity and no ill-will. They had set out on the same road and had failed, and their failure stared out of their crudely painted faces. But perhaps they were grateful to her for not having forgotten them—or for ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... "It may be spiritual affinity, but it looks very like love," thought Kitty. It was a different love from any she had known. They turned and walked through the gate down into the shadow of the wooded creeks, the broad strong figure leaning over the weaker one. Kitty fancied ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... that no book written primarily for a boy is a good book for a boy to read. Apart from lessons in generous living, Franklin may have had his natural tendency to moralize strengthened by this study of Plutarch. It is indeed notable that in one respect eighteenth-century literature has marked affinity with the Greek. The writers of that age, and among them Franklin, were like the Greeks distinctly ethical. In telling a story or recording a life, their interest was in the moral to be drawn, rather than ...
— Benjamin Franklin • Paul Elmer More

... Letter with the account of the Acts, it seems to me that I had not taken up another author, but that I was still reading the historian of that extraordinary society." This is strong; but there is undoubtedly an affinity, and all the affinity that ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... a very handsome plant that bears the closest affinity to our potatoe in its floral construction; it grows to the height of two or three feet in favourable situations, and sends up many branches; the blossoms are large, purely white, freckled near the bottom of the corolla with brownish ...
— The Backwoods of Canada • Catharine Parr Traill

... often had the traveller or stranger visit us to taste our gooseberry wine, for which we had great reputation; and I profess with the veracity of an historian, that I never knew one of them find fault with it. Our cousins too, even to the fortieth remove, all remembered their affinity, without any help from the Herald's office, and came very frequently to see us. Some of them did us no great honour by these claims of kindred; as we had the blind, the maimed, and the halt amongst the number. However, my wife always insisted that ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith

... V. is a great artist, and his supremacy is in the tact with which he suits his toilet to his temperament. But the marvellous affinity of a dandy's mood to his daily toilet is not merely that it finds therein its perfect echo nor that it may even be, in reflex, thereby accentuated or made less poignant. For some years I had felt convinced that ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm

... without the aid of animals, and the goods have in many places to be drawn up or let down over precipices by means of ropes. On these mountains dwells a small king called Tibbet,[254] who lately sent one of his daughters to Shah Selim, by way of making affinity. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... consciousness of a Great First Cause." Then, collecting herself, she said aloud: "Methinks 't were pleasant to glide ever thus down the stream of life, hand in hand with the one being whom the soul claims as its affinity. But what am I saying?"—and the delicate- minded girl hid her ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

... great court where the Basques play their national game of "pelota." Euskara is the term used by the Basques themselves for their mysterious language, a language with no affinity to any European tongue, and so difficult that it is popularly supposed that the Devil, after spending seven fruitless years in endeavouring to master it, gave up the attempt in despair. "Pelota" is the father of racquets and fives, and is an immemorially old game, going back, it is said, to the ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

... and other stringed instruments used by the Persians and the Chinese, hardly admit of being looked upon as links in the genealogical Fiddle chain. Whatever the shape and use of ancient Eastern instruments—having something in common with the European Violin—may have been, the slight apparent affinity is accidental, and no real relationship exists between the European and ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... read Montaigne with a natural affinity for his peculiar turn of mind, will find themselves in a position to regard very humorously and lightly the portentous claims of modern philosophers whether they be rationalists or intuitivists. "There ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... of tobacco is not a slave to rum, yet almost every drunkard is a slave to tobacco; and this is indirect evidence that the habits are in a manner associated, or have a sort of natural affinity. If such be its tendency, what moral responsibility rests upon the man who shall recommend it, either by professional advice, or by his own example! What an infinitude of moral evil must follow in its train, if drunkenness be its legitimate effect! What woes, what ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister

... their compounds are the materials of the civil, mining, mechanical and electrical, as well as of the military engineers. They all deal with the forces of gravitation, cohesion, inertia and chemical affinity. They all require skill, intelligence, industry, confidence, accuracy, thoroughness, ingenuity and, beyond all, sound judgment. Wanting in any one of these qualifications, an engineer is more or less disqualified for important ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various

... that it were lost time to name them. Sir Philip Sidney, in his Defence of Poesy, gives us one, which, in my opinion, is not the least considerable; I mean the help it brings to memory, which rhyme so knits up, by the affinity of sounds, that, by remembering the last word in one line, we often call to mind both the verses. Then, in the quickness of repartees (which in discoursive scenes fall very often), it has so particular a grace, and is so aptly suited to them, that the sudden smartness ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott

... generally been classed with the antelopes, though for what reason it is hard to tell. They have far less affinity with the antelope than with the ox; and the everyday observations of the hunter and frontier boer have guided them to a similar conclusion—as their name for these animals (wild-oxen) would imply. Observation of this class ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... retained, and, indeed, still retained in the articles and liturgy of the Anglican Church, there was much, the growth of ignorance and neglect, to be reformed. The Church of England had never had a real affinity with Rome. The gorgeous and sensual ceremonies which, in the indolent airs of the Mediterranean, were imposing and attractive, palled upon the taste of the more phlegmatic Englishmen. Institutions organized at Rome did not flourish in that higher latitude, and abuses were currently ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... possible, Sir, that a great deal of this philosophy may lie too deep for your conception; it is possible, that not understanding, or not being able to answer it, you may incline to fix an odium on it, and alledge, that it has an affinity with that of Hobbes and Mandevill. But granting it were so, which it is not, truth ought only to be regarded, and names to have no weight in a dispute of this kind. I wanted to say something on female chastity and delicacy, about ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous

... as Johnson was large, but there was a curious affinity in their bodily ailments. Johnson, as a youth, was ulcerated and tortured by the king's evil, in spite of the Royal touch. Gibbon gives us a concise but lurid account of ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... evil, that unmerited suffering, that impotent pain,—the human debris of the social process,—which is a challenge to the power of God, and a cry to the heart of man that broods over it in vain, yet cannot choose but hear. In this region the near affinity of realism to pessimism, to atheism, is plain enough; its necessary dealing with the base, the brutal, the unredeemed, the hopeless darkness of the infamies of heredity, criminal education, and successful malignity, eating into the being as well ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... the hymn, "and inhabits their praises." Indeed, according to Schechter, the ancient Rabbis actually conceived God as existing only through Israel's continuous testimony and ceasing were Israel—per impossibile—to disappear. It is a mysticism not without affinity to Mr. Wells's. A Chassidic Rabbi, quoted by Mr. Wassilevsky, teaches in the same spirit that God and Israel, like Father and Son, are each incomplete without the other. In another passage of Hosea—a passage recited at the everyday winding ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill

... Petersburg there is only a wretched hut for the accommodation of travellers. The country is a wilderness, and the inhabitants do not even speak Russian. The district is called Ingria, and I believe the jargon spoken has no affinity with any other language. The principal occupation of the peasants is robbery, and the traveller does well not to leave any of his effects ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... not emotion, A man may luxuriate in devout feeling, and sing and praise and pray, and be very far from being a saint; and there is a great deal of the emotional Christianity of this day which has a strange affinity for the opposite of saintship. Sanctity is not aloofness. 'There were saints in Caesar's household'—a very unlikely place; they were flowers on a dunghill, and perhaps their blossoms were all ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... distinguished, and in one of his large canvases representing a road like that from Barbizon through the level plain to Chailly, there is the spirit and sentiment of all the summer evenings that ever were. But he has distinctly less power than the strict Fontainebleau group. He has, in force, less affinity with them than Troyon has, whose force is often magnificent, and whose landscape is so sweet, often, and often so strong as well, that one wonders a little at his fondness for cattle—in spite of the way in which he justifies it by being the first of cattle painters. And neither Daubigny ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... State—which destiny seems foreshadowed by her physical resources and her local situation. Except New England, no portion of our country has been more fully and faithfully illustrated as to its scenery, domestic life, and social traits, by popular literature, than Virginia. The original affinity of her colonial life with the ancestral traditions of England, found apt expression in Spenser's dedication of his peerless allegory to Elizabeth, wherein the baptism of her remote territory, in honor of her virginal ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... Missionaries in China to continue the present arrangement, at least until such time as it is found that actual difficulties arise in the way of carrying it out. 'Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity;' and there are few brethren towards whom we feel closer affinity than the members of that Church, which was represented of old by Gomarus and Witsius, by Voet and Marck, and Bernard de Moore, and whose Synod of Dort preceded in time, and pioneered in doctrine, our own Westminster Assembly. Like them, we love that Presbyterianism and that Calvinism which ...
— History and Ecclesiastical Relations of the Churches of the Presbyterial Order at Amoy, China • J. V. N. Talmage

... state. More speculative than Socrates, Plato, from the wide range of his discussions, from their poetic spirit as well as their depth of thought, not less than their beauty of style, is one of the most inspiring and instructive of all authors. No other heathen writer presents so many points of affinity ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... their energies to the service of our idea, and will inspire their congregations by preaching it from the pulpit. They will not need to address special meetings for the purpose; an appeal such as this may be uttered in the synagogue. And thus it must be done. For we feel our historic affinity only through the faith of our fathers as we have long ago absorbed the languages of different nations ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl

... mighty Empire anyhow. I've sojourned up and down it and I can't guess how the old-time highbrows in your little island came to put it together. But I'll let you into a secret, Dick. I read this morning in a noospaper that there was a natural affinity between Americans and the men of the British Dominions. Take it from me, there isn't—at least not with this American. I don't understand them one little bit. When I see your lean, tall Australians with the ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan

... here taken in his own definition, namely, as the science which uncovers the recondite causal relations between all perceptible manifestations of a nation's life and its physical and historical environment. Riehl never lost sight, in any of his distinctions, of that inalienable affinity between land and people; the solidarity of a nation, its very right of existing as a political entity, he derived from homogeneity as to origin, language, custom, habitat. The validity of this view is now generally accepted in theory, while its practical ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... atoms is changed, and the possibility of revolution of the two parts of the compound is given. Whether such revolution take place or not will be determined largely by the structure of the compound. The tendency will be for those parts of the molecule which have the greatest specific affinity for one another to take those positions in which they are nearest to one another. Thus, suppose that chlorine is added to ethylene. By following the change on the model, it is seen that in the resulting ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various

... They are white, transparent, differing from the perfect insect in having a broad, triangular head, and short, thick antennae. Indeed, this is the general form of lice (Pediculus Vestimenti, and P. capitis), to which the larva of Cimex has the closest affinity. Some Cimices are parasites, infesting pigeons, swallows, etc., in this way also showing their near relation to lice. Besides the Reduvius, the cockroach is the natural enemy of the bed-bug, and destroys large numbers. Houses have been cleared of bugs ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard

... more than an energetic chemical combination, or, in other words, it is the mutual neutralization of opposing electricities. When coal is brought to a high temperature it acquires a strong affinity for oxygen, and combination with oxygen will produce more than sufficient heat to maintain the original temperature; so that part of the heat is ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... immortal gods." His mother is the daughter of Cadmus, himself marked out by [24] many curious circumstances as the close kinsman of the earth, to which he all but returns at last, as the serpent, in his old age, attesting some closer sense lingering there of the affinity of man with the dust from whence he came. Semele, an old Greek word, as it seems, for the surface of the earth, the daughter of Cadmus, beloved by Zeus, desires to see her lover in the glory with which he is seen by the immortal Hera. He appears to her in lightning. ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... a sympathetic affinity seemed to be established between the vessel and myself, I rolling as she rolled and heaving when she heaved; while my heart seemed to reach from the Atlantic back to the Channel, and I felt as if I had swallowed the ocean and was trying to get rid ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson

... Parker—now near the close of his life—whose tete-a-tetes were eloquent of beliefs and disbeliefs. As the spring advanced the authoress of "The Mill on the Floss" was reported to be now and again visible in Rome, "with her elective affinity," as Mrs Browning puts it, "on the Corso walking, or in the Vatican musing. Always together." A grand-daughter of Lord Byron—"very quiet and very intense"—was among the visitors at the Via del Tritone, and Lady Marion Alford, "very eager about literature and art and Robert," ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden

... the British round barrows (early Celtic Bronze Age) are mainly broad, the best specimens showing affinity to Neolithic brachycephalic skulls from Grenelle (though their owners were 5 inches shorter), Selaigneaux, and Borreby.[20] Dr. Beddoe thinks that the narrow-skulled Belgae on the whole reinforced the meso- or brachycephalic round barrow folk in Britain. Dr. Thurnam identifies the latter ...
— The Religion of the Ancient Celts • J. A. MacCulloch

... "stone-cutters." Desiderio was for a short time a pupil of Donatello, whom, according to Vasari, he assisted in the work on the pedestal of David, and he seems to have worked also with Mino da Fiesole, with the delicate and refined style of whose works those of Desiderio seem to have a closer affinity than with the perhaps more masculine tone of Donatello. Vasari particularly extols the sculptor's treatment of the figures of women and children. It does not appear that Desiderio ever worked elsewhere than at Florence; and it is there that ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... educated people; something in him had appealed to her mind at a certain time, and her memory held him in gratitude. The other would be found to have informed herself exhaustively concerning the history of some neglected people, dear to her for some subtle reason of affinity or association. But in their table-talk appeared no pedantry; things merely human were as interesting to them as to the babbler of any drawing-room, and their inexhaustible kindliness sweetened every word ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... child has a noted affinity for it, and he is specially happy when he has plenty of it on hands, face, and clothes. The love of mud-pies is universal; children of all nationalities and of all degrees of civilization delight in it. No activity could ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne

... and giving birth to ten or twenty members, who, though they may appear, at the first glance, profoundly dissimilar one from the other, are, as analysis demonstrates, most closely linked together from the point of view of affinity. Heredity, like gravity, has ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... upon the earth betray the fear in the minds of races, nay, the inner spiritual certitude the soul has, that pride and lust of power must yet be humbled by their kind. They must at last meet their equals face to face, called to them as steel to magnet by some inner affinity. This is a law of life both for individuals and races, and, when this is realized, we know nothing will put an end to race conflicts except the equally determined and heroic development of the spiritual, moral, and intellectual ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell

... to her that I have never been obliged to have a nursemaid under my feet or tagging after the boys, to the ruin of their independence. For the first few years Effie, whose fiery locks have not yet found their affinity, helped me, but now merely sees to ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright

... said Bertram; "but to-day we have so many marriages of convenience that the society of some affinity ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny

... were not mine. What had I ever had to do with them? And why, being now free, should I take this thraldom on me once again? It was both sad and dangerous, I whispered to myself, to be in too close affinity with the passions, the errors, and the misfortunes of individuals who stood within a circle of their own, into which, if I stept at all, it must be as an intruder, and at a peril that ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... knew how you were, and just how you'd talk me out of it; and I made up my mind that for once, at least, I'd follow the dictations of a heart that—however capricious in youthful frivolties—should beat, in manhood, loyal to itself and loyal to its own affinity." ...
— Pipes O'Pan at Zekesbury • James Whitcomb Riley

... who felled the tyrant, such as Cambon and Barere, long after repented of their part in his fall. In the north of Europe, especially in Denmark, he had warm admirers. European society believed that he had affinity with it. It took him to be a man of authority, integrity, and order, an enemy of corruption and of war, who fell because he attempted to bar the progress of unbelief, which was the strongest current of the age. His private life was inoffensive and ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... imperceptible. Why then should the case be otherwise with the inner man? The latter too is developing and changing atoms at every moment. And the attraction of these new sets of atoms depends upon the Law of Affinity—the desires of the man drawing to his bodily tenement only such particles as are necessary to ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various

... felt perfectly at ease with her, and neither started nor spoke constrainedly, is worthy of note. It is, in fact, the best possible evidence that his belief in their affinity ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... they bear such an affinity to the people of the more western isles, that no one will doubt they have had the same origin. It is extraordinary that the same nation should have spread themselves over all the isles in this vast ocean, from New Zealand to this island, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... intimate with a set of young Englishmen, and the play was dreadful, it is true; he betted too. That is a curse. Play and horses, and general recklessness and extravagance, but no wine and no women. I never heard that he had the least affinity for either of these dissipations. There were debts—I suppose all young men in his position make debts," said the countess, placidly. "My husband made debts at college, and I am sure my brothers did. Then he left college and lived at home awhile, and that was the happiest ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill

... colored man, and take me up; hence I kept from the light as much as possible. Some men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil; but this was not the case with myself; it was to avoid detection in doing right. This was one of the instances of my adventures that my affinity with the Anglo-Saxon race, and even slaveholders, worked well for my escape. But no thanks to them for it. While in their midst they have not only robbed me of my labor and liberty, but they have almost entirely robbed me of my dark complexion. Being so near the color of a ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb

... thoroughly "Giorgionesque" as to be none other than the young Giorgione himself. In my opinion this is one of his earliest essays into the region of romance, painted probably before his twenty-first year, betraying, like the little legendary pictures in the Uffizi, a strong affinity ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook

... mercury has a greater affinity than silver with the nitrous acid, the silver becomes precipitated; and, being deprived of the nitrous oxygene by the mercury, sinks down in its metallic form and lustre. 2. The attraction between silver and mercury, which causes them readily ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin

... matter of fact, I took no interest in the locomotive; but I had observed it sufficiently to be sure that it offered no facilities for hunting. A few months ago I might have accepted the explanation: for our family has affinity with what is vulgarly termed the upper class, and my father inherits its crude and primitive instincts; among them a passion for the chase. His appearance, as he returned to our compartment, oppressed me for the hundredth time with a sense of ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... object at present before us, imparts a manifoldly greater interest to the contents of any volume. It imparts to the reader an appropriate power, a force of affinity, by which he insensibly and unconsciously attracts to himself all that has a near or even a remote relation to the end for which he reads. Anyone is conscious of this who reads a story with the purpose of repeating it to an absent friend; or an essay or a report with the design ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... limit of conifers—in the middle Sierras, the white bark pine—is not along the water border. They come to it about the level of the heather, but they have no such affinity for dampness as the tamarack pines. Scarcely any bird-note breaks the stillness of the timber-line, but chipmunks inhabit here, as may be guessed by the gnawed ruddy cones of the pines, and lowering hours the woodchucks come ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin

... Moreover, he had not been blind to the fact that Garret's courage had ebbed very visibly under the stress of personal peril, whilst Clarke's spirit had remained calm and unshaken. Dalaber had keen sympathy with Garret, in whose temperament he recognized an affinity with his own, and whose tremors and fits of weakness and yielding he felt he might well share under like trial and temptation. Indeed, he did not deny to himself that, were he not thus fast bound, he might have attempted the escape which yesterday he had scorned. But he thought ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... virtue rear'd then stands aloof; So I, the whilst she said, awe-stricken bow'd. Then eagerness to speak embolden'd me; And I began: "O fruit! that wast alone Mature, when first engender'd! Ancient father! That doubly seest in every wedded bride Thy daughter by affinity and blood! Devoutly as I may, I pray thee hold Converse with me: my will thou seest; and I, More speedily to hear thee, tell ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... her resentment. By a curious affinity, his own spirit thrilled to the unquenchable spirit in her. Qualities in himself responded to like qualities in her. He admired her pride and pluck. Yet the two egoisms reared against each other, seemed to him—could he have put the thought into shape—like combatants with lances ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... opposition to the Roman Catholic Church, as an issue in our politics. To such movements Whigs, as legatees of Federalism, were always more friendly than Democrats, which was partly a cause and partly a consequence of the affinity that naturalized citizens all along showed ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... appearance and mode of life, are yet constructed on the same common plan, of which they constitute diverging manifestations. No a priori reason is conceivable why such similarities should be necessary, but they are readily explicable on the assumption of a genetic relationship and affinity between the animals in question, assuming, that is, that they are the modified descendants of some ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart

... separating his own from the public interest, but from fear as to where the carnage would stop when once the sword was drawn; whether they would be satisfied with the blood of the tyrant, which was sufficient for their liberty, or whether all who were connected with the court, by consanguinity, affinity, or any offices, would, as implicated in another's guilt, be butchered. After he perceived that those who had liberated their country were desirous of preserving it when liberated, and that the counsels of all were directed towards the public good, he had not hesitated ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius

... substantial information we possess on the Barhu. Is there an affinity to be found between the modern Barhus and the Barhuns of Chingis Khan's biography?—and is it to be supposed, that in the course of time, they spread from Lake Baikal to the Hing'an range? Or is it more correct to consider ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... his favorite beverage, seemed to quiver fondly, his eyes squinting that he might not lose sight of his tankard for a moment, and altogether he had the appearance of fulfilling the sole function for which he had been born. You would have said that he established in his own mind some connection or affinity between the two great passions that monopolized his life—Ale and Revolution—and most assuredly he never dipped into the one ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... insects of the Moluccas show a decided affinity with those of New Guinea rather than with the productions of the great western islands of the Archipelago, but the difference in form and structure between the productions of the east and west is not ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... existing state of things, of substituting another for which the ignorant masses are prepared. The aristocracy are constantly clamoring for increased powers and privileges, but it is very certain they have no affinity, beyond pecuniary interest, with the middle and lower classes, and that their sole aim is to interpose every possible obstacle to the progress of freedom. The emperor is now practically the great conservative power who stands between them and their dependents. Any increase of authority ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... in earnest about anything, that on winning her I had staked myself, and that myself was a wholly different person from what I had been imagining. In a word, I sat face to face with that unfathomable mystery of sex-affinity that every man laughs at and mocks another man for believing in, until he has himself felt it drawing him against will, against reason, and sense, and interest, over the brink of destruction yawning before his eyes—drawing ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips

... socialism, and all are essential for American democracy. Above all, the whole American life was controlled by the feeling that individual wealth is the measurement of individual success, and even puritanism had an internal affinity to capitalism. Hence socialism could not mean anything but an imported frill which could not be taken seriously by the commonwealth. In later editions of the book I modified my predictions slightly, and to-day I feel almost inclined ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg

... commissions in our volunteer army on account of their supposed military knowledge or experience, who almost without exception proved failures or worse. They were generally domineering, and of a temperament not suited to command the American volunteer soldier. They had, in fact, no affinity with him, and did not gain his confidence. This was not true, however, of General John B. Turchin, the Russian, and ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... for one another with the community of interests developed in a beehive, and intermarried. If from the process of intermarriage the Fays were, on the whole, excluded, the discrimination lay in some obscure instinct for affinity of which no one at the time was able to forecast ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King

... religion from Dr. Arnold, in part through his close friend Arthur Stanley. But if there was ever any tendency in him to combine with the peculiar elements of the Rugby School, it was interrupted in its nascent state, as chemists speak, by the intervention of a still more potent affinity, the personality of Mr. Newman. Mr. Ward had developed in the Oxford Union, and in a wide social circle of the most rising men of the time—including Tait, Cardwell, Lowe, Roundell Palmer—a very unusual dialectical skill and power of argumentative statement: qualities ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church

... physical charms of an individual. Something was needed for the jaded boulevardiers of Paris to leer at while they feebly clapped their hands and piped "Ah, charmante! Ravissante!" It may be that the fine command of Oriental color which is supposed to have affinity in the idioms of music with voluptuousness in all its forms, had something to do with the case, but the whole structure of the piece, superb as it is in its contrasting elements, and theatrically ingenious and effective, points nevertheless to the unfortunate Sanderson. And in the same way its ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... wait for hearts to break out in flames to know that they are full of combustibles and that a spark has got among them. I don't pretend to say or know what it is that brings these two persons together;—and when I say together, I only mean that there is an evident affinity of some kind or other which makes their commonest intercourse strangely significant, as that each seems to understand a look or a word of the other. When the young girl laid her hand on the Little Gentleman's arm,—which ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... which prevailed in the northern regions of Europe was not merely similar to those of Greece and Italy, but almost the same in another dress, with an embroidery of images apparently Asiatic. From all this, if it be satisfactorily proved, we may infer a general union or affinity between the most distinguished inhabitants of the primitive world at the time when they deviated, as they did too early deviate, from the rational adoration of ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller

... little traits as these; they are not mere incidents, to poetry they are the most important thing of all. These are the features which are found just in the same way in the Babylonian story of the flood; and if the Jehovist has a much greater affinity with the Babylonian story than the Priestly Code, that shows it to have preserved more faithfully the international character of those early legends. This appears most plainly in his accounting for the flood by the confounding of the boundaries between spirit and flesh, and the ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... stranger, and stranger he remains to the end of the chapter. We meet another, and ere we part he is a kindred soul. Magnetic attraction is sudden. So with these two, who, by a kind of free-masonry, knew that each had met his affinity. The Watt engine was exhaustively canvassed and its inventor was delighted that the great, sagacious, prudent and practical manufacturer should predict its success as he did. Shortly after this, ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... because they opposed the First World War, when everyone around them was being carried away in the enthusiasm which marked the first days of American participation. If there had been no storm, they might not have discovered their affinity, but as it was, despite the disparity of their interests and backgrounds, they found themselves in agreement on the most fundamental of their values, when all the rest chose to go another way. By standing together they all gained ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin

... crated, to be a companion for her loneliness, as well as Sandhelo, who, by vote of council, was awarded to her because the others would no longer be able to take care of him, and because he had always had more of an affinity for Katherine than for any of the others. It was the fun they had over Eeny-Meeny and Sandhelo that made the parting less difficult. Katherine was the most hilarious of any. Grasping her umbrella by the bottom, she recited a husky poem ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey

... Crinoids or Feather Stars, so abundant in ancient times, are now exclusively confined to the deep sea, and the late explorations have yielded forms of old affinity, the existence of which has hitherto been unsuspected. The general character of the group of star fishes imbedded in the white chalk is almost the same as in the modern Fauna of the deep Atlantic. The sea urchins of the deep sea, while none of them are specifically ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... tended to disturb the faith of Europe, although it should have carried convictions of a very different character. The Crusaders looked upon the Saracens as infidels, whereas the children of the desert bore a much nearer affinity to the sacred corpse that had, for a brief space, consecrated the Holy Sepulchre, than any of the invading host of Europe. The same blood flowed in their veins, and they recognised the divine missions both of Moses and of his great successor. In an age so ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... succeed in time without being directly connected with one another; they should succeed because the physical basis of them is excited in succession. Some of them would be like an air on the piano: the notes follow each other and arrange themselves into melodies, not by any affinity proper to themselves, but because the keys of the instrument are struck in the ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... courtship set down in the will. Believe me, I am very happily married, as I hope you are. The courtship, you will perceive, is neither here nor there. Please bear with me, Lord Deppingham. It's the silly will that brings us together, not an affinity. Our every issue is identical, Lady Deppingham. Doesn't it strike you that we will be very foolish if we stand alone ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... said the dwarf. "I am a rose, but I happened to bloom outside the pale." She laughed gayly, but Maria's eyes upon her were pitiful. "You are also outside the pale in some way," said Miss Blair. "I always know such people when I meet them. There is an affinity between them and myself. The moment I saw you I said to myself: she also is outside the pale, she also has escaped from the garden of life. Well, never mind, child; it is not so very bad outside when one becomes accustomed to it. I am. Perhaps you have not had time; but you will have. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... good-humour for a week or two after, and enjoy a reflected honey-moon. Being without a family, I am flattered with these temporary adoptions into a friend's family; I feel a sort of cousinhood, or uncleship, for the season; I am inducted into degrees of affinity; and, in the participated socialities of the little community, I lay down for a brief while my solitary bachelorship. I carry this humour so far, that I take it unkindly to be left out, even ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... with particular attention, and I begged her to give me leave to ask her of what family of Maynards she was. Her answer confirmed my supposition, and as she told me that she believed she had some remembrance of my face, I soon made her recollect our affinity and former intimacy, though my twenty years abode in Jamaica, the alteration the climate had wrought in me, and time had made in us both, had almost effaced us from each ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott

... which I have described elsewhere is obvious. In particular, apart from the somewhat doubtful date of its celebration, the Alexandrian ceremony is almost identical with the Indian. In both of them the marriage of two divine beings, whose affinity with vegetation seems indicated by the fresh plants with which they are surrounded, is celebrated in effigy, and the effigies are afterwards mourned over and thrown into the water. From the similarity of these customs to each ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... found few people to talk to. He danced a few dances, mostly with young girls in the white frocks of their first season—a species of partner for which, as a rule, he had no affinity at all. But on the whole he passed the time leaning against the wall in a corner, lost in a reverie which was a vague compound of this and that, there and here; of the Manx Road schoolroom, its odours and heats, its pale, uncleanly crowd absorbed ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... broke gloomily over all abolitionists; perhaps upon none did it press more heavily, than upon the small band in Philadelphia. Situated as that city is, upon the very edge of Slavery, and socially bound as it was, by ties of blood or affinity with the slave-holders of the South, to all human foresight it would assuredly be the first theatre of bloodshed in the coming deadly struggle. As Dr. Furness said in his sermon on old John Brown: "Out of the grim cloud that hangs ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still

... direction of these strokes proves that Michelangelo worked equally with both hands, and the way in which they are hatched and crossed upon the marble reminds one of the pen-drawing of a bold draughtsman. The mere surface-handling of the stone has remarkable affinity in linear effect to a pair of the master's pen-designs for a naked man, now in the Louvre. On paper he seems to hew with the pen, on marble to sketch with the chisel. The saint appears literally to be growing out of his stone prison, as though he were alive and enclosed there waiting ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... struggle which has been going on, in England, for nearly two hundred years, between the Whigs and Tories. These names originated in the reign of Charles II., and were terms of reproach. The court party reproached their antagonists with their affinity to the fanatical conventiclers in Scotland, who were known by the name of the Whigs; and the country party pretended to find a resemblance between the courtiers and the Popish banditti of Ireland, to whom the appellation of Tory ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... young as Alice Noah—no relation to the fellow who built the ark—should just take out legal separation papers in New York. How can the modus vivendi suit her better than divorce? Perhaps she wants to cinch her alimony until she finds another affinity. Then Alice for Dakota. It is foolish to cut your financial string when you might just as well dangle, especially until you find something worth ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr

... that one of the prime objects and prime works of the bards, as an organisation, was to preserve a record of a certain class of historical facts is certain. The succession of the kings and of the great princely families was one of these. The tribal system, with the necessity of affinity as a ground of citizenship, demanded such a preservation of pedigrees in every family, and particularly in the kingly houses. One of the chief objects of the triennial feis of Tara was the revision of such records by the general assembly of the bards, under the presidency of the Ard-Ollav ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady

... gratification of ambition and desire; Catherine sought for them sorrow, hardships, the opportunity to offer their lives in exalted sacrifice for the sins of the Church and the world. She craved for them only less passionately than for herself, the crowning grace of martyrdom. Now Fra Raimondo had no affinity whatever for martyrdom. His chance at it came, in the fortunes of those stern times, and was promptly rejected. Urban, perhaps at Catherine's instigation, had despatched him to the King of France, and Raimondo had bidden his spiritual daughter and mother a solemn farewell, surmising doubtless that ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... the barracks, was a common person. She certainly belonged to the same mammiferous division of vertebrata as Mrs. Beaudesart, but there the affinity ended with a jerk. In a word, she was the low-born daughter of a late poverty-stricken Victorian selector. Her father, after twelve years' manful struggle with a bad selection, had hanged himself in the stable; whereupon the storekeeper ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... the Cornish names hold an affinity with the Welsh, so is their language deduced from the same source, and differeth onely in the dialect. But the Cornish is more easie to bee pronounced, and not so vnpleasing in sound, with throat ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew



Words linked to "Affinity" :   attractive force, attraction, attractiveness, anthropology, force, sympathy, biological science, relationship, immunology, consanguinity, steprelationship



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