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Build upon   /bɪld əpˈɑn/   Listen
Build upon

verb
1.
Be based on; of theories and claims, for example.  Synonyms: build on, repose on, rest on.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Build upon" Quotes from Famous Books



... whom has devoted much study to his special phase of the subject. This leads to a very simple arrangement of the material. The first part deals with the physical or biological basis of the sex problem, which all societies from the most primitive to the most advanced have had and still have to build upon. The second part deals with the various ideas man has developed in his quest for a satisfactory adaptation of this physical basis to his own requirements. Part three attempts to analyze the effect of this long history of ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard

... difficult to make out at any time than the real motives and meaning of family discords: and this is still more the case in an age not yet enlightened by the clear light of history. The chroniclers, especially Boece, have much doubt thrown upon them by more serious historians, who quote them and build upon them nevertheless, having really no better evidence to go upon. The report of these witnesses is that James had been warned by witches, in whom he believed, and by one Andrew the Fleming, an astrologer, that his chief danger arose from his own family, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant

... gives another help to us to understand the parable of the wall. He says that we are building the wall of our salvation on the cornerstone of Christ, and he goes on to say, "Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble: every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. If any man's work abide which he ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould

... being so deceivable, it is no wonder, that all the succeeding works which we build upon them, of arguing, concluding, defining, judging, and all the other degrees of Reason, are lyable to the same imperfection, being, at best, either vain, or uncertain: So that the errors of the understanding are answerable to the ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke

... the first of Continental rulers, recognized the American States as an independent power; and therefore every American minister since, including myself, has found it convenient, on presenting the President's autograph letter to the King or Emperor, to recall this event and to build upon it such an oratorical edifice as circumstances may warrant. The fact that the great Frederick recognized the new American Republic, not from love of it, but on account of his detestation of England, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... eternal conquest of right. And let me say here to those women who not only hang back from this encounter but who throw obstacles in the way of true reform and progress, that the shallow ground upon which they stand is within the belt of the moral earthquake, and that what they build upon it will ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... instant showed, Through a rift, on the vessel's lee; What manner of creatures may be those That build upon the sea?" ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow

... distinguished by the "Tendency toward Individualization." That is, while the Involuntary Process was accomplished by Principles as Principles, the Upward Movement was begun by a tendency toward "splitting up," and the creation of "individual forms," and the effort to perfect them and build upon them higher and still higher succeeding forms, until a stage was reached in which the Temple of the Spirit was worthy of being occupied by Man, the self-conscious expression of the Spirit. For the coming of Man was the first step of a higher ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka

... revengeful animals, knows more about the properties of plants and the cure of disease than does the trained botanist or physician who has devoted a lifetime of study to the patient investigation of his specialty, with all the accumulated information contained in the works of his predecessors to build upon, and with all the light thrown upon his pathway by the discoveries of modern science. It is absurd to suppose that the savage, a child in intellect, has reached a higher development in any branch of science than has been attained ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney

... raged at "Slim" had Bruce been so furious, but there was little time to indulge his temper for there was now an extra boat to build upon which he must trust Smaltz as ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... his materials, controls his processes and isolates his factors so as to reveal the bearing of every step in the process upon an ultimate and often a far distant result. In other words, he tries at every stage to build upon a sure foundation. His trained imagination and judgment working on known facts set the limit on what he may expect to find, and interpret what he does find, all ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss

... came to be considered of good omen, and by a natural consequence they were kept (a harmless sort of course) in the houses, where they nestled about the altars, and came out like dogs or cats to be patted by the visitors, and beg for something to eat. Nay, at table, if we may build upon insulated passages, they crept about the cups of the guests; and in hot weather ladies would use them as live boas, and twist them round their necks ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... to make use of the mistakes of any people for a foundation to build upon: yet through these failures my system will be in some degree supported: at least from a detection of these errors, I hope to obtain much light. For, as the Grecian writers have preserved a kind of uniformity in their mistakes, and there appears plainly a rule and method of deviation, it will be very ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume I. • Jacob Bryant

... our own enemies as to neglect it, we are not to wonder if the world is deficient in discharging their duty to us; for when a man lays the foundation of his own ruin, others will, I am afraid, be too apt to build upon it. You say, however, you have seen your errors, and will reform them. I firmly believe you, my dear child; and therefore, from this moment, you shall never be reminded of them by me. Remember them only yourself so ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... said, "and do not build upon what has passed between us. Perhaps I do but play with thee. Or"—he looked away musingly—"or, if thou dost think of it with any hope, choose between the renown of a gladiator and the service of a soldier. The former may come of the favor ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... the like reformations would, in all probability, be the first fruits of the Whigs' resurrection; and what structures such able artists might in a short time build upon such foundations, I leave others to conjecture. All hopes of a peace cut off; the nation industriously involved in further debts to a degree, that none would dare undertake the management of affairs, but those whose interest lay in ruining ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift

... would surrender my life for such a consummation. But I tell you that Jesus Christ has pointed out the only means by which this unity can be maintained, viz: the recognition of Peter and his successors as the Head of the Church. Build upon this foundation and you will not erect a tower of Babel, nor build upon sand. If all Christian sects were united with the centre of unity, then the scattered hosts of Christendom would form an army which atheism and infidelity could not long withstand. ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons

... doctrine is made more manifest in the instruction of those who, like the Gentiles, have received no tidings whatever; hence the Apostle says (Rom. 15:20): "I have so preached the [Vulg.: 'this'] gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man's foundation." Therefore much rather should Christ have preached to the Gentiles than to ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... worthlessness of all these others, if they do not issue in this. Not that these inward emotions are ever to be despised, but that, if they are genuine in our hearts, they cannot but manifest themselves in our lives. And so, dear Christian friends! do you not build upon your faith, on your adherence to God, on your aspirations after Him, unless you can bring into court, as witnesses for these, daily and hourly, your efforts after the conformity of your will to His, in the great things and in the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... friends, of profession, of ambition, of love, of home—he had never wholly lost hold of a sustaining hope, and now it would seem that this long-abiding faith was at last to be rewarded. Yet he realized, as he fronted the facts, how very little he really had to build upon,—the fragmentary declaration of Slavin, wrung from him in a moment of terror; an idle boast made to Brant by the surprised scout; a second's glimpse at a scarred hand,—little enough, indeed, yet by far the most clearly marked trail he had ever struck in all his ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... the unflinching determination of the founders of these British colonies to make this land a British home, we feel that we should as unflinchingly carry on their work and expand their views. Deeply rooted in the hearts of our ancestors was a love of the old land, and their desire in the new was to build upon ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith

... a beginning he was the first imaginative and thoughtful administrator that Florence had had since Lorenzo the Magnificent. He set himself grimly to build upon the ruins which the past forty and more years had produced; and by the end of his reign he had worked wonders. As first he lived in the Medici palace, but after marrying a wealthy wife, Eleanora of Toledo, he transferred ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... so high, neither doth it ever sink below; and it has not met with the approbation it deserves, only because it has not been more read and considered. His subject indeed is confined, and he has a narrow foundation to build upon, but he has raised as noble a superstructure, as such little room, and such scanty materials would allow. The great beauty of it is the contrast between the two characters of the tempter and Our Saviour, the artful sophistry, and specious insinuations of the one, refuted ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... straightway prepare a feast. And until my thralls come, the overseers of my steading, whose care it is to choose out oxen from the herd and drive them hither, we will drag down the ship to the sea, and do ye place all the tackling within, and draw lots for the benches for rowing. Meantime let us build upon the beach an altar to Apollo Embasius [1101] who by an oracle promised to point out and show me the paths of the sea, if by sacrifice to him I should begin my venture ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius

... Inclinations of the Virginians induce them to cohabit in Towns; so that they are not forward in contributing their Assistance towards the making of particular Places, every Plantation affording the Owner the Provision of a little Market; wherefore they most commonly build upon some convenient Spot or Neck of Land in their own Plantation, though Towns are laid out and establish'd in each County; the best of which (next Williamsburgh) are York, Glocester, ...
— The Present State of Virginia • Hugh Jones

... into fellowship with God and his judgment; and in that condition it is possible to rejoice in pulling to pieces our own works. Paul says: 'Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any man build upon this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, every man's work shall be made manifest—for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work, of what sort ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... vote of Parliament. All through the reign of William III. there was (in common speech) one king whom man had made, and another king whom God had made. The king who ruled had no consecrated loyalty to build upon; although he ruled in fact, according to sacred theory there was a king in France who ought to rule. But it was very hard for the English people, with their plain sense and slow imagination, to keep up a strong sentiment of veneration for a foreign adventurer. ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... Edgbaston Proprietary School, Hagley Road, was the property of a company constituted by deed of settlement, dated February 28, 1839. The cost of the land chosen to build upon and the handsome edifice erected was L10,500, the school being opened in 1841. In 1874 there was originated a Birmingham Higher Education Society, and in 1876 a scheme was adopted for a High School for Girls in conjunction with the Proprietary School, a company being formed, with a nominal capital ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell

... their salvation, became their destruction and their ruin. Oh! brethren, it is always so! He is either 'a savour of life unto life, or a savour of death unto death!' 'Behold! I lay in Zion for a foundation, a tried Stone.' Build upon it and you are safe. If you do not build upon it, that Stone becomes 'a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence.' You must either build upon Christ or fall over Him; you must either build upon Christ, or be crushed to powder under ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... God and live. We cannot go so far back upon ourselves as to undermine our own foundations; if we try to do we topple over, and lose that very reason about which we vainly try to reason. If we let the foundations be, we know well enough that they are there, and we can build upon them in all security. We cannot, then, define reason nor crib, cabin and confine it within a thus-far-shalt-thou-go-and-no- further. Who can define heat or cold, or night or day? Yet, so long as we hold fast by current consent, our chances ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... he was undressing in front of a fire. He knew that he uncovered himself to no icy blast or contemptuous rain, as he had felt when, so few days before, he had spoken of himself and what he was to his father. There was here the common land of music to build upon, whereas to Lord Ashbridge that same soil had been, so to speak, the territory of the enemy. And even more than that, there was the instinct, the certain conviction that he was telling his tale to sympathetic ears, to which the mere fact that he was speaking of himself presupposed a ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson

... arbitrary, than a collection fairly deserving, from its constant identity with itself, the name of a distinct work, and the reputation of having wholly emanated from the same inventive mind. To say nothing of the improbability of supposing that one individual, with every license to build upon the foundation of popular stories, a work which had once received a definite form from a single writer, would have been multiplied by the copyist with some regard at least to his arrangement of words as well as matter. But the various copies we have seen bear about ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... literally, in letters of fire across it. The stars are of all ages, from sturdy youth to decrepit age, and even to the darkness of death. We saw that this can be detected on the superficial test of colour. The colours of the stars are, it is true, an unsafe ground to build upon. The astronomer still puzzles over the gorgeous colours he finds at times, especially in double stars: the topaz and azure companions in beta Cygni, the emerald and red of alpha Herculis, the yellow and rose of eta Cassiopeiae, and so on. It is at the ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... but finding the actual battlefield unsuited for a monastery, since there was no water there, he designed to build lower down towards the west. Now when the King heard of it he was angry and bade them build upon the field itself, nor would he hear them patiently when they asserted there was no water there, for, said he: "If God spare me I will so fully provide this place that wine shall be more abundant there than water is ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton

... of a constitution founded on the basis of absurdity. But, waiving these remarks, I own I am unwilling to be either imprisoned for debt, or punished for imposture. I know how far to depend upon generosity, and what is called benevolence—words to amuse the weak-minded; I build upon a surer bottom. I will bargain for your assistance. It is in my power to put twelve thousand pounds in the pocket of Samuel Crowe, that there sea-ruffian, who, by his goodwill, would hang me to ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... Onachili resembles most of the Indian villages of Florida. The natives always endeavoured to build upon high ground, not least to erect the house of their cacique, or chief, upon an eminence. As the country was very level and high places seldom to be found, they constructed artificial mounds of earth, capable of containing from ten ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... old manor-house build upon the sandy cliffs above the Loire, not far from the bridge where Julie's journey was interrupted in 1814. It is a picturesque, white chateau, with turrets covered with fine stone carving like Mechlin lace; a chateau such as you often see in Touraine, spick and span, ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac

... for it and it asks no sympathy, so we may as well ride and carry our freight up hill, if we prefer it, and build our houses on the mountain tops. One characteristic of our nature has not changed, and there is still a great variety of taste, so that plenty of people choose the lower land to build upon. I see by your faces that you both admire this panorama and think we were wise to place our house on such high ground. We like to have our friends take this view in the morning, when the world has been freshened by ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... resembled. The very spirit of the dead beauty seemed to animate every feature and every movement of the young girl whose position in the school was assured from that moment. She had a good solid foundation to build upon in the jealousy of two or three of the leading girls of the style of pretensions illustrated by some of their talk which has been given. There is no possible success without some opposition as a fulcrum: force is always aggressive, and crowds ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... a man's teaching comes of his followers, such as having never touched the foundation he has laid, build upon it wood, hay, and stubble, fit only to be burnt. Therefore, if only to avoid his worst foes, his admirers, a man should avoid system. The more correct a system the worse will it be misunderstood; its professed admirers will take both its errors and their misconceptions of its truths, and hold ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... because he wished to train a few to be in advance and act as monitors to the rest. The English were on very good terms with him, and allotted a piece of land for a missionary settlement, which he called Berea, and began to build upon it in the fashion of ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... very briskly, "What had they to do there? that they came on shore without leave; and that they should not plant or build upon the island; it was none of their ground." "Why," says the Spaniard, very calmly, "Seignior Inglese, they must not starve." The Englishman replied, like a rough tarpaulin, "They might starve; they should not plant nor build in that place." "But what must they do then, seignior?" said the Spaniard. ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... how our real wide-awake world revolves around the shadowy unrealities of Dreamland. Despite all that we say about the inconsequence of dreams, we often reason by them. We stake our greatest hopes upon them. Nay, we build upon them the fabric of an ideal world. I can recall few fine, thoughtful poems, few noble works of art or any system of philosophy in which there is not evidence that dream-fantasies symbolize ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller

... them—they wor always about them; it was the same in their father's time. I remember ould Laghlin Hogan, an' his whole clanjamfrey, men an' women, young an' old, wor near six months out o' the year about ould Gerald Cavanagh's—the present man's father; and another thing you may build upon—that whoever ud chance to speak a hard word against one o' the Cavanagh family, before Philip Hogan or any of his brothers, would stand a strong chance of a shirtful o' sore bones. Besides, we all know ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... terms. Events more potent than acts of Congress had already reconstructed them. Lincoln with a forecast of this had shaped his ends accordingly. Johnson, himself a Southern man, understood it even better than Lincoln, and backed by the legacy of Lincoln he proceeded not very skillfully to build upon it. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... or which way to resolve. My brain (methinks) is like an hour-glass, And my imaginations like the sands Run dribbling forth to fill the mouth of time, Still changed with turning in the ventricle. What were I best to do? it shall be so. Nay, I dare build upon ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson

... buried. But the principles which underlay it, the tendencies to which it appealed, and the perils which alarmed Paul for the Corinthian Church, are perennial. He feared that these Judaising teachers, who dogged his heels all his life long, and whose one aim seemed to be to build upon his foundation and to overthrow his building, should find their way into this church and wreck it. The keenness of the polemic, in this and in the contextual chapters, shows how real and imminent the danger was. Now what they ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... situation, and liberty for the commonage of three cows, twenty sheep and one horse, with necessary wood and water for his use, on condition that he should follow the trade of whaling for two years, build upon his ...
— A Narrative of the Mutiny, on Board the Ship Globe, of Nantucket, in the Pacific Ocean, Jan. 1824 • William Lay

... in most parts of it seems to be very maturely weighed, may be a foundation for those to build upon who have a public spirit large enough to ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty

... Paris, New Orleans, and Australia throng in; though New York sends its worthless womanhood in floods, there are even now worthy home circles by the Golden Gate. Church, school, and family begin to build upon solid foundations. All the government bureaus are in working order. The Custom House is already known as the "Virginia Poor House." The Post-Office and all Federal places teem with the ardent, haughty, and able ultra Democrats of the sunny South. The victory of the Convention ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... you now lose, is so much character and advantage lost; as, on the other hand, every moment that you now employ usefully, is so much time wisely laid out, at most prodigious interest. These two years must lay the foundations of all the knowledge that you will ever have; you may build upon them afterward as much as you please, but it will be too late to lay any new ones. Let me beg of you, therefore, to grudge no labor nor pains to acquire, in time, that stock of knowledge, without which you never can rise, but must make a very insignificant figure in the world. Consider ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... evil will all be taken away by the forgiveness which we have in His blood. If you will trust yourselves to Him you will have that eternal life, which is not wages, but a gift; which is not reward, but a free bestowment of God's love. And then, if we build upon that Foundation on which alone men can build their hopes, their thoughts, their characters, their lives, however feeble may be our efforts, however narrow may be our sphere,—though we be neither prophets nor sons of prophets, and though our righteousness may be all stained and imperfect, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... "in recalling examples of the kind, madame, you must not build upon them, please: they are extraordinary cases, not the rule. You must expect no privilege; in your case the ordinary laws will be carried out, and your fate will not differ from the fate of other condemned persons. How would it have been had you lived and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... full and original title, comes next in order of time, and perhaps of abiding value. It is a book rather difficult for us now to estimate after more than half a century, for so very much has been done in the interval to build upon these foundations, to enlarge our knowledge of these very heroes, and the estimates of Carlyle in the first half of this century are for the most part so completely the commonplaces of the English-speaking world ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison

... I look upon that stretch of steel we wonder at the daring of its builders. Great men they were who boldly built that road—great in imagination, greater in their deeds—for they were men so great that they did not build upon a line that was without tradition. The route they followed was made by the buffalo and the elk ten thousand years ago. The bear and the deer followed it generation after generation, and after them came the trapper, ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various

... blow! After my father's consent had been so kindly given—but no more of this. She has made me miserable forever! Let me soon hear from you, dear Catherine; you are my only friend; your love I do build upon. I wish your visit at Northanger may be over before Captain Tilney makes his engagement known, or you will be uncomfortably circumstanced. Poor Thorpe is in town: I dread the sight of him; his honest heart would feel so much. I have written to him and my father. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... enemy should read in the words "fed up" a sign that our tenacity is giving out, he reads it wrong; grim will be the disillusionment of any hopes he may build upon his misreading, and even grimmer the anger of those whom he ...
— Fragments From France • Captain Bruce Bairnsfather

... an example from your old tutor. Erase from your mind everything that he imprinted there. Do not build your castle upon the shifting sand. And look well ahead, and be sure of your ground, before you build upon the charming creature who ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen

... but land. The people are coming to us in great numbers, but most of them are poor. We must give them time to settle down and create something and increase the wealth of the state. Then we shall have a solid base to build upon; then we shall have the confidence of the capital we require for improvements. Now I fear that we are ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... mean to roam from flower to flower, over as varied a garden as the imagination can well conceive. There have been brave workers before us in the field, and we shall build upon good foundations. We hope to be catholic in our selections; we shall prune away only the superfluous; we shall condense anecdotes only where we think we can make them pithier and racier. We will neglect no fact that is interesting, and ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... And now, my beloved, how is it possible that these, after having rejected the sure foundation, can ever build upon it, that it may become the head of ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous

... country, then it seems to me undeniable that it may be constitutionally comprehended in the powers to declare war, to provide and maintain a navy, and to raise and support armies. At the same time, it would be a misuse of these powers and a violation of the Constitution to undertake to build upon them a great system of internal improvements. And similar reasoning applies to the assumption of any such power as is involved in that to establish post-roads and to regulate commerce. If the particular improvement, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson

... that. The great artists realize that the mechanical side of piano playing is but the basis, but they would no sooner think of trying to do without that basis than they would of dispensing with the beautiful artistic temples which they build upon the substantial foundation which technic gives to them. The Russian pianists have earned fame for their technical grasp because they give adequate study to the matter. Everything is done in the most solid, substantial ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke

... think that there is some responsibility attached to ownership; and he may not like to be in any way accessory to the building of such habitations for the poor as he thoroughly disapproves of. And if the owner of land feels this, still more may the capitalist who undertakes to build upon it. It may be a satisfactory thing to collect in any way much money; but I think, on the other hand, that most men have a great pleasure in doing anything well, in a workmanlike and stable manner. And, strange as it may seem, it is very possible ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... Murray says that it is now shown that many submarine mountains exist, which are usually volcanic, and which, being built upon by various forms of shell-bearing animals, could be raised to such a level that ordinary corals could build upon them. He concludes that probably all atolls are seated on submarine volcanoes, and thus it is not necessary to suppose such extensive and long-continued subsidences as Darwin suggested. This view is also in harmony with ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... practice must support each other. An exceedingly large mass of facts has been gathered, the methods have become refined and differentiated, and however much may still be under discussion, the ground common to all is ample enough to build upon. ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... political leaders, who were simply firebrands, is arising a new class of leaders, which, with a wider horizon, a deeper sagacity and a truer patriotism, are endeavoring to establish a foundation of morality, industry and knowledge, and to build upon them a race that shall be capable of availing itself of every opportunity that the future may present, and worthy of whatever ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... at Harvard at the psychological moment. Harvard had passed through many distressing years playing for the football supremacy. He found something to build upon, because, although the game at Cambridge was in the doldrums, there had been keen and capable ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... I was now constantly developing new, short-lived ambitions. Occasionally I became industrious for short periods of time. Indulgent and now prosperous parents provided a way for me to pursue my little ambitions. I had secured the rudimentary part of an education and I determined to build upon it. I was going to reach ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs

... only was it not his peacefully to build on undisturbed foundations; it was not even his to lay in peace original foundations. His was the harder, the more hopeless task, to re-lay foundations which had been torn up and scattered, and then begin to build upon them. And under what discouragements was the task to be undertaken and prosecuted: with diminished and diminishing numbers of fellow-workers; with narrow resources and restricted means; amid manifold and unexpected difficulties; amid jealousies that not infrequently deepened into ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut

... ministry—well, all the better to have one's father-in-law in power—promotion is so cursed slow now a-days. And lastly, the sly allusion to the commissions—the mechancete of introducing her name to interest me. With such materials as these to build upon, frail as they may seem to others, I found no difficulty in regarding myself as the dear friend of the family, and the acknowledged suitor of ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... to me, extraordinarily delicate. Are we to let the mistakes in this flattering cable slide, and build upon its promises, or, are we to pull whoever believes these figures out of their fool's paradise? Well, I feel we must have it out and although deeply grateful for the nice words and for the splendid effort actually being made, we cannot let it be assumed by anyone that our vanishing ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton

... the Relation of some credible person, avowing it upon his own experience. For I am troubled, I must complain, that even Eminent Writers, both Physitians and Philosophers, whom I can easily name, if it be requir'd, have of late suffer'd themselves to be so far impos'd upon, as to Publish and Build upon Chymical Experiments, which questionless they never try'd; for if they had, they would, as well as I, have found them not to be true. And indeed it were to be wish'd, that now that those begin to quote Chymical ...
— The Sceptical Chymist • Robert Boyle

... are these among so many? To meet the ignorant condition of things, the Government is doing nothing. The State governments are doing only a little. In the Southern States previous to the war there was no system of common schools. After the war there were not even old foundations to build upon. Everything had to be started de novo by those who had nothing with which to start. "We must remember," said Dr. Mayo, "that nine men out of ten of the South never saw what we call a good public elementary school. It ...
— American Missionary, Vol. XLII., May, 1888., No. 5 • Various

... Is this an account of the world of fact or the world of romance? The disciples did not hope; but, says M. Renan, vague words about the future had dropped from their master, and these were enough to build upon, and to suggest that they would soon see him back. In vain it is said that in fact they did not expect it. "Une telle croyance etait d'ailleurs si naturelle, que la foi des disciples aurait suffi pour la creer de toutes pieces." Was it indeed—in spite of Enoch ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church

... have made with many dear and valued Friends in the neighborhood of London has, I hope, been a little strength to me in the best things. It is truly pleasant to be treated with such genuine kindness; but it is nothing for the soul to build upon,—we must look for a more sure foundation than the favor of the great ...
— Memoir and Diary of John Yeardley, Minister of the Gospel • John Yeardley

... and loved, I did not build Upon the event with marble. Could it mean To last, a love set pendulous between Sorrow and sorrow? Nay, I rather thrilled, Distrusting every light that seemed to gild The onward path, and feared to overlean A finger even. And, though ...
— Sonnets from the Portuguese • Browning, Elizabeth Barrett

... which is based on the worship and practice of morality as exemplified in the lives and teachings of the wise men who have gone before, and who, as he conceived, have made the world what it is, and have left it to posterity to build upon the same basis; while he lived he was held in greater and greater honour by multitudes of disciples, till on his death he became an object of worship, and even his descendants came to be regarded as a kind of sacred caste; ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... grant them a portion of the land, and the site where now the Monastery is builded, and the owners thereof did freely grant their request and gave them the land for the Brothers to dwell in. When they had obtained the power to build upon the spot pointed out to them aforetime by Master Gerard, they set in order a small house, at the bottom of the mountain, that had been given to them by a certain matron, and some labourers assisted them in ...
— The Chronicle of the Canons Regular of Mount St. Agnes • Thomas a Kempis

... We must build upon the broad foundation of man's life, and not upon any special faculty. The merely literary man is often the most pitiful of men,—able, it may be, to do little else than complain that his merits are not recognized. Let it not be imagined then that the lover of wisdom, the follower of intellectual ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... right to depend upon the applause of the world, St. Paul declares that if we please men, we are not the servants of God,[3] the friendship of the world being enmity with God. If then that little book has brought to me some vain and unmerited praise, it would be well worth my while to build upon its foundation some inferior work, so as to beat down the smoke of this incense, and earn that contempt from men which makes us so much the more pleasing to God, because we are thereby more and ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus

... are laid in the Roman cement of tradition, and that stately and splendid structures may be reared on such a foundation. But to see one laying a platform over heretical quicksands, thirty or forty or fifty years deep, and then beginning to build upon it, is a sorry sight. A new convert from the reformed to the ancient faith may be very strong in the arms, but he will always have weak legs and shaky knees. He may use his hands well, and hit hard with his fists, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... I, "as I always do. I seconded the motion, but I gave them a dose of common sense, as a foundation to build upon. I told them niggers must be prepared for liberty, and when they were sufficiently instructed to receive and appreciate the blessing, they must have elementary knowledge, furst in religion, and then in the useful arts, before a college should be attempted, and so on, and then took up my hat and ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... stretch out our hands too late—when we have been caught in its fatal snares, and then in the darkness and misery that will surround us, we will feel how foolish we have been, and our cries of despair and distress will be echoed back to our own ears in sounds of mockery and scorn. Let us not build upon that "something else" that is always buried in the to-morrows, for we are losing the present ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... calm face was gentle, with the protective gentleness of the stone that will not fail you when you lean on it. One felt sure of Mother Bridget, as one feels sure of the solid rock to build upon. She looked at me with keen, half-quizzical eyes. ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter

... the national debt, seeing the parlous financial condition of the State, tremble at the thought that it may lie in the power of a single man to cancel the debt by bankruptcy. To secure themselves they are burrowing underground to overthrow a state and build upon its ruins a new one in which they shall be the masters. And to accomplish this they inflame the people. Already in Dauphiny we have seen blood run like water—the blood of the populace, always the blood of the populace. Now in Brittany we may see the like. And ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... severely lamed or injured, flutters through the grass and into the nearest bush. As I do not follow, but remain near the nest, she chips sharply, which brings the male, and I see it is the Speckled Canada Warbler. I find no authority in the books for this bird to build upon the ground, yet here is the nest, made chiefly of dry grass, set in a slight excavation in the bank, not two feet from the water, and looking a little perilous to anything but ducklings or sandpipers. There are two young birds and one little specked ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... the direct offspring of the tunefulness of the German Volkslied, and so it expressed, with wonderful freshness and beauty, all the range of passion and sentiment within the limits of this pure and simple language. But the boundaries were far too narrow to build upon them the ultimate union of music and poetry, which should express the perfect harmony of the two arts. While it is true that all of the great German composers protested, by their works, against the spirit and character of the Italian school of music, Wagner claims that the first ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris

... work, was too ardent a seeker and lover of the purely beautiful to build upon the forms of past generations, and thus his piano music, neither restrained nor supported by poetic declamation, was never held ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell

... his mind and not want to," said Shigalov; "he is a madman anyway, so he is not much to build upon." ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... often better in theory than in practice, for the lime is omitted altogether, and perhaps at some risk of loss, in both time and money, as regards permanent improvement. To use a figure of speech—the prudent architect will first secure a solid foundation to build upon, and with materials of known durability; this accomplished, he need have no fears of the stability of the structure, and may, at pleasure add thereto, either for ornament ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson

... notion of free-will, Mr. M'Cosh, nevertheless, falls back upon the old Calvinistic definition of liberty, as consisting in a freedom from external co-action, in order to find a basis for human responsibility. It may seem strange, that after all his labour in laying the foundation, he should not build upon it; but it is strictly true. "If any man asserts," says he, "that in order to responsibility, the will must be free—that is, free from physical restraint; free to act as he pleases—we at once and heartily agree ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... the busy birds did vlee, Wi' sheenen wings, vrom tree to tree, To build upon the mossy lim', Their hollow nestes' rounded rim; The while the zun, a-zinken low, Did roll along his evenen bow, I come along where wide-horn'd cows, 'Ithin a nook, a-screen'd by boughs, Did stan' an' flip the white-hoop'd pails ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes

... bottle, "we have some Johannisberg, very fine as I can assure you; but I have little fancy even for the best of these Rhenish wines. Too much like a pretty woman without soul. They never warm the imagination. There's something better to build upon there close beside your elbow. Since the claret's forbidden us for the present, I'll drink you welcome in that rich Madeira. Why, do you know, sir," rattled on the Doctor, as I passed the bottle, seemingly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... worthless and vain works, as are followers of the papacy and of all false worship. No doubt such error has its rise in the principle that we are to do good and avoid evil. The principle fundamentally is true, and accepted by all men; but when it comes to the theories we build upon it, the speculations as to how it is to be put into practice, there is disagreement. Only the Word of God can show how to ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther

... self-help could be secured in that way. You do not say whether you know anything about farming. Farming is a very complicated business and a basic knowledge derived from experience is a proper foundation to build upon in the light of the fuller application of ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... life adorned with all grace, with all nobility, fragrant with all goodness, and permanent as that life which does the will of God must clearly be, is this, to bow before the seen Christ, seen in His word, and speaking to your hearts, and to take His yoke and carry His burden. Then you will build upon what will stand, and make your days noble and your lives stable. If you build on anything else, the structure will come down with a crash some day, and bury you in its ruins. Surely it is better to learn the worthlessness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... study, and although I had another master at first, it was not so very long before I went to Vienna, to Leschetizky, for I felt the need of more thorough preparation than I had yet had. There is nothing like a firm technical foundation; it is a rock to build upon; one cannot do great things without it. I have had to labor hard for what I have attained, and am not ashamed to say so. I practise 'all my spare time,' as one of my colleagues expresses it; though, of course, if one studies with the necessary concentration one cannot practise more than ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower

... thighs, all the result of the old technique. As you know, we insist upon your preparing for the ballet course by taking our limbering and stretching exercises, and today you know why. You have a genuine foundation to build upon. Your bodies are lithe and supple, your muscles hard yet not misshapen, and you have advanced by easy stages through the foundation work to where you are today, ready ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... was spread abroad, the people came in throngs to thank the King, who had delivered them; but he bade them rather give thanks to Heaven. Then, having distributed among them the treasure his knights had not needed, and having commanded Sir Howel to build upon the hill which the giant had haunted a chapel in honor of St. Michael, he returned to his army, and led it into the country of Champagne, where he pitched ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... to develop within himself; a vague hope that she might fill the void which a lifetime of longing had expressed. A tremendous opportunity now presented. Already the foundation had been well laid—but not by earthly hands. His task was to build upon it; and, as he did so, to learn himself. He had never before realized more than faintly the awful power for good or evil which a parent wields over a child. He had no more than the slightest conception of the mighty problem of child-education. And now Carmen ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants.... There is no safe certaintie but of Scripture only, for any considering man to build upon. This therefore, and this only I have reason to beleeve; this I will professe; according to this I will live, and for this I will not only willingly, but even gladly loose my life, though I should be sorry that Christians should take it from me. Propose me anything ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... strengthened them: which was, that the religious sentiments of the Greeks and Romans, and the disposition of their minds, being in every respect absolutely foreign from ours, it is impossible for us to create according to their conceptions, or to build upon their ground. They may be imitated by dint of study; but how can genius employ all its energies in a work where memory and erudition are so necessary? It is not the same with subjects that belong to our own history and ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael

... have confidence of God's protection and assistance against the violence (else irresistible) both of sea and infinite perils upon the land; whom God yet may use as an instrument to further His cause and glory some way, but not to build upon so bad a foundation. Otherwise, if his motives be derived from a virtuous and heroical mind, preferring chiefly the honour of God, compassion of poor infidels captived by the devil, tyrannizing in most wonderful and dreadful ...
— Sir Humphrey Gilbert's Voyage to Newfoundland • Edward Hayes

... when they ruled the Duchy of Spoleto, following their usual policy of opposing new military centres to the ancient Roman municipia, encouraged Fulginium at the expense of her two neighbours. But of this there is no certainty to build upon. All that can be affirmed with accuracy is that in the Middle Ages, while Spello and Bevagna declined into the inferiority of dependent burghs, Foligno grew in power and became the chief commune of this part of Umbria. It ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... shall believe that Christ has merited only the prima gratia, as they call it, and that we afterwards merit eternal life by our works, hearts or consciences will be pacified neither at the hour of death, nor at any other time, nor can they ever build upon certain ground; they are never certain that God is gracious. Thus their doctrine unintermittingly leads to nothing but misery of soul and, finally, to despair. For God's Law is not a matter of pleasantry; it ceaselessly accuses consciences outside of Christ, as Paul says, Rom. ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon

... and again. It is wonderful how often a man will spell over and over the same commonplace syllables, if they happen to touch a subject vitally concerning himself, and what theories and speculations he will build upon the accidental turn of a phrase, or the careless dash of ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... but now he had his revenge and was all sunshine. He thought the state of the ice in the Kara Sea would be favorable; some Samoyedes had said so, who had been seal-hunting near the eastern entrance of the Strait a day or two previously. This was not very much to build upon, certainly, but still sufficient to make us regret that we had not got there before. Then we spoke of the Urania, of which no one, of course, had seen anything. No ship had put in there for some time, except the sealing sloop we had ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen

... makes the profoundest revelation of the moral fixedness and self- control of God so long as we hold to the scriptural representation. It is to be regretted that many theological theories break away from the Scripture basis and build upon assumptions which are artificial, not to say unmoral: or, rather, in their striving after system they get away from the atmosphere of moral suggestiveness with which the Gospels and Epistles surround the cross. That ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell

... liberties may be taken and the intention is for a purely artistic composition, the curvilinear S shape will be found a good line to build upon. When this is too apparent a single oppositional figure will destroy ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore

... unhappy Latins build upon another stead The bale-fires numberless of tale: but of their warriors dead, A many bodies there they dig into the earth adown, And bear them into neighbouring lands, or back into the town: The rest, a ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil

... these Roman ladies fly from odori so, that a drop of lavenderwater in one's handkerchief, or a carnation in one's stomacher, is to throw them all into, convulsions thus? Sure this is the only instance in which they forbear to fabbricare fu l'antico[Footnote: Build upon the old foundations.], in their own phrase: the dames, of whom Juvenal delights to tell, liked perfumes well enough if I remember; and Horace and Martial cry "Carpe rosas" perpetually. Are the modern inhabitants still ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... now at sea without chart or compass. When a man or woman loses their self-respect, they are moral wrecks. "WANDERING STARS." There is nothing left to build upon. It is from this cause that thousands commit suicide, both men, women, and girls. It is the continual gnawings of the conscience over the secret sins and crimes they have not the moral courage to confess. Like the hidden spark of fire in a bale of cotton, it continues its ravages until the whole ...
— There is No Harm in Dancing • W. E. Penn

... will suppose that He had come down from the Cross. No case can so powerfully illustrate the filthy falsehood and pollution of that idea which men generally entertain, which the sole creditable books universally build upon. What would have followed? This would have followed: that, inverting the order of every true emanation from God, instead of growing and expanding for ever like a [symbol: <], it would have attained its maximum at the first. The effect for the half-hour would have been prodigious, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... neighbors and reported their "scirscumstances and conuersation." In those days a man gained instead of losing his freedom by marrying. "Incurridgement" to wedlock was given bachelors in many towns by the assignment to them upon marriage of home-lots to build upon. In Medfield there was a so-called Bachelor's Row, which had been thus assigned. In the early days of Salem "maid lotts" were also granted; but Endicott wrote in the town records that it was best to abandon the ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle

... believe that any nation could have vaulted to the final stage of the simple alphabetical writing without tracing the devious and difficult way of the pictograph and the syllabary. It is possible, however, for a cultivated nation to build upon the shoulders of its neighbors, and, profiting by the experience of others, to make sudden leaps upward and onward. And this is seemingly what happened in the final development of the art of writing. For while the Babylonians and Assyrians rested ...
— A History of Science, Volume 1(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... richest and most intelligent manufacturers in Paris, M. Marcolet, has just purchased in Grenelle the vast grounds belonging to the Lacoche estate. He proposes to build upon them a manufacture of chemical products, the management of which is to be placed in the ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... throughout the settlement. Several inhabitants were dispossessed of their houses, and many others of respectable characters, or who had become opulent by trade, were threatened with the Governor's resentment if they presumed to build upon ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... the first place, all conduct springs ultimately and radically out of native instincts and impulses. We must know what these instincts and impulses are, and what they are at each particular stage of the child's development, in order to know what to appeal to and what to build upon. Neglect of this principle may give a mechanical imitation of moral conduct, but the imitation will be ethically dead, because it is external and has its centre without, not within, the individual. We must study the child, in other words, to get our indications, ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey

... Dr. Johnson has given me my plan of studies, and free access to his library. My ambition is not great, nor my views unbounded. I shall proportion the means to the object. If I persevere with attention, I have something more than wishes to build upon. Nothing within the compass of my abilities, that is justifiable, will be left untried, to gratify ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... of the world, who build upon the style of your neighbor's dress or equipage and trifle away God's precious moments in silly show and vain trumpery, go to the retreats at "Gladswood," follow Phillip Lawson in his daily rounds, and if you will not, like him, feel your heart expand and seek aspirations of a higher mould— a something ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... reported to him by the factor he had left at Diu, that the Nawab of that place had gone to Ahmadabad in order to induce the King of Gujarat to refuse the Portuguese leave to build upon the island, and also that Ismail Shah, of Persia, had sent a special embassy to Ahmadabad to induce the King to accept the Shiah form of the Muhammadan religion. Albuquerque, on this, determined to send a better equipped embassy than before to the Court of Muzaffar ...
— Rulers of India: Albuquerque • Henry Morse Stephens

... ice farther north than expected, and it's impossible to interpret the fact. One hopes that we shall not have anything heavy, but I'm afraid there's not much to build upon. 10 P.M.—We have made good progress throughout the day, but the ice streams thicken as we advance, and on either side of us the pack now appears in considerable fields. We still pass quantities of bergs, perhaps ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... worker in her special line of work is looking back at it from the place where things show truest, and she says, "God help us all! What is the good done by any such work as mine? 'If any man build upon this foundation . . . wood, hay, stubble. . . . If any man's work shall be burned he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire!' An infinitude of pains and labour, and all to disappear like the stubble and ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael

... perpendicularly, by only fixing it to a piece of iron upon the beam, without chains, or perpendicular guides, or untowardly frictions, arch-heads, or other pieces of clumsiness.... I have only tried it in a slight model yet, so cannot build upon it, though I think it a very probable thing to succeed, and one of the most ingenious simple pieces of ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson

... helpless, because she had been flung there, because she could not lift herself—because, in a word, her hands were tied behind her back and her feet fastened together. Well, then, follow this train of reasoning, my friend! Suppose my conjectures—and we had nothing but conjectures to build upon-were true, the woman flung upon the sofa could not be Helene Vauquier, for she would have said so; she could have had no reason for concealment. But it must be Mlle. Celie. There was the slit in the one cushion and the stain on the other which, of course, I had not accounted for. There was still, ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason

... Which aggravate a fault with feigned excuses, And drive discountenanced virtue from the throne; That leave blame of rigour to the prince, And of his every gift usurp the merit; That hide in seeming zeal a wicked purpose, And only build upon ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... audience. Thus, the reader is assumed to be unacquainted with what you have to say at the beginning of a work, and hence you must use simple language to initiate him into your lines of thought. Afterwards you may build upon this foundation what you can. It follows that if you are to speak of some outrageous crime, you should not inveigh against it with a comparable violence of diction until your audience has achieved such a notion of the crime as will not be at odds ...
— An Essay on True and Apparent Beauty in which from Settled Principles is Rendered the Grounds for Choosing and Rejecting Epigrams • Pierre Nicole

... thousand shrines, And build upon the sands, Passing the one great Temple, and The Rock ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster

... a good method, or way, for the maintaining of a Family. For if he have not that to build upon, the whole foundation ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... thereanent that seem so strange and marvellous that I forbear to set them down. And in Halyburton's priceless Memoirs we read: "Hereby I was brought into a doubt about the truths of religion, the being of God, and things eternal. Whenever I was in dangers or straits and would build upon these things, a suspicion secretly haunted me, what if the things are not? This perplexity was somewhat eased while one day I was reading how Robert Bruce was shaken about the being of God, and how ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... it was," I cried. "I saw the lady fairly nestling her head in it. But I advise the major not to build upon ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James

... illustrating the particular idea which he wishes to convey. Such associations, where he cannot correct them, it is the business of the popular preacher to inherit as if they were his own, and to build upon as if they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... also fruitless, as Messrs. M'Dougal and Stuart did not find an advantageous site to build upon. But, as the captain wished to take advantage of the fine season to pursue his traffic with the natives along the N.W. coast, it was resolved to establish ourselves on Point George, situated on the south bank, about ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere

... the constitution, but from the failures of the officers in whose hands it was. This he did seem to give good ear to; but did give me of myself very good words, which pleased me well, though I shall not build upon them any thing. Thence home; and after dinner by water with Tom down to Greenwich, he reading to me all the way, coming and going, my collections out of the Duke of York's old manuscript of the Navy, which I have bound up, and do please me mightily. At Greenwich I come to Captain Cocke's, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... early trained to a love for all household work. That precious experience is a thing for which a cooking-school is no manner of substitute, while it is just the thing for professional training to build upon, widen, and correct. Mrs. Lincoln's book is practical, and though there is much of theory, it gives proof of being based less upon theory and much upon experiment. The book is handsomely gotten up, and will ere long attest its usefulness ...
— Carving and Serving • Mrs. D. A. Lincoln

... they both employed so lavishly. The old lady's beauty was even more than Isabelle's assisted by art, for her snowy-white hair was a wig, her teeth not her own, and her eyebrows quite openly manufactured without one single natural hair to build upon. But it pleased her generation to regard these facts as sacred, and to assume that the secrets of the boudoir were unsuspected. Even Nina never saw so much as a powder puff in her grandmother's dressing room, and any compliment upon her hair or complexion Madame Carter ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... it myself in three. I could hardly have hoped, therefore, in the present age, when every source of ghost and goblin story is ransacked, that the origin of the tale would escape discovery. In fact, I had considered popular traditions of the kind as fair foundations for authors of fiction to build upon, and made use of the one in question accordingly, I am not disposed to contest the matter, however, and indeed consider myself so completely overpaid by the public for my trivial performances, that I am content to submit to any deduction, which, in their after-thoughts, they may ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... of the senses, or a repetition of that impression in the memory. It is merely the force and liveliness of the perception, which constitutes the first act of the judgment, and lays the foundation of that reasoning, which we build upon it, when we trace the ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume

... do not mean to exclude or deny it; for it is, as I have just said, bound up with the same conception from which the "argument from adaptability" is drawn. I only mean that I do not need to build upon it as on a prior conception; that I can put it aside. Indeed, of these two off-shoots, theism is less near to the common ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... and both, in their earlier boyhood, had experimented for the sake of sport with a crude form of snowshoe. Now they were to build upon this slender knowledge, for the sake of an immediate necessity, and it was the hardest task that they had yet set for themselves. Nevertheless, it was ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... feelings by threats of vengeance upon their enemies. Now and then a real criminal came along, and now and then a paid inciter, a Peter Gudge or a Joe Angell. Peter told the worst that he had heard, and all he knew about the arrested men, and Guffey wrote it all down, and then proceeded to build upon it. This fellow Alf Guinness had had a row with a farmer in Wheatland County; there had been a barn burned nearby, and Guffey would furnish an automobile and a couple of detectives to travel with Peter, and they would visit the scene of that fire and the nearby village, and familiarize ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... as well as a master's guidance upon him, and led him to the first steps in that style of writing which was afterwards one of his greatest glories." The point is admirably put by Sir Hubert Parry. He says, in effect, that what Haydn had to build upon, and what was most congenial to him, through his origin and circumstances, was the popular songs and dances of his native land, which, in the matter of structure, belong to the same order of art as symphonies and ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden

... taken in law cases and in the proceedings of legislative committees. A number of these machines was built, but mechanical difficulties became so frequent that the parties interested resolved, very wisely, before proceeding to build upon a large scale, to put the machine into the hands of a thorough mechanical expert, so that it might be tried out and a determination reached as to whether or not it was a commercially practical one. At ...
— The Building of a Book • Various

... through them; at such a time it was good to fold one's hands in prayer and reflect that we were still all together, and that not one of us had been taken away, but God had preserved us from all calamity. Our hope was weak, for there was no foundation for it to build upon, but our faith was ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai

... "Do not build upon that, Ronald. No doubt as soon as we had passed, some of those fellows mounted the horses we saw in the carts, and rode off in accordance with an agreed plan to give notice that we had passed them safely, and were proceeding by that road. In the next place the ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... individualizes, concretes, numbers, compares, things which, material or immaterial, are thoroughly identical and indistinguishable. Matter, as well as spirit, plays, as we view it, all sorts of parts; and, as there is nothing arbitrary in its metamorphoses, we build upon them these psychologic and atomic theories, true in so far as they faithfully represent, in terms agreed upon, the series of phenomena, but radically false as soon as they pretend to realize their abstractions and ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon

... have thought that we had never seen a cheque for forty dollars before, so much did we rejoice over this one, and so many hopes of future emolument did we build upon it. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... position of Agents and Ministers of the Crown in South Africa, should be just as much above and remote from racial feuds, as the position of the Crown in this country is above our Party politics. We do not seek to pit one race against the other in the hope of profiting from the quarrel. We hope to build upon the reconciliation and not upon the rivalry of races. We hope that it may be our fortune so to dispose of affairs that these two valiant, strong races may dwell together side by side in peace and amity under the shelter ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill

... various smaller ones, we came upon a huge vulture's nest on a very small tholukh, which seemed to bend and look unhappy beneath the weight of this den of rapacity and violence. There are hereabouts no rocks for the eagles to build upon. We halted amidst abundance of herbage and small trees, which afforded a ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson

... caves were filled to overflowing with increasing population, and generations of peace had wrought a confidence which had not existed when the pioneers had sought safety in caves, these people ventured to move out of cliffs and to build upon the tops of the mesa. Whether all the cave-dwellers were descended from the original pilgrims or whether others had joined them afterward is not known, but it seems evident that the separate communities had found some ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... barbarians, and, instead of a Roman knight, appointed as governor of it a man of consular rank. The ruins of houses which had been burnt down long before, being a great desight to the city, he gave leave to any one who would, to take possession of the void ground and build upon it, if the proprietors should hesitate to perform the work themselves. He resolved upon rebuilding the Capitol, and was the foremost to put his hand to clearing the ground of the rubbish, and removed some of it upon his own shoulder. And he undertook, likewise, to restore the three ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... power of human imagination when, excited, it creates phantoms and visions, peopling the bottomless and ever silent emptiness with them. It is sad to admit that there are people, however, who believe in ghosts and build upon this belief nonsensical theories about certain relations between the world of the living and the enigmatic land inhabited by the dead. I understand that the human ear and eye can be deceived—but how can the great and lucid human mind fall into such coarse ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... inclinations of the Virginians induces them to cohabit in towns: so that they are not forward in contributing their assistance towards the making of particular places, every plantation affording the owner the provision of a little market; wherefore they most commonly build upon some convenient spot or neck of land in their own plantation, though towns are laid out and established in ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... thou must do after baptism. Thou must abstain from all sin, and every evil affection, and build upon the foundation of the Catholick Faith the practice of the virtues; for faith without works is dead, as also are works without faith. For, saith the Apostle, 'Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.' Now the works of ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus

... will have to do. We must select a site for our camp,—or town, you may well say,—and we must build upon it without delay. That is to be our first step. Details will come later. There are over six hundred of us here. We represent a fair-sized village. We have mechanics, carpenters, farmers, surveyors, masons,—and merchants, to say nothing ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon



Words linked to "Build upon" :   rest on, depend upon, devolve on, hinge on, repose on, build on, owe, hinge upon, turn on, depend on, ride



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