"Attribute" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... formally resolving to help the police instead of hindering them; of the prison ward in Bellevue Hospital standing empty for three days at a time, an astonishing and unprecedented thing, which the warden could only attribute to the "prompt closing of the saloon at one A.M."; and of the police force recovering its lost self-respect,—we had found out more and greater things than whether the excise law was a good or a bad law. We understood what Roosevelt meant when he insisted upon the "primary ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... blunders, may have produced the interpolation of this voyage, garbled out of the letters of Vespucci and the accounts of other voyagers. This is merely suggested as a possible mode of accounting for what appears so decidedly to be a fabrication, yet which we are loath to attribute to a man of the good sense, the character, and the reputed merit ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... also he is of flexile form; for if he were hard and without flexure he could not enfold all things, or wind his way into and out of every soul of man undiscovered. And a proof of his flexibility and symmetry of form is his grace, which is universally admitted to be in an especial manner the attribute of Love; ungrace and love are always at war with one another. The fairness of his complexion is revealed by his habitation among the flowers; for he dwells not amid bloomless or fading beauties, whether of body ...
— Symposium • Plato
... Students of county government attribute many of its defects to the "long ballot." In one county in North Carolina, at a recent election, there were twenty-five different candidates for county offices on each of three party tickets, making seventy-five candidates among whom ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... feet. Fearful stories were narrated of luckless wagon-trains caught in the narrow defiles by sudden mountain storms, and perishing helplessly amid these Alpine rigors. It was surely a legitimate question whether a railroad were possible in the face of such embarrassments; and it is fair to attribute the adverse action of Congress to these considerations, rather than to occult ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... class of readers, and a class which had hitherto been neglected by authors—"the ladies and gentlewomen of England." With the instinct, almost, of a religious reformer, Lyly saw that to succeed he must enlist the ladies on his side. And the experiment was so successful that I am inclined to attribute the pre-eminence of Lyly among other euphuists to this fact alone. "Hatch the egges his friendes had laid" he certainly did, but he fed the chicks upon a patent food of his own invention. Mr Bond suggests that the general attention which the Anatomy secured by its attacks upon women ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... torn with briars. They were likewise required to abstain from any commerce with their women for the like period, this last condition being considered indispensable to their success. A chief who failed to catch a whale has been known to attribute his failure to a breach of chastity on the part of his men. It should be remarked that the conduct thus prescribed as a preparation for whaling is precisely that which in the same tribe of Indians was required of men ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... she smiled wisely to herself. Inwardly she reflected that simplicity of dress was Clyde's long suit. With her hair, complexion, and figure the less fussiness there was to distract the eye the better. And Mrs. Wade was inclined to attribute to the fortunate owner of these things a perfect ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... given modification, &c. For, by a modification of man's essence, we understand every disposition of the said essence, whether such disposition be innate, or whether it be conceived solely under the attribute of thought, or solely under the attribute of extension, or whether, lastly, it be referred simultaneously to both these attributes. By the term desire, then, I here mean all man's endeavours, impulses, appetites, and volitions, which vary according to each man's disposition, and ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... our wishes. The usual reason is merely that wishes are all, to begin with, unconscious, and only become known when they are actively noticed. Usually, from laziness, people do not notice, but accept the theory of human nature which they find current, and attribute to themselves whatever wishes this theory would lead them to expect. We used to be full of virtuous wishes, but since Freud our wishes have become, in the words of the Prophet Jeremiah, "deceitful above all things and desperately wicked." Both ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... fifty dollars—as large a "killing" as he had ever made in any single day, one large enough to elevate him to the rank of prince among the "sure-thing snides." He said nothing about his luck to his family, but let them attribute his unprecedented good humor to the news he brought ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... mere temporal sanctions, the fear of exile, the dungeon, or the gibbet, when conscience no longer enforced the dictates of religious faith. The great auxiliary and support of all human authority is to be found in that most noble attribute of human nature—the sense of duty, which ceases to operate the moment we lose the consciousness of freedom, believing that our thoughts, our actions, ourselves, are but necessary links in an eternal chain ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... the girl's apprenticeship, if the parents complained of her want of proficiency, the pious Sweater would attribute it to idleness or incapacity, and as the people were generally poor he seldom or never had any trouble with them. This was how he fulfilled the unctuous promise made to the confiding parents at the time the girl was handed over to his tender mercy—that ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... appeals to SS. Cyprian, Ambrose, and Gregory of Nazianzus, and then continues: "Such doctors, and so great as these, saying that there is nothing of which we may boast as of our own, which God has not given us; and that our very heart and our thoughts are not in our own power, ... attribute these things to the grace of God, acknowledge them as God's gifts, testify that they come to us from Him and ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... happiness, of joyous spirits, of confidence in my proceedings, possesses me on this, the third day of my stay. I do nut say that it is reasonable to experience this sudden accession, or that everybody is expected to attribute it to the course of treatment so recently commenced. I only say, so it is; and I look for a confirmation of this happy frame of mind, when supported by renewed strength ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... of celestial Virtue, point not the scoffing glance at these, her truant children, as ye pass them by—but pity, and afford them a gleam of cheerful hope: so shall ye merit the protection of Him whose chief attribute is charity and universal benevolence. And ye, lords of the creation! commiserate their misfortunes, which owe their origin to the baseness of the seducer, and the natural depravity of your ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... to my sense, that I cannot refuse the implication which comes along with it: that only theoretically, only as it were by deference to others, did the attribute, in that particular apprehension of it, move him to admiration. I do not, of course, mean anything so inconceivable as that he questioned the loveliness of the "pure in heart"; I mean merely that he questioned the artificial value which has been set upon physical chastity—and that when departure ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... imaginative of us is frankly aware of the fact that a detective is just a common man earning (or pretending to earn) a common living by common and obvious means. Yet in spite of ourselves we are accustomed to attribute superhuman acuteness and a lightning-like rapidity of intellect to this vague and romantic class of fellow-citizens. The ordinary work of a detective, however, requires neither of these qualities. Honesty and obedience are his ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... doors, and English nurse-maids pursuing their laborious avocations. This preponderance of small children at the Villa, is as much its characteristic distinction, as whatever relates to gaiety, or novelty, or scandal, may be considered the peculiar attribute of the Ponte. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... have been a little more deference in his manner to Diana; that was all. As for Bellew, he had not been trained in the diplomatic service for nothing. He possessed to a marked degree the consummate sang-froid that is a natural attribute of aides-de-camp. Nothing could have been more cool than his manner when he joined the group and suggested a game of quoits. The whole world of the ship had its ears cocked to listen to these two, and was watching them acutely—with eyes that gazed at the horizon. If only Diana could ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... make poor will do wait upon I should— We own they're prudent, but who feels they're good? Ye wise ones, hence! ye hurt the social eye! God's image rudely etch'd on base alloy! But come ye who the godlike pleasure know, Heaven's attribute distinguished—to bestow! Whose arms of love would grasp the human race: Come thou who giv'st with all a courtier's grace; Friend of my life, true patron of my rhymes! Prop of my dearest hopes for ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... jôgi is a Hindu ascetic, but like the word faqîr, jôgi is often used for any kind of holy man, as here. Supernatural powers are very commonly ascribed to them, as well as the universal attribute of granting sons. Classically the yôgi is the devotee seeking yoga, the union of the living with the sublime soul. The wonderful cow is the modern fabulously productive cow Kâmdhain, representing the classical ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... to these is an intoxicant in use in southern Mexico and Yucatan, prepared from the bark of a tree called by the Mayas baal-che. The whites speak of the drink as pitarilla. It is quite popular among the natives, and they still attribute to it a sacred character, calling it yax ha, the first water, the primal fluid. They say that it was the first liquid created by God, and when He returned to His heavenly home He left this beverage and its production in charge of the gods of the ...
— Nagualism - A Study in Native American Folk-lore and History • Daniel G. Brinton
... intrinsic and centred at every point. It is never wholly recoverable. To recover it at all, an historian must have a certain detachment and ingenuousness; knowing the dignity and simplicity of his own mind, he must courteously attribute the same dignity and simplicity to others, unless their avowed attitude prevents; this is to be an intelligent critic and to write history like a gentleman. The truth, which all philosophers alike are seeking, is eternal. It lies as ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... JOHANN RIOHERS. In the second volume he attempts to utterly overwhelm, confound, and destroy Newton's Theory of Attraction, by such an argument as the following. "Let any man jump from a height, in descending he feels no attraction to the Earth. How hasty and absurd therefore is it to attribute the movement in question to ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... to the needs of the soldiers, which you attribute to their not having, and the impossibility of providing them with, encomiendas for a long time; and as it concerns the temporary employments which you give them instead of the servants, and even these employments are not sufficient ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various
... the natives here was very remarkable, and as we can hardly attribute the circumstance to an inherent pacific disposition, we must the more appreciate the wonderful address displayed by the political agent in his dealings with the various parties, who in these remote mountains, as ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... have flourished it seems they flourish no more. The production of idols and fetiches continues, but the production of fine art is apparently at an end. The tradition is moribund, a misfortune one is tempted to attribute, along with most that have lately afflicted that unhappy continent, to the whites. To do so, however, would not be altogether just. Such evidence as we possess—and pretty slight it is—goes to show that even in the uninvaded parts of West Central Africa the arts are decadent: wherever the modern ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... obtain. A large percentage of the population, especially in rural areas, derives its living from agricultural activity, often on a subsistence basis. On a per capita basis, real income has stagnated at 1980 levels. Most observers attribute Paraguay's poor economic performance to political uncertainty, corruption, limited progress on structural reform, and deficient infrastructure. The economy rebounded between 2003 and 2007, posting modest growth each year, as growing world demand for commodities combined with high prices ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... side, begun the business by abolishing tithes and all feudal rights without indemnity, and by confiscating all ecclesiastical property; the Jacobin operators continue and complete the job; we have seen by what decrees and with what hostility against collective and individual property, whether they attribute to the State the possession of all corporations whatever, even laic, such as colleges, schools and scientific or literary societies, hospitals and communes, or whether they despoil individuals, indirectly ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... The names of these places were shams, invented to please Frenchmen who could not endure the things of their own country. A French merchant must call his discoveries English to make them fashionable, just as in England the druggists attribute ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... pockets. When he is batting he crams one hand into his pocket between each delivery. As he wears a large batting glove and his trousers are very tight (as I mentioned before) this is a matter of some difficulty. In fact we usually attribute the smallness of his scores to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... holes and corners, dogs run mad Man knows a braver remedy for sorrow— Revenge, the attribute of gods; they stamped it, With their great image, on our natures. Die! Consider well the cause that calls upon thee, And, if thou'rt base enough, die then. Remember Thy Belvidera suffers; Belvidera! Die!—damn first!—What! be decently interred ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy in Five Acts • Thomas Otway
... mine, Our now division duly solemnise. Unlike the strains, and yet the theme is one: The strains unlike, and how unlike their fate! You to the blinding palace-yard shall call The prefect of the singers, and to him, Listening devout, your valedictory verse Deliver; he, his attribute fulfilled, To the island chorus hand your measures on, Wed now with harmony: so them, at last, Night after night, in the open hall of dance, Shall thirty matted men, to the clapped hand, Intone and bray and bark. Unfortunate! Paper and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... using Brahmanism in two very different senses, that we are again playing with words. In the one sense it is stark idolatry, in the other the loftiest spiritual worship. The former asserts the existence of many personal gods, the latter shrinks even from the attribute of personality as too human a conception of the Highest Spirit. The former makes the priest a kind of god on earth, the latter proclaims the priesthood of all men; the former is guided by scriptures which ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... and temples still standing at Veii, wondering why they might not go thither in a body and live in comfort, instead of digging among ashes to rebuild a city simply to give Camillus, of whom they quickly began to be jealous, the honor that had been an attribute of Romulus only. Then the senate appealed to the memories of the olden time; the stories of the sacred places, and especially of the head that was found on the Capitoline Hill, were retold, and by dint of entreaty and expostulation the distressed inhabitants were led to go to work to patch ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... representatives of God and are honored by the exalted title "gods." Compare the similar appellation applied to Moses (Exo. 4:16; 7:1). Jesus Christ possessed divine authorization, not through the word of God transmitted to Him by man, but as an inherent attribute. The inconsistency of calling human judges "gods," and of ascribing blasphemy to the Christ who called Himself the Son of God, would have been apparent to the Jews but for their ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... taken with a large grain of salt, for the sake of the amusement they afford to readers at home. In future, whenever I hear a man state how he broke the back of an antelope at 600 yards, I shall incline to believe a cipher had been added by a slip of the pen, or attribute it to a typographical error, for this is almost an impossible feat in an African forest. It may be done once, but it could never be done twice running. An antelope makes a very small target at 600 yards distance; but, then, all these stories belong by right divine to the chasseur who travels ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... much too modest a young fellow to suppose that this happy change in all his circumstances arose from his own generous and manly disposition: he chose, from some perverseness, to attribute his good fortune to the sole agency and benevolence of little George Osborne, to whom henceforth he vowed such a love and affection as is only felt by children—such an affection, as we read in the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "I attribute a great part of this success in avoiding strikes to the high wages which the best men were able to earn with the differential rates, and to the pleasant feeling fostered by this system; but this is by no means the whole cause. It has for years been the policy of that company ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... any work done so quietly, so well; and I doubt if the history of war can show a bridge of that extent (viz., thirteen hundred and fifty feet) laid so noiselessly and well, in so short a time. I attribute it to the genius and intelligence of General William F. Smith. The steamer Dunbar arrived up in the course of the morning, and relieved Ewing's division of the labor of rowing across; but by noon the pontoon-bridge was done, and my three divisions were ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... he was afraid of anything except possible damage to her reputation. She had, lately, considered this question on several occasions. Being no coward, as far as mere fear for her life was concerned, she found it difficult to attribute such fear to him. Indeed, one of the traits in her which he found inexplicable and which he disliked was a curious fearlessness of death—not uncommon among women who, all their lives, have ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... torrentuous galopade, that I am compelled to seize occasion by the forelock; for each moment has its imperious employ. Do not then accuse me of negligence: if my correspondence has not always that regularity which I would fain give it, attribute the fault solely to the whirlwind in which I live, and which carries me hither ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... To attribute manual dexterity and a calculating mind to a mere crab, is, no doubt, an insult to the intelligence of those who "view all culogium on the brute creation with a very considerable degree of suspicion and who look upon every compliment ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... gunpowder, pottery and other articles in common use. This knowledge which he claimed to possess was tested by actual demonstration during the trial for his life. His superior skill in planning was universally admitted by his fellow workmen. He did not, however, attribute this superior influence to sorcery, conjuration or such like agencies, for he had the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... through all these negotiations has been such as I really cannot describe. He told me yesterday, with tears in his eyes, that he did not know what the Board would do without me. I attribute his feeling partly to Robert Grant's absence; not that Robert ever did me ill offices with him far from it; but Grant's is a mind that cannot stand alone. It is begging your pardon for my want of gallantry, a feminine ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... of the respect with which we so often treat those who are richer than ourselves. We observe men for the most part (admitting however some few abnormal exceptions) to be deeply impressed by the superior organisation of those who have money. It is wrong to attribute this respect to any unworthy motive, for the feeling is strictly legitimate and springs from some of the very highest impulses of our nature. It is the same sort of affectionate reverence which a dog feels for man, ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... of sight behind the counter. Palmer's dust was very fine, and more than once he had suffered through such sharp practice, only to vow he never would suffer so again. In Francis he had found a strictly honest banker, whose virtue he was inclined to attribute to correct political principles, overlooking the moral delinquencies of other Democratic neighbors. But the old man, through long years of experience with human nature in California, had grown extremely cautious and secretive. Probably ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... that he had given her only the scantiest account of his adventure at the tree, for he had wished to spare her the details of an incident that meant her disappointment as well as his own. She might now readily attribute his reticence to a desire ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... bibliomaniacal appetites in fostering the institution "for the erecting of a Library and an Academy for the study of Antiquities and History."[327] Notwithstanding her earnestness to root out all relics of the Roman Catholic religion (to which, as the best excuse, we must, perhaps, attribute the sad cruelty of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots), I cannot in my heart forbear to think but that she secured, for her own book-boudoir, one or two of the curious articles which the commissioners ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... conditions, such as climate, food, &c., as the only possible cause of variation. In one limited sense, as we shall hereafter see, this may be true; but it is preposterous to attribute to mere external conditions, the structure, for instance, of the woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak, and tongue, so admirably adapted to catch insects under the bark of trees. In the case of the misletoe, which draws ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... of mountain which we are now considering, is that of the eruptive kind. But there is much of this eruptive matter in the bowels of the earth, which, so far as we know, never has produced a volcano. It is to this species of eruption that I am now to attribute the formation of many insulated mountains, which rise in what may be termed low countries, in opposition to the highlands or alpine situations. Such is Wrekin in Shropshire, which some people have supposed to have been a volcano. Such are the hundred little mountains in ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... metropolis. How often must his heart have been gladdened by the delight of children, as they viewed these animated figures! or his pride indulged, by haranguing learnedly to grown men on the mechanical powers which produced such wonderful effects! or his gallantry brought into play (for this is an attribute which such grave men do not lack) by the visits of pretty maidens! And then with how fresh a feeling must he return, at intervals, to his own ...
— The Seven Vagabonds (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Pisistratus and his sons Athens attained to an importance in the world of art which it had not enjoyed before. A fine Attic work, which we may probably attribute to the time of Pisistratus, is the grave-monument of Aristion (Fig. 88). The material is Pentelic marble. The form of the monument, a tall, narrow, slightly tapering slab or stele, is the usual one in Attica in this period. The man represented in low relief is, of course, ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... weep as he realises his loss. And the rest of the Free Company, — the pony, the cows, the great cart-horses, — are ever shaming him by their unboastful exercise of some enviable and unattainable attribute. Even the friendly pig, who (did but parents permit) should eat of his bread and drink of his cup, and be unto him as a brother, — which among all these unhappy bifurcations, so cheery, so unambitious, so purely contented, so apt to be the guide, philosopher, and ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... Corbario to exercise a sort of paternal vigilance over him? Somehow Marcello did not like that idea at all. So far as he knew, Folco had always been singularly frank with him, and had never deceived him in the smallest thing, even "for his own good." Marcello could only attribute good motives to him, but the mere idea of being watched was excessively disagreeable. He wondered whether Settimia had influenced Regina to get him away from Paris, acting under directions from Corbario. Was Regina deceiving him too, "for his own good"? If ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... Nor yield to anger's mastering sway. The moon for gentle grace is known, The sun has splendour all his own, The restless wind is free and fast, And earth in patience unsurpassed. So glory with her noble fruit Is thine eternal attribute. O, let not, for the sin of one, The triple world be all undone. I know not whose this car that lies In fragments here before our eyes, Nor who the chiefs who met and fought, Nor what the prize the foemen sought; Who marked the ground with hoof and wheel, Or whose the hand that ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... much as if I had just awakened out of a long sleep. I attribute it to the fact that I have slept the greater part of the time for the last two days and nights. On Wednesday, I sat up all night, in Virginia, in order to be up early enough to take the five o'clock stage on Thursday morning. I was on time. It was a great success. I had a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... on September 23, 1912, quotes the report of the manager of the Lobito railway, in which the latter, after stating that he has had no difficulty in obtaining all the labour he has required, adds, "I attribute the facility in obtaining so large a supply of labour, relatively cheaply, to the good food we supply them with, and chiefly to the regularity with which payments in cash are effected, and also to the justice with which they ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... was a very simple-minded man, and it never struck him to attribute her grief to any other cause than anxiety at the state of affairs and at her incarceration for an indefinite period in a besieged town that ran the daily risk of being taken vi et armis. Still he was a little hurt at the manner of his reception ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... according to its views. It appears to have been with the same motive that the Queen in a proclamation, which generally breathed nothing but benevolence, remitted payment of the subsidies last voted under her brother. Yet we can hardly attribute the result wholly to this. Parliamentary elections are wont to receive their impulse from the mistakes of the last administration and the evils that have come to light: and much had undeniably been done under Edward VI which could not but call forth discontent. ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... have argued the existence of extensive trade-relations from the occurrence of a peculiar kind of turquoise called callais in some of the megalithic monuments of France and Portugal. The rarity of this stone has inclined some archaeologists to attribute it to a single source, while some have gone so far as to consider it eastern in origin. For the last theory there is no evidence whatsoever. No natural deposit of callais is known, but it is highly probable that the sources of the megalithic examples ...
— Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders • T. Eric Peet
... be best to head for the river. Tall grass twisted about the Terran's legs as he began to run. In spite of the gloom, he hesitated to cross that open space. At night Warlock's peculiar vegetation displayed a very alien attribute—ten ... twenty varieties of grass, plant, and tree emitted a wan phosphorescence, varying in degree, but affording each an aura of light. And the path before Shann now was dotted by splotches of that radiance, not as brilliant ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... church. They fed the imagination of the mediaeval church. But that modern Christianity which finds in Christ the source and embodiment of all its own refined and exalted conceptions is inclined to look away from all this millennial prophecy; to weaken or ignore its significance, or to attribute it to the misconception of the disciples. This modern Christianity fastens its attention on those teachings of purely spiritual and universal truth in which Jesus indeed spoke as never other man spoke. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... it; one has only to see and hear you to believe you incapable of a falsehood. But, what is incomprehensible in your situation, augments, irritates my impatient curiosity; it is only to that that you must attribute the sharpness of my words just now. Come, I avow I was wrong; for, although I had no other right to your confidence than my earnest wish to be useful to you, you have offered to tell me that which you have told to no one, and I am very sensible, ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... Shall we attribute it to a coincidence that Mrs. L.'s best poem strikes a very familiar chord? It is called the ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... Parisians not only received him very well, but forthwith threw themselves into a headlong furor for Shakespeare and Charles Kemble, which, although they might not improbably do the same to-morrow for two dancing dogs, we are quite willing to attribute to the merits of the poet and his interpreter. The French papers have been profuse in their praises of both, and some of our own have quoted their commendations. My mother is, I think, recovering, though ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... title of German Baroness, the proverbial wealth of the bankers of Frankfort, to whom the people were accustomed to attribute everything that was singular and bizarre, had been most admirably combined by the Count de Fersen, to account for anything strange or remarkable in the appearance of the royal equipages; nothing, however, excited ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... a subsequent elaboration; he would do it all in one process, giving his blot an irregular edge and allowing the color to accumulate where the shadows required it. His elaborative touches elsewhere were of the same nature. They were brush blots as distinct from washes. To this, I think, we may attribute on analysis the freedom of handling which—though each man has his distinctive method—is characteristic of both Cox and DeWint. If we add to these two methods of using the brush a third—its manipulation as ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... does not become the supreme passion of the working-man, the inevitable consequence is drunkenness and all that is generally called demoralisation. The physical enervation and the sickness, universal in consequence of the factory system, were enough to induce Commissioner Hawkins to attribute this demoralisation thereto as inevitable; how much more when mental lassitude is added to them, and when the influences already mentioned which tempt every working-man to demoralisation, make themselves felt here too! There is no cause for ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... the lenghthe / that they shall thincke and Iudge that theise teachers ar not deceyued in Religion / bicause they be of an exacte and perfect knowledge in these liberall sciences / and philosophie. This (I saye) may happen of it that men ar wont to attribute mutch vnto their teachers. Yea that it may be so / I will proue by the contrarie. Origen by teaching the Mathematicalls / and such sciences / did bring many men to the knowledge of christe. For furst ...
— A Treatise of the Cohabitation Of the Faithful with the Unfaithful • Peter Martyr
... is to measure so great a change, and it is not wholly easy to ascertain with precision its various and concurrent causes, and to attribute to each its proper potency. But we shall certainly not be wrong if, among those causes, we assign a prominent place to the Evangelical revival of religion. It would be a mistake to claim for the Evangelical movement the whole credit of our social ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... Shakespeare wrote the plays that bear his name, thousands believing that it was impossible for a man who had no more education than Shakespeare had in his youth, to have exhibited the varied knowledge and learning that characterize his works, therefore these attribute them to Sir Francis Bacon, one of the most brilliant and best educated men of his time. All the evidence goes to show that at the age of 18, when Shakespeare married, that he had acquired with a "little ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... aware of the hardships and perils that would attend her flight, yet the thought of again meeting her friends was enough to nerve her for the undertaking, and she waited with anxious impatience the coming of her rescuer. But he came not. She could attribute no other design in his conduct but that of effecting her escape, and yet he neither came for her, nor beckoned her away. She had reposed confidence in his promise, for she knew that the Indian, savage ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... possible," said the king with some anxiety, "that you have perceived it, then, from her conduct towards you? Have her manners in any way been such towards you that you can attribute them to the jealousy you ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... new suggestion required no weighing and fine balancing. You could attribute no villainy whatever to one of the old man's enemies that he would not admit the extreme likelihood of your being right. "Stephen ain't that sort; she's got him by the nose, hell take her! She's drivin' him to it, an' it's ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... offered up for their own and the public safety. But we are still assured by monuments of brass and marble, by the Imperial medals, and by the Antonine column, that neither the prince nor the people entertained any sense of this signal obligation, since they unanimously attribute their deliverance to the providence of Jupiter, and to the interposition of Mercury. During the whole course of his reign, Marcus despised the Christians as a philosopher, and punished them as ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... by the allegorical interpreters whenever they attempt to exhibit the truth intended to be conveyed; whereas perspicuity is a characteristic essential to an allegory.—The subtlety of the [Pg 15] serpent, pointed out in chap. iii. 1, is a natural attribute of that animal; and the comparison, in this respect, of the serpent with the other beasts, clearly indicates that a real serpent is spoken of. To such an one the denunciation of the punishment must necessarily, ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... extinguishes the idea of the incarnation, as a degradation of God; and also the doctrine of the fall, inasmuch as psychological deterioration is impossible if the soul be pure, and if evil be a necessary attribute of matter.(192) With the fall, redemption also disappears, because the perfect cannot admit of change; Christ's coming could only be to correct what God already knew, or rectify what ought to have been corrected ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... cauldron, pouring out black volumes of sulphureous smoke, and clamouring with unceasing thunder, was for ages a blood-stained altar of human sacrifice. Every year the fairest maiden of the Tengger was the chosen victim offered to Siva, who, in his attribute of a Consuming Fire, occupied the volcanic abyss. The worship of the Divine Destroyer has ever been a fruitful source of crime and cruelty, and a tangible atmosphere of evil lingers round those hoary temples ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... idea of their nature than they are able to maintain in after years. Real life, like the weather, is made up of gray and cloudy days alternating with those when the sun shines and the fields are gay. Young people, however, exhibit fine weather and no clouds. Later they attribute to marriage the evils inherent in life itself; for there is in man a disposition to lay the blame of his own misery on the persons and things that ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... sticky, and incapable of swelling in water. On the other hand, although some distinguished chemists deny or exalt the nutritive properties of bran, agriculturists, taking practical observation as proof, attribute to that portion of the grain a physiological action which has nothing in common with plastic alimentation, and prove that animals weakened by a too long usage of dry fodder, are restored to health ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... "when the Earl was at Merton"— probably January 11-26, 1236,—clandestinely, but with connivance of mother, to Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester; divorced 1237; livery of her estates granted to brother John, May 5, 1241; therefore died shortly before that date. Most writers attribute to Earl Hubert another daughter, whom they call Magotta: but the Rolls show no evidence of any daughter but Margaret. Magotta, or Magot, is manifestly a Latinism of Margot, the French diminutive for Margaret; the Earl's gifts ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... could do to get his team down to a trot by the time they reached the clearing, for there the going was perilous, and besides, it was just as well that his father should not witness any signs on Billy Jack's part of the folly that he was inclined to attribute to the rising generation. So steadily enough the bays trotted up the lane and between long lines of green cordwood on one side and a hay-stack on the other, into the yard, and swinging round the big straw-stack that faced the open shed, and ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... me intimately from close association will attribute any vice to me sooner than arrogance, and will acknowledge that I am closer to the Socratic utterance, 'This alone I know, that I know nothing,' than to this, 'I yield to none.' But if they imagine that I have ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... the faculty and inclination of receiving those things which relate to knowledge and love; and if he does not receive these from others, he remains viler than a beast. That man is born in this condition, to the end that he may attribute nothing to himself, but to others, and at length every thing of wisdom and of the love thereof to God alone, and may hence become an image of God, see the MEMORABLE RELATION, n. 132-136. From these ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... after-time were offended by his coarseness of speech—for more or less of the artist of Pigeon Creek stuck to him almost to the end; he talked in fables, often in gross fables—these men, despite their annoyance, felt no impulse to attribute to him personal habits in harmony with his tales. On the other hand, they were puzzled by their own impression, never wavering, that he was "pureminded." The clue which they did not have lay in the nature of his double life. That part of him which, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... the First Dynasty, about 2000 B.C. It is indisputable that Marduk obtained his pre-eminence in the Babylonian Pantheon at this early period. But some authorities deny the existence of monotheistic conceptions among the Babylonians at that time, and attribute Marduk's kingship of the gods to the influence of the political situation of the time, when Babylon first became the capital of the country, and mistress of the greater part of the known world. Material for deciding this question is wanting, but ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... thing is because of something else that was. Marriage is because of a primeval club. Man craved woman and he procured her. Considering the beginnings of the institution of marriage, it is interesting, if nothing more, to consider the efforts of the priest to give it an attribute of sanctity, to call it a sacrament. In truth, marriage is the most artificial of the relations which exist in the social body. It is a device of man at his worst—a mixture of slavery, savage egotism and priestcraft. It is indicated by nothing in the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... reproached with, that his Greeks, his Jews, and his Turks, were all inmates of Versailles. He had two critics, who, like our Dennis with Pope and Addison, regularly dogged his pieces as they appeared[A]. Corneille's objections he would attribute to jealousy—at his pieces when burlesqued at the Italian theatre[B] he would smile outwardly, though sick at heart; but his son informs us, that a stroke of raillery from his witty friend Chapelle, whose pleasantry hardly sheathed its bitterness, sunk ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... and vengeance," exclaimed Mr. Saulsbury, "can not last forever. The eternal God who sits above, whose essence is love, and whose chief attribute is mercy, says to all his creatures, whether in the open daylight or in the silent hours of the night, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... appears between personal arbitrariness and devotion to this universal law founded by them. Frederick the Great, Joseph II., Catherine of Russia, Maria Theresa, Charles XII., Peter the Great, could none of them quite escape from the eccentricity which was considered the necessary attribute of genius. They furnished material, therefore, for countless anecdotes; by personal whims, freaks, and caprices they freed themselves at times from the new spirit of social uniformity and political legal equality. One could not reconcile such anecdote-business ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... that we should probably have had something not unlike Erewhon sooner or later, even without the Russian lady and Sir F. N. Broome, to whose promptings, owing to a certain diffidence which never left him, he was perhaps inclined to attribute too much importance. But he would not have agreed with this view at the time; he looked upon himself as a painter and upon Erewhon as an interruption. It had come, like one of those creatures from the Land of the Unborn, pestering him and refusing to leave him ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... one attribute of royalty—a feeling that I need not reveal all my mind or my secret designs even to my intimate friends. I had fully resolved on my course of action. I meant to make myself as popular as I could, and at the same time to show no disfavour to Michael. By these ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... entertain but one thought at one time; and certain it is, from the nature of attention, and from the association of ideas, that unity is one of the principal characteristics of mind. It is this which constitutes personal identity; an attribute that, however unsatisfactory may be the explanations which have been given respecting it, we all of us feel, and that lies at the foundation of all our voluntary actions, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... was not sure he cared about the personages of a story that had clutched his imagination and heart, until he reeled a little with responsive enchantment; though it is hard to say about what he cared if not about the romancer's powerful allies, who carried his meaning for him. Mr. Motley tries to attribute to the scenes he knew so well in reality, under their new guise of dreamy vividness, the spell which came, I believe, from the reality of moral grandeur, in both its sin and its holiness, but which we so entirely ignore every precious hour by sinking to the realities of bricks and common ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... our people have recently been unwell, Yusuf amongst the rest. They take little care of themselves, and attribute their illness to the ghaseb. I expect we shall have ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... sneerers uncharitably given, may, from a consideration of the times, places, and circumstances at and under which the abnormal phenomena here recited were stated to have been observed, be led to attribute them simply to the promptings and imaginings of brains overheated by excessive indulgence in spirituous liquors. But I, striving to be mindful always of the great scriptural injunction to judge not, lest we be judged, and opportunely remembering my friend O'Kweene's learned ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... like a philosopher, as you invite me," she said, "the least part always implies a greater. Let me ask what you esteem the greater part of the rare quality you are pleased to attribute ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... instances. That they remained silent and subdued under the progress of the acts of the secessionists, and never raised hand or voice in contradiction to them, proves in this class an absence of that force of character, or of that moral courage or 'energy' which is the distinguishing attribute of our Northern people, even the poorest, and this was also evinced when we first occupied the town. It was not peacefulness of disposition which I remarked, but the lack first, of decision of character, and next, of decision of understanding respecting the questions at issue. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Dungannon and to take his last stand at Charlemont. In a severe action with Sir Robert and Sir William Stewart, he had displayed his usual courage with better than his usual fortune, which, perhaps, we may attribute to the presence with him of Sir Alexander McDonnell, brother to Lord Antrim, the famous Colkitto of the Irish and Scottish wars. But the severest defeat which the confederates had was in the heart of Leinster, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... say, Hugh," he added, "that your presence in the capital should not be advertised as connected with this—legislation. They will probably attribute it to us in the end, but if you're reasonably careful, they'll never be able to prove it. And there's no use in putting our cards on the table ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... is this, cousin Charlotte, said I, that is dearer to you than your life? Your honour, you'll say—I will not talk to a lady (I never did) in a way she cannot answer me—But in the instance for which I put my case, (allowing all you attribute to the phantom) what honour is lost, where the will is not violated, and the person cannot help it? But, with respect to the case put, how knew we, till the theft was committed, that the miser did actually set so romantic a value upon ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... horse-power! If we were to ask him to tell us how they acquired their rolling strength, he would most probably answer—from the current of the stream. This reply would amount to nothing in the matter of explanation; the force of the current is as much a borrowed attribute as the force of the wheelwork. The running water is no more an independent and living agent than is the machinery which it turns. Beyond both is the one grand determining influence—the attractive energy ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... age, still, our next move will be in the downhill direction. Yet, notwithstanding all this, we talk and act, and think, and feel, too, like boys. I do not speak this reproachfully, but as a fact which develops a curious attribute of the ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... power which reduces the most complex idea into its elements, which traces causes to their first principle, and, by the power of generalization and combination, unites the whole in one harmonious system—then, so far from deserving contempt, it is the highest attribute of the human mind. It is the power which raises man above the brute—which distinguishes his faculties from mere sagacity, which he holds in common with inferior animals. It is this power which has raised the astronomer from being a mere gazer at the stars to the high intellectual ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... that we were indebted for such a happy state of affairs, as among the class of people continually on the move coming in and going out there are quite a few that would be capable of attempting anything if they were certain of escaping detection. I can only attribute the lack or comparative utter absence of serious crime to the extreme watchfulness of our men which renders it well nigh impossible for loose characters to engage in doubtful enterprises and stay in the country. The (under the circumstances) speedy and condign punishment ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... administration, manifold and laborious as its duties are. He must have a quick intelligence and a retentive memory. He is a public carrier of knowledge in its germs. His office is like that which naturalists attribute to the bumble-bee,—he lays up little honey for himself, but he conveys the fertilizing pollen from flower ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
