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noun
Alpha  n.  The first letter in the Greek alphabet, answering to A, and hence used to denote the beginning. "In am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last." Note: Formerly used also denote the chief; as, Plato was the alpha of the wits. Note: In cataloguing stars, the brightest star of a constellation in designated by Alpha.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Alpha" Quotes from Famous Books



... includes the two-letter codes maintained by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in the ISO 3166 Alpha-2 list and used by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to establish country-coded ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... I went down in a shuttleship, leaving the stellatomic orbited pole-to-pole two thousand miles above Alpha Centauri's second planet. While we took an atmosphere-brushing approach which wouldn't burn off the shuttle's skin, we went as swiftly ...
— Lost in the Future • John Victor Peterson

... surrounded by open seas during the summer, but more than doubles in size during the winter and extends to the encircling land masses; the ocean floor is about 50% continental shelf (highest percentage of any ocean) with the remainder a central basin interrupted by three submarine ridges (Alpha Cordillera, Nansen Cordillera, and Lomonsov Ridge); maximum depth is 4,665 meters in the ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... by our fellows to be one of us," said the spokesman. "We want you to become an Alpha Beta Pi. It is a grand fraternity with chapters in the best schools in the country. Let ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson

... call it the Alpha and Omega Club, to shadow forth its all-embracing international character; it's just a boozing institution, where you run to seed. They come in here, and say the south wind makes them thirsty. Red and Blue Club would be a more appropriate ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... said the Doctor. 'Oh! Come in, Toots; come in. Mr Dombey, Sir.' Toots bowed. 'Quite a coincidence!' said Doctor Blimber. 'Here we have the beginning and the end. Alpha and Omega Our head boy, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... handsomer since his last visit at home, in her eyes at least; and who is now entertaining himself by teaching his pet, Emma, (a little girl of four,) to repeat the Greek alphabet, and whose funny pronunciation of Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, &c., is received with peals of laughter by the ...
— Arthur Hamilton, and His Dog • Anonymous

... had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged—that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my heart's wishes broke involuntarily from my lips ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte

... breathing mark) Iota, omicron, upsilon, (soft breathing mark) omicron, alpha, iota, ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... ALLEN. Westward Expansion: A History of the American Frontier, Macmillan, New York, 1949. This Alpha to Omega treatise concludes with a seventy-five-page, double-column, fine-print bibliography which not only lists but comments upon most books and articles of any consequence that have been published ...
— Guide to Life and Literature of the Southwest • J. Frank Dobie

... sit right down here, Jerry, and let us have the whole yarn from Alpha to Omega. What you haven't been through since you left us yesterday morning isn't worth mentioning, to judge from the hints you let fall. A deer, four wild dogs, lost in the big timber, storm bound, rescuing our most bitter enemy; and now helping to land an escaped lunatic—say, ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen

... pierced Him." The Jew is specifically designated: the coming has special significance for the Jewish nation. And all the people of the earth shall penitently mourn as they see Him. And then like an endorsing signature from the One of whom he is writing comes the sentence: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God, who is and who was, and who ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon

... as possible its legislative enforcement, with greater earnestness; but he made important reservations. Not thinking drunkenness to be a vice inborn, or incident to the poor more than to other people, he never would agree that the existence of a gin-shop was the alpha and omega of it. Believing it to be, the "national horror," he also believed that many operative causes had to do with having made it so; and his objection to the temperance agitation was that these were left out of account altogether. He thought the gin-shop ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... prep", Pauline was able to make freshman with only three conditions. In the first week she was initiated into Olivia's fraternity, the Kappa Alpha Kappa, joined the woman's literary and debating society, and was fascinated and absorbed by crowding new events, associations, occupations, thoughts. In spite of herself her old-time high spirits came flooding back. She caught herself humming—and checked herself reproachfully. She caught ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... Alpha and Omega, sadness and mirth, The springing music, and its wasting breath— The fairest things in life are Death and Birth, And of these two the fairer thing is Death. Mystical twins of Time inseparable, The younger hath the holier array, And hath ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson

... me who were the writers in the Lyra Apostolica who assumed the letters [alpha], [beta], ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 231, April 1, 1854 • Various

... Sunday.... I know next to nothing about what is going on in the world. But George writes that he feels decidedly pleased with the look of things. He has been carrying on like all possessed since I left, having company to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and finally went and had Chi Alpha ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... all became nurses at Mrs. Warburton's, Hoxton, whither, I imagine, Mary Lamb had often retired. Mrs. Parsons, one of the sisters, became Mary Lamb's nurse when, some time after Lamb's death, she moved to 41 Alpha Road, Mrs. Parsons' house. The late John Hollingshead, great-nephew of these ladies, says in his interesting book, My Lifetime, that their father was rector ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... mine eyes the remedy or late Or early, at her pleasure; for they were The gates, at which she enter'd, and did light Her never dying fire. My wishes here Are centered; in this palace is the weal, That Alpha and Omega, is to all The lessons love can read me." Yet again The voice which had dispers'd my fear, when daz'd With that excess, to converse urg'd, and spake: "Behooves thee sift more narrowly thy terms, And say, who level'd at this scope thy bow." "Philosophy," ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... about thee and me. "I know My sheep." We do not take Him by surprise. He does not come in late, and find the performance half over! He is in at our beginnings, when grave issues are being born. "I am Alpha." ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett

... called Divine Thought. Thought or spirit is with him the ultimate fact of existence; the one thing about which it is vain to theorize, and which we can never get behind. His gospel would begin, "In the beginning was the Thought;" and since he can only conceive this as self-conscious, his "Alpha and Omega" is a Divine intelligence from which all the ideas of the human intellect are derived, and which stamps them as true. These religious conceptions are the meeting-ground of the dramatic and the metaphysical activity of his poetic genius. The two ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... by Nu Deltas. The president of the chapter, Merle Douglas, had said to Hugh in passing, "We've got our eye on you, Carver," and that was all that had been said. Carl did not have even that much consolation. But he wasn't so much interested in Nu Delta as Hugh was; Kappa Zeta or Alpha Sigma would do as well. Both of these fraternities were making violent efforts to get Hugh, but they were paying only polite ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks

... once defined a heretic as "celui qui a une opinion" ([Greek: airesis]). A somewhat similar attitude was at one time adopted to those who were inclined to doubt whether a knowledge of Latin and Greek could be considered the Alpha and Omega of a sound education. The calm judgment of that great humanist, Professor Jebb, led him to the conclusion that the claims of the humanities have been at times defended by pleas which were exaggerated and paradoxical—using this latter ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... best and wisest of your sons. Such a school for moral training has never been devised as one of the floating colleges that carry guns. The youngest midshipman acquires habits of command, the oldest captain practises the ennobling virtue of obedience; and these, we take it, form the alpha and omega of man's useful existence. Power gives self-respect, responsibility gives caution, and subjection gives humility. With all these united, as they are in every rank in the service, the character has little room left for improvement; tenderness and generosity, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... that propyl and isobutyl alcohols with camphor were active solvents, and the ketones, palmitone, and stearone in alcohol solution, also alpha- and beta-naphthol, with alcohol and anthraquinone (diphenylene diketone) in alcoholic solution, and also iso-valeric aldehyde and its derivatives, ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford

... have? A million years quotha! nay, not so much. It depends on the speed and the direction taken. If they were able to cover, say, the distance from Liverpool to New York in a tenth of a second, they would get to Alpha in the constellation Centaur, perhaps the nearest of the fixed stars, in twenty or thirty years—a mere bagatelle. But why should we stop there?" went on Gazen. "Why should we not build large vessels for the navigation of the ether—artificial planets in fact—and ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro

... origin of this distinction between the two symbolic figures, I was told by a young Buddhist scholar that the male figure in such representations is supposed to be pronouncing the sound 'A,' and the figure with closed lips the sound of nasal 'N '- corresponding to the Alpha and Omega of the Greek alphabet, and also emblematic of the Beginning and the End. In the Lotos of the Good Law, Buddha so reveals himself, as the cosmic Alpha and Omega, and the Father of the World,—like ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... a speech which I made shortly after taking office I used the phrase "killing Home Rule with kindness." This phrase has been repeatedly quoted since, as if it had been a formal declaration on the part of the incoming Irish Government that to "kill Home Rule" was the Alpha and the Omega of their policy. What I really said was that we intended to promote measures having for their object an increase in the material prosperity of the country; that if we could thereby kill Home Rule with kindness, ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... This Alpha and Omega of all the commandments in the editorial creed some editors learn by sorrowful experience. Bok was, again, fortunate in learning it under the most friendly auspices. He continued to work without ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... (Alpha and Beta) of the Dipper point nearly to Polaris, at a distance equal to five times the space that separates these two stars of the ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts

... from above through the Divine Word, the Christ, whom we know outwardly as the historical Person of the Gospel, and whom we know inwardly as the Revealer of Light and Love, the Witness in us against sin, the Voice of the Father to our hearts, calling us home, the Goal of our spiritual quest, the Alpha and the Omega of all religious truth and all spiritual experience. The Way to God, he says, is Christ inwardly and spiritually known.[37] But however audible the inner Word may be; however vivid the illumination; however drawing ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... will judge every one of us for every sinful thought, and dreams are thoughts. Christ has said: Give me your heart, my son! Go to Him! Pray, pray, pray! Whatsoever is chaste, whatsoever is pure, whatsoever is lovely—that is He. The alpha and the omega, life and happiness. Chasten the flesh and be strong in prayer. Go in the name of the Lord and sin ...
— Married • August Strindberg

... occasion had to go to London and brought back for me a pair of 12-inch globes. They were invaluable to me. The first stars which I learnt from the celestial globe were alpha Lyrae, alpha Aquilae, alpha Cygni: and to this time I involuntarily regard these stars as the birth-stars of my astronomical knowledge. Having somewhere seen a description of a Gunter's quadrant, I perceived that I could construct one by means of the ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... dissenting voice at every one of these meetings: "We hereby reaffirm the resolve of the great Ulster Convention of 1892: 'We will not have Home Rule.'" These words became so familiar that the laconic phrase "We won't have it," was on everybody's lips as the Alpha and Omega of Ulster's attitude, and was sometimes heard with unexpected abruptness in no very precise context. A ticket-collector, when clipping the tickets of the party who were starting from Belfast in a saloon for Enniskillen, made no remark and no sign of recognition till ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill

... its looks and behavior. None of your "half-calf" economies in that volume, sir! And see how it lies open anywhere! There is n't a book in my library that has such a generous way of laying its treasures before you. From Alpha to Omega, calm, assured rest at any page that your choice or accident may light on. No lifting of a rebellious leaf like an upstart servant that does not know his place and can never be taught manners, but ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... Shropshire Hero, Yorkshire Hero, Duke of Albany, Telephone, Telegraph, Champion of England, Forty Fold, Long Island Mammoth, Large White Marrowfat, Black-Eyed Marrowfat, Canada Field, Mammoth Podded Sugar, Melting Sugar, Dwarf Gray-Seeded Sugar, Tall Gray-Seeded Sugar, Laxton's Alpha Beans.—Early Dwarf Prolific Black Wax or Butter, Early Dwarf, Challenge Black Wax or Butter, Early Pencil Pod Black Wax, Early Dwarf Improved Golden Wax, Early Dwarf Black-Eyed Wax, Early Dwarf Golden-Eyed Wax, Early Dwarf Red Flageolet Wax, Early Dwarf Refugee Wax, Early Dwarf Wardwell's ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis

... growths and will not grow in our soil. We all start on the old basis and try to improve the old nature, but that is not God's way. His way is to get self out of the way entirely, and let Him create anew out of nothing, so that all shall be of Him; and we must find Jesus the Alpha and Omega. ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson

... of my unpublished MSS. of any size or consequence is perhaps my translation of Book Alpha of the Iliad, quite literal and in its original metre of hexameters: hitherto I have failed to find a publisher kind enough to lose by it; for there are already at least twelve English versions of Homer unread, perhaps unreadable. Still, some day I don't despair to gain an ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... [Greek: Alpha-Omega] Samueli Johnson Grammatico et Critico Scriptorum Anglicorum litterate perito Poetae luminibus sententiarum Et ponderibus verborum admirabili Magistro virtutis gravissimo Homini optimo et singularis exempli. Qui vixit ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... then of Montreal, discovered that the radiation from uranium, thorium and radium was complex. (Rutherford, "Radio-activity" (2nd edition), Cambridge, 1905.) Three types of rays were soon distinguished. The first, named by Rutherford alpha-rays, are absorbed by thin metal foil or a few centimetres of air. When examined by measurements of the deflections caused by magnetic and electric fields, the alpha-rays are found to behave as would positively ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... such order on both sides, and the four Cardinal Virtues are towards the west or exterior; the three Theological Virtues toward the east or interior of the apse. On the stall forming the eighth on the south side, there is the monogram of the Alpha and Omega. On the panels of the stalls, "the leading idea sought to be maintained was the representation in sequence of the various emblems of Christ and the Christian life, as drawn from the cornu copiae of Nature, in the fruits and flowers of the vegetable world, that unfallen portion ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story

... blowing the fire, nor his ways of eating; his habits, morals, and opinions will vividly illustrate the history of the valley. This renegade serves to show the utility of democracy; he is at once its theory and its practice, its alpha and its omega, in short, ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... velocity we can give a rifle-ball is 2000 feet a second, the next second it is only 1500 feet, and soon it comes to rest. We cannot compact force enough behind a bit of lead to keep it flying. But light flies unweariedly and without diminution of speed. When it has come from the sun in eight minutes, Alpha Centauri in three years, Polaris in forty-five years, other stars in one thousand, its wings are in nowise fatigued, nor is the rapidity of its flight slackened in ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren

... are identical with the beta rays of the atom and consist of a stream of negatively charged particles moving at the velocity of light—186,000 miles a second. These rays, in theory, have the power to combine with the positively charged alpha rays of the atom and drag them from their electrons, causing them to discharge their full quanta of energy at once, in the form of complete disintegration—and it was this theory the professor had ...
— Spawn of the Comet • Harold Thompson Rich

... but independent themes and translation from English into German—which would be distinctly harmful in elementary work—are now valuable exercises in the study of German style. It would be wholly wrong, however, to make linguistic drill the Alpha and Omega of this part of the college course. The preparatory years should have laid a sound basis, which during the college work proper should not be allowed to disintegrate, but the fact should not be lost sight of that the cultural ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... the example, since followed by the Salvation Army, of preaching in its streets, and now lies buried under one of its churches with almost the honors of sainthood. William Lloyd Garrison was born in Newbury. The town must be regarded as the Alpha and Omega of anti-slavery agitation, beginning with its abolition deacon and ending with Garrison. Puritanism, here as elsewhere, had a flavor of radicalism; it had its humorous side, and its ministers did ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... found, she was careful of the prize, keeping it in silk and cotton- wool. Yet, woe be to that man or woman who relied on her one inch beyond the point where it was her interest to be trustworthy: interest was the master-key of Madame's nature—the mainspring of her motives— the alpha and omega of her life. I have seen her feelings appealed to, and I have smiled in half-pity, half-scorn at the appellants. None ever gained her ear through that channel, or swayed her purpose by that means. On the contrary, to attempt ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... at alpha (Betelgeuse), the great topaz star on Orion's right shoulder, and admired the splendor of its color, we may turn the four-inch upon the star Sigma 795, frequently referred to by its number as "52 Orionis." It consists of one star of ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss

... radioactive substances, such as uranium, spontaneously emit negatively charged particles of extremely small mass (electrons), and also positively charged particles of much greater mass, known as alpha particles. Rutherford and Geiger actually succeeded in counting the number of alpha particles emitted per second by a known mass of radium, and showed that these ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale

... sparsely populated country for nearly the whole distance. We were able too, without indiscretion, to accept the hospitalities of our friends in Halifax, during our brief stay there. But duty called us back to the Confederacy, and passage was engaged for the whole party by the first steamer (the Alpha,) ...
— The Narrative of a Blockade-Runner • John Wilkinson

... continuation of a sporadic journal long kept up, which was, however, merely a mass of disconnected thoughts, flashes of perception, remarks on personal events, and endless reflections on the unrevealed Alpha and Omega of life—began to be filled with other matter: chapter after chapter containing nothing but accounts of and speculations concerning two beings as far apart as the poles of the earth, and bearing no such similarity: the history and surmised character of ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... said: "Before Abraham was, I am"; and again, "I am with you always, unto the end of the world"; using the eternal present for past and future alike. With the same purpose, the Master speaks of himself as "the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston

... allowance of dry bread, having only taken fourteen days provisions with us from Baxter's range, which was nearly all expended, whilst we were yet at least two days journey from Port Lincoln. At night I observed the latitude of our camp, by alpha Aquilae 34 degrees 12 minutes 52 seconds S. by beta Leonis 34 degrees 12 minutes 35 seconds S. and assumed the mean of the two, or 34 degrees 12 minutes 43 seconds as ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... million years is not much of a span of time in geologic reckoning, yet a million years ago the earth was farther from its present place in space than any of the stars with a measurable parallax are now. It was more than seven times as far as Sirius, nearly fourteen times as far as Alpha Centauri, three times as far as Vega, and twice as far as Arcturus. But some geologists demand two hundred, three hundred, even one thousand million years to enable them to account for the evolutionary development of the earth and its inhabitants. In a thousand ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

... thou, oh God, who givest life to all, who dost animate all, who art the principle of all. Thou art Alpha and Omega; thou art the potent arm which has caused the worlds to rise, which has re-united the scattered forces of matter, which has made order out ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... had more pride. What right have we to the word "civilised" till we give mothers and children a proper chance? This is but the Alpha of decency, the first step of progress. We are beginning to realise that; but, even now, to make a full effort and make it at once—we have ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... and made the beds, how they named the tents Alpha and Omega, how eagerly they awaited Gladys's coming, how Sahwah was placed on the tower ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey

... reflected, a message from Earth was an event. Radio had, indeed, gone between Sol and Alpha Centauri, but that was with very special equipment. To pinpoint a handful of ships, moving at half the speed of light, and to do it so well that the comparatively small receiver Mardikian had erected would pick up the beam—Yes, the ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson

... same night a Comet was seen. This Comet is described by another authority as a "monstrous" one and as being in Sagittarius on Feb. 5. The Chinese date it for Feb. 17, and place it near the stars [Greek: alpha] and [Greek: gamma] Tauri. ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers

... Alpha of her public life; the market place of Rouen its Omega! Riding forth in the bitter cold of that February morning, 1429, with but meager escort and along three hundred miles of brigand-infested roads and ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy

... first, of course," Neel told him. "Chances are that that will be enough to straighten things out. Since the completion last year of the refining equations of Debir's Postulate, all sigma-110 and alpha-142 ...
— The K-Factor • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)

... would give him a worse designation, but that is a manifest impossibility; for without the assistance of two good presentable members of your Estate, Alpha and Upsilon, he would be a mere nonentity—he it is that has dared to outdo all injuries that I have ever known, expelling me from the nouns and verbs of my inheritance, and hunting me out of my conjunctions and prepositions, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... bondage not on the ground of benevolence, or because their liberation would endanger the public safety, but because they are profitable to their owners, they also believe that the consumers of slave goods contribute to a fund for supporting slavery with all its abominations; that they are the Alpha and the Omega of the business; that the slave-trader, the slave-owner, and the slave-driver, are virtually the agents of the consumer, for by holding out the temptation, he is the original cause, the first mover in the horrid process; that we are imperiously called upon to refuse ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison

... marvels of scientific discovery offer no solace to the huge Majority of the Afflicted, unless we point the lesson that the Soul of Man is destined to live through more than these wonders; and that the millions of planetary systems in the Milky Way are but the ALPHA BETA of the sublime Hereafter which is our natural heritage, if we will but set ourselves earnestly to win it. Moreover, we should not foolishly imagine that we are to lead good lives MERELY for the sake of some suggested reward or wages,—no, —but simply because ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... white light. We also have electric waves, the waves of the alternating current, and shorter still we find the Hertzian waves, which are used in wireless. We have only begun to know of X-rays and the alpha, beta, and gamma rays from them, of radium, radioactivity, and finally of this new force which I have discovered and call 'protodyne,' ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... would show its anatomical knitting and structure. Do you remember how Burke's speech on Conciliation was parsed and sub-headed in the preface to the school-texts? Just so, in I and II and III, A. B. and C, ([alpha]), ([beta]), and ([gamma]), i, ii, and iii, we could articulate the strict and bony logic that vertebrates B——'s talk. Reservations, exceptions, qualifications, parentheses, sub-clauses, and humorous paraphrases swim upon him as he goes, ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... Sickness comes, and they thirst from fever—water quenches their burning desire. Nature overcomes disease, and they long for food to re-invigorate their frame. What get they?—the potato! The child sinks in weakness towards its grave. What holds it betwixt life and death?—the potato. It is the Alpha and Omega of their existence. A blessing granted by Providence to man, but made by man a curse to his fellow-beings. From what causes come the charges made, and made with truth, against the Irish peasant, of "indolence" and "filth in and about their habitations?"—One ...
— Facts for the Kind-Hearted of England! - As to the Wretchedness of the Irish Peasantry, and the Means for their Regeneration • Jasper W. Rogers

... the name of a small space in the heavens, embracing /alpha/ Markab and another star of Pegasus. Its culminating at night-fall was the signal that the labours of husbandry were over for the year, and that building operations should be taken in hand. Great as was the urgency for the building of his new capital, duke ...
— The Shih King • James Legge

... those who {115} keep the words of this book;" and yet this speaker is not distinguished from him who afterwards says (vv. 12, 13), "Lo, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to render to each according as his work is. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end," who, without doubt, is the Lord himself. This may be accounted for by the following considerations. This angel, of whom it is twice asserted that ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis

... general of Asterius, who was called Taurus, which is also the Greek name for a bull. Bochart has an ingenious suggestion, based upon etymological grounds. He thinks that the twofold meaning of the word 'Alpha,' or 'Ilpha,' which, in the Phoenician dialect, meant either a ship or a bull, gave occasion to the fable; and that the Greeks, on reading the annals of the Phoenicians, by mistake, took the word in ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... would be pope, three aspirants having resigned their hoods for the benefit of Christianity. The cardinal, who was a cunning Italian, long bearded, a great sophist, and the life and soul of the Council, guessed, by the feeblest exercise of the faculties of his understanding, the alpha and omega of the adventure. He only had to weigh in his mind one little thought before he knew how to proceed in order to be able to hypothecate his manly vigour. He arrived with the appetite of a hungry monk, and to obtain its satisfaction he was just the man ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac

... hers the spirit of a Bruno? Was she convinced of the intellectual rightness of the stand she had taken? Was hers a steady, enlightened opposition to superstition? or—and a subtler thought—was she mastered by some vaster, profounder superstition, a fetish-worship of which the Alpha and the Omega was ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London

... seen from what follows. In its synthesis 1,000 grammes of picoline were first converted into alphapicoline, 380 grammes being obtained. This was heated with paraldehyde, whereby it was converted into allylpyridine (48 grammes), and this by reduction with sodium yielded alpha-propylpyridine, a body in almost every respect identical with coniine. The more important difference was its optical inactivity, but he succeeded in splitting up a solution of the acid tartrate of the base by means of Penicillium glaucum. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... audience part of the English Opera House. The ruby glow of the old boy's countenance shone like an omen of the merry humour of his mind. "What, out for a spree, boys, or just bailed from the watch-house, which is it? the alpha or omega, for they generally follow one another?" "Then you are in time for the equivoque, Crony," said Echo; "so enlist him, Transit;" and without more ceremony, Crony was marched off, vi et armis, to the Finish, a coffee-house ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... The "Alpha test", used on recruits who could read, consisted of eight pages of questions, each page presenting a different type of problem for solution. On the first page were rows of circles, squares, etc., to which certain things were to be done in accordance with spoken commands. The subject ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... Alpha of the Plough says in the London Star: "I was walking with a friend along the Spaniards-road the other evening talking on the inexhaustible theme of these days, when he asked, 'What is the biggest thing that has happened to this country ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... stars known are a double star of the sixth magnitude, called 61 Cygni, and one of the seventh magnitude, called Groombridge 1830. The velocity of the latter is 200 miles a second. The nearest known stars are 61 Cygni and [alpha] Centauri. The distance of these from us is about 400,000 times the distance of the sun. Their parallax is accordingly half a second of arc. Sirius is more than a million times further from us than our sun is, and twenty times as big; many of the brightest stars ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge

... Elysees, as if guarding its souvenirs. The pick of the mason has brought down the proud gateway which its imperial builder fondly imagined was to last for ages. The Tuileries preceded it into oblivion. The Alpha and Omega of that gorgeous pageant of the fifties vanished ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... nine times, and the first chapters of his history eighteen times. Of one of his works Montesquieu said to a friend: "You will read it in a few hours, but I assure you it has cost me so much labor that it has whitened my hair." He had made it his study by day and his dream by night, the alpha and omega of his aims and objects. "He who does not write as well as he can on every occasion," said George Ripley, "will soon form the habit of not writing well ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... is my alpha and omega in the art of education, I repeat now what I said at the beginning of this book and half way through it. Try to leave the child in peace; interfere directly as seldom as possible; keep away ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key

... the location of the Jovian fleet, their speed and course, and the course which he should fly to reach the Earth ahead of them. He noted down the directions and set the cross hairs of his forward observer on Alpha Centauri. His hand sought the controlling lever and the ship rapidly gathered momentum for the trip ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek

... voyaging from sunrise, needs any appetizer when his shadow marks noon. We halted, fired up, and lunched vigorously on toasted pork and trimmings. As pork must be the Omega in forest-fare, it is well to make it the Alpha. Fate thus becomes choice. Citizens uneducated to forest-life with much pains transport into the woods sealed cans of what they deem will dainties be, and scoff at woodsmen frizzling slices of pork on a pointed stick. But Experience ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various

... him to escape unscathed. This same evening, while halting for the night at Lodge Pole Station, the opportunity of observing the awe-inspiring aspect of a great thunder-storm on the plains presents itself. With absolutely nothing to obstruct the. vision the Alpha and Omega of the whole spectacle are plainly observable. The gradual mustering of the forces is near the Rockies to the westward, then the skirmish-line of fleecy cloudlets comes rolling and tumbling in advance, bringing a current of air that causes ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... you see, and the highest abilities are of no avail so long as Art and Life are not one and the same—so long as Art is not the Alpha and Omega of existence, but merely an amusement or ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... ... but not to Alpha Centauri, not much to our surprise." James gulped twice; then went on, speaking almost jauntily now that the attempt had been made and had failed. "So now it's up to you, Clee, as Director of Project ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... have sprawled around a little fire and are burning their boot-leather thereat. The colonel, his adjutant, and the doctor are curled up under a tent-fly that serves by day as a wrap for the rations and cooking-kit they carry on pack-mule. Two company commanders,—the Alpha and Omega of the ten, as Major Sloat dubbed them,—the senior and junior in rank, Chester and Armitage by name, have rolled themselves in their blankets under another tent-fly and are chatting in low tones before ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King

... the door of the O.K. Society, where he found congenial intellectual companionship with the editors from the classes above and below him; and when Dr. Edward Everett Hale wished to revive and perpetuate the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity, Roosevelt was one of the half-dozen men from the Class ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... the cape or eastern point of Cuba he gave it the name Alpha and Omega, which means beginning and end, for he believed that this cape was the end of the mainland in the Orient." Las Casas, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various

... travels faster with the current of running water than against it. Science has perfected a thermal instrument by which it can detect the heat of a lighted candle six miles away, and the warmth of the human face several miles distant. It has devised a method by which it can count the particles in the alpha rays of radium that move at a velocity of twenty thousand kilometers a second, and a method by which, through the use of a screen of zinc-sulphide, it can see the flashes produced by the alpha atoms when they strike this screen. It weighs and counts and calculates the motions of particles of matter ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... accompanied us from Regent's lake that they call those ponds of a river which never dry up quawy, a word which proved to be of use to us in descending the Lachlan. At this camp I found, by a careful observation of alpha and beta Centauri, that the magnetic variation was 8 degrees 56 minutes 15 ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... heard of you, Mr. Barker," said Jones, in the most favorable manner. "We belong to the senior class, and at our last meeting we elected you unanimously a member of the Alpha Zeta Society." ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger

... but find it, must exist a diary of one of these ancient astronomers—and from it I quote in anticipation. "Early this night to my roof," it runs, "the heavens being bare of clouds (coelo aperto). Set myself to measure the elevation of Sagittarius Alpha with my new astrolabe sent me by my friend and master, Hafiz, from out Arabia. Did this night compute the equation a(Dx/2T)f(a, b c T3). Thus did I prove the variations of the ellipse and show Hassan Sabah to be the mule he is. Then rested, pacing ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... It is also why a certain pirate landed his ship on the desert out there three days ago. Callisto Queen, the ship's name is, though it has borne a dozen others. Cargo—Jovian silks and dyestuffs from the moons of Mars, narco-vin from the system of Alpha Centauri." ...
— Bride of the Dark One • Florence Verbell Brown

... their origin and their up-bringing. I venture to asset that, although it is possible to read individual volumes of the Rougon-Macquart series while neglecting others, nobody can really understand any one of these books unless he makes himself acquainted with the alpha and the omega of the edifice, that is, "The Fortune of ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola

... comprise the group of the first magnitude, which include all the brightest stars visible, as Sirius, Canopus, Alpha, Arcturus, Rigel, and Capella. ...
— Aether and Gravitation • William George Hooper

... circular web. Now, the cause of all this preparation was that on the seventh of July the Herd-boy star and the Spinning Maiden star cross the Milky Way to meet each other. These are the stars which we call Capricornus and Alpha Lyra. These stars that shine and glitter so far up in the zenith, are the boy with an ox and the girl with a shuttle, about whom the story ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis

... independent of France in 1960 as the Mali Federation. When Senegal withdrew after only a few months, what formerly made up the Sudanese Republic was renamed Mali. Rule by dictatorship was brought to a close in 1991 by a coup that ushered in democratic government. President Alpha KONARE won Mali's first democratic presidential election in 1992 and was reelected in 1997. In keeping with Mali's two-term constitutional limit, KONARE stepped down in 2002 and was succeeded by ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... and is antithetical to Ticci, he who begins. These two terms express the eternity of divinity; they convey the same idea of mastery over time and the things of time, as do those words heard by the Evangelist in his vision in the isle called Patmos, "I am Alpha and Omega; I am the ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton

... There is not a word mispelled either in your journal or letter, which cannot be said of a single page you ever before wrote. The fable is quite classical, and, if not very much corrected by Mr. Leshlie, is truly a surprising performance, and written most beautifully. But what has become of poor Alpha Beta? Discouraged? That is impossible. Laid aside for the present? That, indeed, is possible, but by no means probable. Shall I guess again? Yes; you mean to surprise me with some astonishing progress. And yet, to confess the truth, your lessons ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... proceeded to Peak Downs Station, which my brother-in-law, Edmund Casey, was then managing for the Messrs. Fairbairn. I found he had broken in to harness for me two Arab ponies which would trot their 12 miles an hour. I trucked these and a buggy I had purchased in Sydney to Alpha, the then terminus of the Central railway line, where my other horses—brought from Winton—met me. Good rains had fallen in July, thus breaking up the long drought which had commenced three years before. I had plenty of grass and water all the way to Winton. I camped a night at Mount Cornish, ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... could send Man to the stars on a string of helium nuclei. Oh, he was smart. Thought of everything. Auxiliary jets to kick off the negative charge, bigger mercury vapor banks—a fine straight thrust of positive Alpha particles." He hiccuped, put his face ...
— Teething Ring • James Causey

... then correct yourself. It is human to err, but it is stupidity to persist in error and refuse to be enlightened. If you cannot see for yourself, common sense demands that you get another to see for you. You are not supposed to know the alpha and omega of theological science, but you are bound to possess a satisfactory knowledge in order that your faith ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton

... college life fifty and sixty years ago. The collegian danced and drove and flirted and dined and sang the night away. Robert Tomes echoed the strain in his tale of college life a little later, under stricter social and ecclesiastical conditions. There was a more serious vein also. In 1827 the Kappa Alpha Society was the first of the younger brood of the Greek alphabet—descendants of the Phi Beta Kappa of 1781—and in 1832 Father Eells, as he is affectionately called, founded Alpha Delta Phi, a brotherhood based upon other aims and sympathies ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis

... religious crank, the clergy an Atheist, and even the Mugwumps regard me with suspicion. But let me tell you right here that whatever I may or may not be, I am an American from the ground up—from Alpha to Omega, world-without- end. I may be a man without a party and without a creed; but so long as Old Glory blazes in God's blue firmament I will never be a man ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... have managed to get an extraordinary atmosphere," he continued, bent on doing himself an exact justice. But I should say, if you pressed me, that it represents to me the deification of beauty to the exclusion of all else. You have made beauty the Alpha ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... blessing of God, was so likely to bring about the birth of grace in others. The good old man bestowed long and repeated counsels upon his neophyte. The course of study which he prescribed was very simple. The Bible was the Alpha and the Omega—it was the essential whole. It would be well to read other books if they could be had—Clarke and Wesley were, of course, spoken of—but they could be done without. The word of God was in the one volume, and it needed no help from commentators to win its way and ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... according to Geoffrey a Trojan hero and eponymous founder of the British race. Standing at the beginning of British (and English) history, his name came to be applied to the whole of it, just as the first two Greek letters, alpha and beta, have given the name to the alphabet.] Laghamon was a humble parish priest in Worcestershire, and his thirty-two thousand half-lines, in which he imperfectly follows the Anglo-Saxon alliterative ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... and towards which they converge again on the opposite side of the world. So mercy is the strong axletree, the northern pole and the southern, on which the whole world of the divine perfections revolves and moves. The first and last, the Alpha and Omega of God, beginning and crowning and summing up all His being and His work, is His ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... that which thou shouldst seek only in the centre of all things? As the rivers go to the ocean, so flow all the streams of human life to the one great central ocean of humanity—PARIS! It is there the Alpha and the Omega—there the mighty heart through which the blood of all the body must be pumped, and is pumping always," I say to myself, unconsciously rising to the sublimity of my great countryman, Hugo, in ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... nuclear physicist," Melroy disclaimed, "but all that alpha stuff looks like a big chunk of Pu-239 left inside. ...
— Day of the Moron • Henry Beam Piper

... saw it, as usual. Judge of my surprise to find, on the sixteenth of December, that it had suddenly become a star of the first magnitude, and almost equal to Rigel. It continued to increase. Rigel is now not to be compared with it. It exceeds Arcturus, and is very near equal to Alpha Centauri, being, at the moment I write, the fourth star in the heavens, in the order of brightness."[275] It has since passed through several variations of luster. Humboldt gives a catalogue of twenty-four of such stars whose variations have ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... principle, or pursue the analogy. Geoffroy St. Hilaire has taken one course. I take the other. If, in the investigation of this question, it be legitimate to employ analogy in one part, it must be legitimate to employ it in like respects in another.... Analogy was Paley's alpha, it must be made also his omega."[279] In pursuing this course, he makes large concessions, such as might seem at first sight to involve the very principles on which the Theistic proof depends. "That design implies a designer, I am disposed to allow; ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... had a fine view of Alpha Lyrae, whose disk, through our captain's spy-glass, subtends an angle of half a degree, looking very much as our sun does to the naked eye on a misty day. Alpha Lyrae, although so very much larger than our sun, by the by, resembles ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... ([alpha].) Oxide of Bismuth (Bi^{2}O^{3}).—This oxide is a light yellow powder, fusible at a red heat, insoluble in caustic potash and ammonia. It is the base of the salts of bismuth. Its hydrate is white, ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous

... word surrounded by a cedilla such as this signifies that the word is bolded in the text. A word surrounded by underscores like this signifies the word is italics in the text. Greek letters are translated into English and are in brackets, e.g. [alpha]. ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons

... should like it of all things. It would remove from the anticipated pleasures of this day the enormous Alpha privative which has so far ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton

... along the coast of Cuba, the admiral at length reached the eastmost point of that island, to which he gave the name of Cape Alpha; and on Wednesday the fifth December he struck across the channel between Cuba and Hispaniola, which islands are sixteen leagues asunder; but owing to contrary currents, was unable to reach the coast of Hispaniola until the next day, when he entered a harbour which he named Port St Nicholas, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr

... whose shoes Not Cromwell's self was worthy to unloose. Repeat his name in thunder to the skies! Ye hills fall prostrate, and ye vales arise! Through faction's wilderness prepare the way! Prepare, ye listening senates, to obey! The idol of the mob, behold him stand, The Alpha and Omega of the land! Methinks I hear the bellowing demagogue 400 Dumb-sounding declamations disembogue, Expressions of immeasurable length, Where pompous jargon fills the place of strength; Where fulminating, rumbling eloquence, With loud ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]

... endure His Human Passion, since together they form the shadow of the Word made Flesh. They are the singing echo in time of God's speechless patience, as we are destined to be if we conquer our wills. But patience is suffering, and Alpha must submit to the yoke of Omega. Since God is the Alpha and Omega he caused the Incarnation and Passion. THE IDEAL OF HUMAN LIFE IS THE PASSIONATE REDEMPTION OF THE WILL. This is life's darkest secret, unless we live in the Eucharist. We are to be the silent reflections ...
— The Forgotten Threshold • Arthur Middleton

... staff three years later and remained until 1929, when he took the federal position he held until his death. He was a veteran of World War I, having served as an infantry second lieutenant. He was a member of Alpha Zeta Sigma Xi, and Gamma Sigma Delta honor societies and was a life-long member of the Evangelical church, which has since merged with ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various



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