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Essence   /ˈɛsəns/   Listen
Essence

noun
1.
The choicest or most essential or most vital part of some idea or experience.  Synonyms: center, centre, core, gist, heart, heart and soul, inwardness, kernel, marrow, meat, nitty-gritty, nub, pith, substance, sum.  "The heart and soul of the Republican Party" , "The nub of the story"
2.
Any substance possessing to a high degree the predominant properties of a plant or drug or other natural product from which it is extracted.
3.
The central meaning or theme of a speech or literary work.  Synonyms: burden, core, effect, gist.
4.
A toiletry that emits and diffuses a fragrant odor.  Synonym: perfume.



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"Essence" Quotes from Famous Books



... with an elated spirit, seeing in herself the future hostess of the fashionable throng there assembled. Instead of standing in a corner, listening with unctuous deference or sympathy to any who chanced to come against her, as was her wont, proffering her fan, or her essence-bottle, or in some quiet way ministering to their egotism, she now stepped freely forth upon the field of action, nodding and smiling at the young men to whom she might have been at some time introduced; whispering ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various

... dark, ruddy hair, thin at the top, the crisp, virile moustaches, the small, aggressive tuft upon his projecting chin. Something there was of Napoleon III., something of Don Quixote, and yet again something which was the essence of the English country gentleman, the keen, alert, open-air lover of dogs and of horses. His skin was of a rich flower-pot red from sun and wind. His eyebrows were tufted and overhanging, which gave those naturally cold ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... general. These worldly preoccupations were no doubt misplaced in view of the solemnity of the moment. For a duel whether regarded as a ceremony in the cult of honour or even when regrettably casual and reduced in its moral essence to a distinguished form of manly sport, demands perfect singleness of intention, a homicidal austerity of mood. On the other hand, this vivid concern for the future in a man occupied in keeping sudden death at sword's length from his breast, ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad

... The partition walls came to an end at quite a long distance from the front; and, with the general company spreading themselves at large over the whole width of the foreground, it was very difficult to entertain any illusion of that privacy which is of the essence of the cabinet particulier. I say nothing of the bedroom, whose tenancy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various

... thus understood, has, he says, this peculiarity—that, being labour in an externalised and also in a permanent form, it is capable of being detached from the labourers and appropriated by other people; and the essence of modern capitalism is neither more nor less than this—the appropriation of the instruments of production by a minority who are not producers. So long as the implements of production were small and simple, and such that each could be used by one man or family, ...
— A Critical Examination of Socialism • William Hurrell Mallock

... or which even to the writer's feeling was exaggerated, but because it was expressed coarsely, and as a physical power: now, every thing physical is measurable by weight, motion, and resistance; and is therefore definite. But the very essence of whatsoever is supernatural lies in the indefinite. That power, therefore, with which the minds of men invested the emperor, was vulgarized by this coarse translation into the region of physics. Else it is evident, that any power which, by standing above all human control, occupies ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... what are you going to give us? We don't want any old silly stuff that has been hashed over and over, we want a big new idea to plant in our hearts. Come on, Miss Teacher, what is the boiled-down, double-distilled essence of June? Give it to us strong. We are large enough to furnish it developing ground. Hurry up! Time is short and we are waiting. What is the miracle of June? What one thing epitomizes the whole month, and makes it just a ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter

... makes them so striking, these admirers are unwilling to see that it is through an art that they are brought in so beautifully in their spontaneousness and give such finish to larger effects. And we have no end of writers who are forever trying to imitate them, forgetting that the essence of their beauty is in their coming unsought and in their proper places as unexpected felicities and fine touches growing out of and contributing to some higher purpose. They are natural in this way:—when the poet is engaged upon his work, these delicate fancies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various

... too well, and he felt as much as any man, how difficult it was to accommodate a standing army to a free constitution, or to any constitution. An armed disciplined body is, in its essence, dangerous to liberty; undisciplined, it is ruinous to society. Its component parts are in the latter case neither good citizens nor good soldiers. What have they thought of in France, under such a difficulty as almost puts the human faculties to a stand? They have put their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... both sides. It has been represented by some as far too favourable to the Company, and by others as most unjust to the Company. Sir, I own that we cannot prove that either of these accusations is unfounded. It is of the very essence of our case that we should not be able to show that we have assigned, either to commerce or to territory, its precise due. For our principal reason for recommending a compromise was our full conviction ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... worshipped that Divine Lord, that First cause of the universe, that giver of boons, that puissant one sporting with the fair-limbed Parvati, that high-souled Being surrounded by large bands of ghosts, spirits, that Unborn one, that Supreme Lord, that Embodiment of the unmanifest, that Essence of all causes, that One of unfading power. Having saluted Rudra, that destroyer of the Asura Andhaka, the lotus eyed Narayana, with emotion filling his heart, began to praise the Three-eyed one (in these words), 'O adorable one, O first of all ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... more enlightened? I do not think so. The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone—like the bloom from a soiled flower. Surely it is a paradox to speak of the self-interest ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... requires, as the basis of its conclusions, not experience merely, but specific experience. By the method a priori we mean (what has commonly been meant) reasoning from an assumed hypothesis; which is not a practice confined to mathematics, but is of the essence of all science which admits of general reasoning at all. To verify the hypothesis itself a posteriori, that is, to examine whether the facts of any actual case are in accordance with it, is no part of the business of science at all, but of the ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... about evolution. Like electricity, the cholera germ, woman's rights, the great mining boom, and the Eastern Question, it is 'in the air.' It pervades society everywhere with its subtle essence; it infects small-talk with its familiar catchwords and its slang phrases; it even permeates that last stronghold of rampant Philistinism, the third leader in the penny papers. Everybody believes he knows all about ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... What Machiavelli says (Ist. Fior. vii. 1) about the arts of Cosimo contains the essence of the policy by which the Medici rose. Compare v. 4 and vii. 4-6 for his character of Cosimo. Guicciardini (Op. Ined. vol. ii. p. 68) describes the use made of extraordinary taxation as a weapon of offense against his enemies, by Cosimo: 'uso le gravezze in luogo ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... victualled for eighteen months. In addition to the customary allowance of provisions we were supplied with sourkraut, portable soup, essence of malt, dried malt, and a proportion of barley and wheat in lieu of oatmeal. I was likewise furnished with a quantity of ironwork and trinkets to serve in our intercourse with the natives in the South Seas: and from the board of Longitude I received ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... very solemn and deeply impressed. On one side of him sat Aunt Sally, and on the other, Tilly; and the coon dog, which followed them everywhere, sat on its tail, well to the front, looking the very essence of concentrated solemnity. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... which and its spirit of brotherhood are its essence, Freemasonry is more ancient than any of the world's living religions. It has the symbols and doctrines which, older than himself, Zarathrustra inculcated; and it seemed to me a spectacle sublime, yet pitiful—the ancient Faith of our ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... his fingers, and the very essence of all his being seemed to pass down into that moist palm. Then he opened his hand; their eyes met again, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert

... that the king's writ was as necessary as his presence to the being of a legal parliament, and as the convention was defective in this particular, it could not be vested with a parliamentary authority by any management whatsoever. The whigs replied, That the essence of a parliament consisted in the meeting and co-operation of the king, lords, and commons; and that it was not material whether they were convoked by writ or by letter: they proved this assertion by examples deduced from the history of England: they observed that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... horseflesh). And yet there were people who liked their porridge sweet! who, after wasting their allowance of sugar in it, would go running about the streets to borrow a little sugar for their tea. Had it been practicable to utilise a little horse-essence for the tea, all would be well. But it would hardly do. Nobody ventured even to hint at the adoption of such a course to a neighbour; with borrowing rampant it was undesirable to be on other than amicable terms with the lady ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... first to open the eyes of Philistia to the splendors of his powers. Like all of those few artistic masterpieces that approach perfection, the "Tosca Symphony" is popular alike with the many and with the few; because it contains something of the essence of all humanity: strikes a chord that must find some echo in the breast of every man and woman that has known the meaning of pain. But, superb as was the height attained in this work, Ivan paid dearly for its accomplishment. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... houses and churches, where they have been cherished for centuries. Like the silkworm they spent themselves; and by their industrious lives were surrounded in their living graves by the elaborated essence of their own natures, a joy and consolation to themselves, and a legacy to all time. To them, also, art appeared as ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... so, dear Raoul, but in the image of his spirit—that man hath a soul which partakes, though in a small degree, of the imperishable essence of God; and thus far doth he exist in his image. More than this, none have presumed to say. But what a being, to be the master of ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... balance; from quick marriage of mind and heart, reason and sense, in the French nature, all the clear created forms of French life arise, forms recognised as forms with definite utility attached. Controlled expression is the result of action and reaction. Controlled expression is the essence of culture, because it alone makes a sufficiently clear appeal in a world which is itself the result of the innumerable interplay of complementary or dual laws and forces. French culture is near to the real heart of things, because it has a sort of quick sanity which never loses its way; or, when ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... Parsifal is Buddhistic rather than Christian; that it is taken directly from the philosophy of Schopenhauer, who was perhaps as nearly a Buddhist as was possible for an Occidental mind to be; that the dominating idea in Parsifal is compassion as the essence of sanctity, and that Wagner has merely clothed this fundamental Buddhistic idea with the externals of Christian form and symbolism. This criticism is ingenious. It may also suggest that all great religions in their essence have much which is akin. But no one who reads ...
— Parsifal - A Drama by Wagner • Retold by Oliver Huckel

... village of a dozen houses and driving all before him with his shot-gun save, for one old man, too feeble to flee, who spat at him and whined and snarled as he dug open a ground-oven and from amid the hot stones dragged forth a roasted pig that steamed its essence deliciously through its green-leaf wrappings. It was at this place that a wantonness of savagery had seized upon him. Having feasted, ready to depart with a hind-quarter of the pig in his hand, he deliberately fired the grass thatch of a ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... commands of Venus; and with his waters washed away from AEneas whatever was mortal, and sprinkled him. His superior essence remained. His mother anointed his body {thus} purified with divine odours, and touched his face with ambrosia, mingled with sweet nectar, and made him a God. Him the people of Quirinus, called Indiges,[49] and endowed with ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso

... bee for honey, not, like Coleridge, a browsing ox. To him the essence of delight was choice; and choice, with him, was readier when the prize was far-fetched and dear bought: a rarity of manners, books, pictures, or whatever was human or touched humanity. 'Opinion,' he said, 'is a species of property; and though I am always desirous ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... and apart from the main purpose of raising revenue, an income tax stands on an entirely different footing from an inheritance tax; because it involves no question of the perpetuation of fortunes swollen to an unhealthy size. The question is in its essence a question of the proper adjustment of burdens to benefits. As the law now stands it is undoubtedly difficult to devise a national income tax which shall be constitutional. But whether it is absolutely impossible is another question; and if possible it is most certainly desirable. The first ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... was singularly gifted with these qualifications, particularly with that sublime possession of the mind, which constitutes the essence of ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck

... skill. He considered himself a sort of pervading divinity, whose culinary ideas passing with his cookery into the bodies of the guests enabled them, on retiring from the feast, to carry away as part of themselves some of the fine essence of Maitre ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... us; but needed there that, or any thing to make it such in ours. Why, love lay in her eye, that evening, like religion, solemn and calm.—We should have smiled then at the thought of any thing in height or depth, ending, what through each instant seemed to breathe eternity from its own essence;—we were one, one,—that trite word makes no meaning in your ear.—to me, life's roses burst from it; music, sunshine, Araby, should image what it means; what it meant ...
— The Bride of Fort Edward • Delia Bacon

... thenceforth, but cooled off perceptibly on the trail of Jean de Courtois. The hunters, of course, credited Hermione with a talent for craft and duplicity which she certainly did not possess; being rogues, or of the essence of rogues, they suspected her of roguery, and, in so doing, dug a deep pit ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy

... the religion he actually attained, to what might have been the development of his profoundly religious spirit, had he been able to see that the old-fashioned Christianity is itself but the proper historic development of the true "essence" of the New Testament. There, again, is the constitutional shrinking, through a kind of metaphysical prejudice, from the concrete—that fear of the actual—in this case, of the Church of history; to which the admissions, which form so large a part of these volumes, naturally lead. Assenting, ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater

... fitting companion for a woman of genius, but not a very great one. I am not sure that she will not embroider her ideal better on a plain ground than on one with a brilliant pattern already worked in its texture. But as the very essence of genius is truthfulness, contact with realities, (which are always ideas behind shows of form or language,) nothing is so contemptible as falsehood and pretence in its eyes. Now it is not easy to find a perfectly true woman, and it is very hard to find ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various

... faith in God the Saviour, Jesus Christ, because that is faith in the visible God in Whom is the Invisible; and faith in the visible God, Who is at once Man and God, enters into man. For while faith is spiritual in essence it is natural in form, for everything spiritual, in order to be anything with a man, is received by ...
— The Gist of Swedenborg • Emanuel Swedenborg

... more in common than at first sight appeared. Fenton had been right in declaring that Helen was by instinct a Puritan. It was true that she had shaken herself free from all the fetters of old creeds and that her religious beliefs were of the most liberal. The essence of Puritanism, however, was not its dogmas, but its strenuous earnestness, its exaltation of self-denial, and its distrust of the guidance ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... low-born at titles and distinctions, the silly at wit, the knave at the semblance of probity. But I was about to remark, that an honest man may fairly scoff at all philosophies and religions which are proud, ambitious, intemperate, and contradictory. The thing most adverse to the spirit and essence of them all is falsehood. It is the business of the philosophical to seek truth: it is the office of the religious to worship her; under what name is unimportant. The falsehood that the tongue commits ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... spirits in the brain, as they are hot, cold, dry, moist, "all without matter from the motion alone, and tenebrosity of spirits;" of melancholy which proceeds from humours by adustion, he treats apart, with their several symptoms and cures. The common signs, if it be by essence in the head, "are ruddiness of face, high sanguine complexion, most part rubore saturato," [2624]one calls it, a bluish, and sometimes full of pimples, with red eyes. Avicenna l. 3, Fen. 2, Tract. 4, c. 18. Duretus and others out of ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... Tibullus, converse in our own tongue more finely and poetically than they were used to express themselves in their native Latin. Nothing can be imagined more elegant, refined, and court-like, than the scenes between this Louis the Fourteenth of antiquity and his literati. The whole essence and secret of that kind of intercourse is contained therein. The economical liberality by which greatness, seeming to waive some part of its prerogative, takes care to lose none of the essentials; the prudential liberties of an inferior, which flatter by commanded boldness and soothe ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... have known this in his heart, yet the most far-seeing statesman will not so trust his own misgivings as to refuse to hope for the regeneration of the institutions into which he is born. He will determine that justice shall be done. Justice is the essence of government, and without justice all forms, democratic or monarchic, are tyrannies alike. But he will work with the existing methods till the inadequacy of them has been proved beyond dispute. Constitutions ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... temptations and abuses without number might and did often arise from this very fact. Ambition, the desire of wealth, the mere love of ease, led many to profess a religious life who had never passed through that transformation of will and understanding which is the essence of religion. The very purpose of religion was forgotten, or allowed to be hidden away under things excellent in themselves, yet not essential; and difference of view about these unessential ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston

... know it to-day. There are three insidious evils that are creeping like a blood-poison through the body politic, threatening the very life of the Republic. They are killing the soul of self-government, though perhaps not its form; destroying its essence, though perhaps not ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor

... articles thought to be especially dangerous. Newspapers are strictly forbidden,—unless first steeped in a tincture of asbestos of a very dull color, expressly manufactured and supplied by the Governing Machine. When properly saturated with the essence of dulness and death, and brought down from a glaring white and black to a decidedly ashy-gray neutral color, a few small newspapers are permitted to be circulated, but with the greatest caution. They sometimes take fire, it is said,—these ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... once and without delay whatever we owe to our neighbors; to make them wait for what is due to them, is the essence of injustice. ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson

... of his fellowship had been a soft year, he had got on to The Times through something very like a misapprehension, and it was the chances of a dinner and a duchess that had given him the opportunity of the Kahn show. He'd dropped into good things that suited him. That at any rate was the essence of it. And these lucky chances had been no incentive to further effort. Because things had gone easily and rapidly with him he had developed indolence into a philosophy. Here he was just over forty, and explaining to ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... to decide in a passage like this, the difference existing between a man's /utukku/ and his /edimmu/, but the probability is, that the former means his spiritual essence, whilst the latter stands for the ghostly shadow of his body, resembling in meaning the /ka/ of the Egyptians. To all appearance the abode described above is not the place of the punishment of the wicked, but the dwelling of those accounted good, who, if lucky in ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches

... language in its very essence is rich in vowels and vowel combinations, from which comes principally the color in tones, and it has consequently been called the "language of song." Italians thus have naturally what it is so much trouble for singers of other ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini

... with heroes and mighty exploits; the other with positively commonplace individuals and the most trivial events. One is the revival of the glorious past; the other a reflection of the sordid present. One is painted with the most brilliant hues of Romanticism, and glows with the essence of the Romantic spirit—Aspiration; the other looks at life through an achromatic lens, and is a catalogue of Realities. To a certain extent, the difference is the difference between the bubbling energy of youth and the steady energy of middle ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... must be in London, and had forgotten him—and that it was better so. But the night and the darkened road would not be denied. They held the very essence of her being, and left him weak with ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter

... wheel a much-bandaged warrior to his ward, the recreation-room door opened and a burst of music-cum-essence-of-nigger emerged on his astonished ears. I was a little doubtful as to whether our new guest would not think his reception somewhat flippant in key. The poor fellow was visibly suffering, and the sound of tambourines and comedians' ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... as Lamb and Wolf; and the French version of Spin the Platter is My Lady's Toilet, concerned with laces, jewels, and other ballroom accessories instead of our prosaic numbering of players. These changes that a game takes on in different environments are of the very essence of folklore, and some amusing examples are to be found in our own country. For instance, it is not altogether surprising to find a game that is known under another name in the North called, in Southern States, "Ham-Ham-Chicken-Ham-Bacon!" The author found a good example of folklore-in-the-making ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft

... become so quiet and pensive. Depressed and irritable himself, everything, Lialia, the dark garden the distant starlit sky seemed to him sad and cold. He did not perceive that this dreamy mood concealed not sorrow, but the very essence and fulness of life. In the wide heaven surged forces immeasurable and unknown; the dim garden drew forth vital sap from the earth; and in Lialia's heart there was a joy so full, so complete, that she feared ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef

... use the old-fashioned word in such a connection—had left the free forest for Will's Coffee-house, and haunted ladies' boudoirs instead of the brakes of the enchanted island. Her wings were clogged with 'gums and pomatums,' and her 'thin essence' had shrunk 'like a rivel'd flower.' But a delicate fancy is a delicate fancy still, even when employed about the paraphernalia of modern life; a truth which Byron maintained, though not in an unimpeachable form, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... or in wrong views of their conduct. The deeds of childhood are considered of small moment. Childhood with them has no connection with manhood. The child may be anything, and make a giant in intellect, or a professor in morals. But it should be remembered that the very essence of good government lies in watching the connection of one act with another, in tracing the relation between the conduct of mature age and the little developments of childhood and youth. Good government respects ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... the least idiosyncratic country in Europe, Lesage is a citizen not of Brittany, not of France, not of Europe even, but of the world itself, in far more than the usual sense of cosmopolitanism. He has indeed coloured background and costume, incident and even personage itself so deeply with essence of "things of Spain," that, as has been said, the Spaniards, the most jealous of all nationalities except the smaller Celtic tribes, have claimed his work for themselves. Yet though Spain has one of the noblest languages, one of the greatest literatures ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... congealed by the frigidity of the air, whereby it acquireth no new form, but rather a consistence or determination of its defluency, and amitteth not its essence, but condition of fluidity. Neither doth there any thing properly conglaciate but water, or watery humidity, for the determination of quicksilver is properly fixation, that of milk coagulation, and that of oil and unctuous bodies only incrassation."—Is ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay

... book in England, next to the Bible, it is one of the least known, the reason being that about one-fifth is utterly unfit for translation, and the most sanguine Orientalist would not dare to render more than three-quarters of the remainder, [142] consequently the reader loses the contrast—the very essence of the book—between its brilliancy and dulness, its moral putrefaction and ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... the Bishops of Alexandria and Cesarea, and many others, as I learn, who accuse him of wrongly receiving and falsely teaching the doctrines of Christ; and for two hundred years has there prevailed the like uncertainty about the essence of the religion.' ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... fear I cannot keep Christmas- day aright, for I have not a peaceful Christmas spirit in me; and I know that I shall never get it by thinking, and reading, and understanding; for it passes all that, and lies far away beyond it, does peace, in the very essence of thine undivided, unmoved, absolute, eternal Godhead, which no change nor decay of this created world, nor sin or folly of men or devils, can ever alter; but which abideth for ever what it is, in perfect rest, and perfect power, and perfect love. O Father, ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... most urgent efforts on pressing problems, we will continue to pursue the benefits that only change can bring. For it always has been the essence of America that we want to move on, we understand that prosperity, progress and most of all peace cannot be had by standing still. A world of nations striving to preserve their independence, and of peoples aspiring for economic development ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... whole existing world treats as a chimera, or imposture; if I promised to show thee how to command the beings of air and ocean, how to accumulate wealth more easily than a child can gather pebbles on the shore, to place in thy hands the essence of the herbs which prolong life from age to age, the mystery of that attraction by which to awe all danger and disarm all violence and subdue man as the serpent charms the bird,—if I told thee that all these it was mine to possess and ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... generally of relatively high moral and intellectual standards; and such a condition actually existed among the Jews. These men who were habitually denied rights, and whose province it has been for centuries "to suffer and to think," learned not only to sympathize with their fellows (which is the essence of democracy and social justice), but also to accept voluntarily the leadership of those ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... time perhaps more attached to Simon Perkins than to any other creature in the world; that is to say, she did not happen to like anybody else better. How different from him, to whom she represented the very essence of that spiritual life which, in our several ways, we all try to live, which so few of us know how to attain by postponing its enjoyment for a few ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... he meant to present to his favourite actor at the Duke's Theatre, after he had exhibited himself in it half a dozen times at Whitehall, for the benefit of the great world, and at the Mulberry Garden for the admiration of the bona-robas. He was a fat, double-chinned little man, the essence of good nature, and perfectly unconscious of being an offence ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon

... and intolerable, and the right of voting was rendered so obscure and perplexed by the pretensions and proceedings of all the candidates for Oxfordshire in the last election, that the fundamentals of the constitution seemed to shake, and the very essence of parliaments to bo in danger. Actuated by these apprehensions, sir John Philips, a gentleman of Wales, who had long distinguished himself in the opposition by his courage and independent spirit, moved ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... facts which only occur at a height of ten thousand feet or more above the sea—mountain-sickness and its accompaniments—of which his imaginary comrade Solinus tries to cure him with a sponge dipped in essence. The ascents of Parnassus and Olympus, of which he speaks, are perhaps ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... rested on anything his still glance seemed to pass through it, into its essence. An inscrutable Fate had willed that his eyes should not rest on ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... is alleged, the world stands on a turtle, the turtle stands on money. No money no turtle. As for money, that stands on opinion, credit, trust, faith—things that, though highly material in connection with money, are still of immaterial essence. ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... novel duplicated the success of the play; in fact the book is greater than the play. A portentous clash of dominant personalities that form the essence of the play are necessarily touched upon but briefly in the short space of four acts. All this is narrated in the novel with a wealth of fascinating and absorbing detail, making it one of the most powerfully written ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... cadences and images of the first chapter—made a certain impression upon my imagination, and were (I think) my earliest initiation into the magic of literature. I was incapable of defining what I felt, but I certainly had a grip in the throat, which was in its essence a purely aesthetic emotion, when my Father read, in his pure, large, ringing voice, such passages as 'The heavens are the works of Thy hands. They shall perish, but Thou remainest, and they all shall wax old as doth a garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them up, and they shall be changed; ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... spiritualism a fraud! Why not apply to love the accommodating philosophy which takes the world as it is, and does not throw a savory fruit into the press under the pretext of extracting I know not what imaginary essence? Two beautiful eyes, a satin skin, white teeth, and a shapely foot and hand are of such positive and inestimable value! Is it not unreasonable, then, to place elsewhere than in them all the wealth of love? Intellect sustains its ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... friend. It is as follows:—"This mighty work, teeming with German grandeur and depth of feeling, having been given under my direction at Prague, had enabled me to acquire the most enthusiastic and instructive knowledge of its inner essence, by means of which I hope to produce it before the public here with full effect, provided as I am with all possible accessories for the purpose. Each performance will be a festival to me, permitting me to pay that homage to your mighty ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace

... so far as Henry VIII. was concerned, was not in essence doctrinal; neither was it primarily a schism between the English and Roman communions. It was rather an episode in the eternal dispute between Church and State. Throughout the quarrel, Henry and Elizabeth maintained that they were merely reasserting their ancient royal prerogative ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... made from fodder in seasons when there is no grass. Good fresh grass is the essence of all fine cheese, so silo or barn-fed cows can't give the kind ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... Now the essence of modern, as contrasted with ancient, physiological science appears to me to lie in its antagonism to animistic hypotheses and animistic phraseology. It offers physical explanations of vital phenomena, or frankly confesses that it has none to offer. And, ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... then, the conception of order, and purity, as the essence of the flower's being, no less than of the crystal's. A ruby is not made bright to scatter round it child-rubies; nor a flower, but in collateral and added honour, to give birth to ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... impression for some good purpose." CUMBERLAND, whose conversation was delightful, happily describes the species I have noticed. "Nonsense talked by men of wit and understanding in the hour of relaxation is of the very finest essence of conviviality, and a treat delicious to those who have the sense to comprehend it; but it implies a trust in the company not always to be risked." The truth is, that many, eminent for their genius, have been remarkable in society for a simplicity and playfulness ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... passion and poetry were eccentricities. Both Froude and Kinglake, when one met them at dinner, were very agreeable, very intelligent; and perhaps the English method was right, and art fragmentary by essence. History, like everything else, might be a field of scraps, like the refuse about a Staffordshire iron-furnace. One felt a little natural reluctance to decline and fall like Silas Wegg on the golden dust-heap of British refuse; but if one must, one could ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... poring upon the exquisite fineness of the skin, upon the rosy little mouth, still sucking comically at an imaginary meal, upon the dimpled, fragile hands, upon the peaceful relaxation of the body, till the very trusting, appealing essence of babyhood flooded her senses like a strong drug; and when the child was awake, and she could bathe the much creased little body, and handle the soft arms, and drop passionate kisses on the satin-smooth skin, and rub her cheek on the downy head, she found ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... also seen that Carlin was there—there to stay! . . . Something in her—that no fever or poison or death could take away—something for him! The thing was vivid to him for moments afterward; it lingered in dimmer outlines for hours; but as the days passed, he could only hold the vital essence of what he had learned ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... handkerchiefs and shawls, English and German, are sold, we passed to the shop of Mustapha, the scent dealer, where we established ourselves for a luncheon, consisting of pipes, coffee, and lemonade, while the various bottles of perfume,—viz. attar of roses and jasmine, musk, musk rat-tails, lemon essence, sandal wood, pastilles, dyes, all the sweet odours that form part and parcel of a sultana's toilet, were temptingly exposed to our view. From time to time, portions of these delicacies were rubbed on our whiskers, hands, and lips, to induce us to purchase; so ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... excitement and enthusiasm as the hideous effects of their discovery became apparent. Be sure an iron cross quickly hung over the iron heart that conceived and developed this filthy arm; for does it not offer the essence—quintessence of all "frightfulness?" Does it not challenge every human nerve-centre by its horror? Does it not, once proclaimed, by anticipation awake those very emotions of dread and dismay that make the stroke more ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... consequences of Yankee pride. After a fecund generation of such stories Edith Wharton in Ethan Frome has surpassed all her native rivals in tragic power and distinction of language; Robert Frost has been able to distil the essence of all of them in three slender books of verse; Edwin Arlington Robinson in a few brief poems has created the wistful Tilbury Town and has endowed it with pathos at once more haunting and more lasting than that of any New England village chronicled in prose; it has ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren

... and moral misfortune, animated at once by the last glow of those powers, and by the indefinable charm of a fond retrospection, displaying every faculty in autumn luxuriance, are so delightful that they sometimes seem to be the very cream and essence of his literary work in prose. Indeed, I have always wondered why they have not been published separately as a History of the Waverley Novels by their author. Yet the public, I believe, with what I fear must be called its usual lack of ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury

... state of things there were only two courses to be pursued: either to proclaim Napoleon II. constitutionally, as its essence, its duty, its ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... their monoplane as a bird; but they call it Taube—a dove. To think of calling this sinister adjunct of warfare a dove, which among modern peoples has always symbolized peace, seemed a most terrible bit of sarcasm. As an exquisite essence of irony I saw but one thing during our week-end in Louvain to match it, and that was a big van requisitioned from a Cologne florist's shop to use in a baggage train. It bore on its sides advertisements of potted plants and floral pieces—and ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... would his four-in-hand have been to-day? She was sure that no timid speculator had ever made a fortune; on the contrary, she had often heard it said that a flash of courage at the right moment was the very essence of success in speculation. She remembered ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... opened before him, and he emerged at once, if not into new powers, at least into a new use of them. The frame may grow like a tree; the faculties may grow as imperceptibly as the frame; but the mind acquires that knowledge of life which forms its exercise, its use, and perhaps its essence, by bounds and flights. This moonlight walk with my old and honoured Mentor, was the beginning of my mental adolescence. My manhood was still to come, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... is a self evident Proposition, which is the very essence of Truth. She lived under the hill, and if she's not gone, she lives there still. Nobody will presume to ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey

... the interior walls of the pyramids of Thebes. Our theism is the purification of the human mind. Man can paint, or make, or think nothing but man. He believes that the great material elements had their origin from his thought. And our philosophy finds one essence collected or distributed." [128] And a devout author, whose orthodoxy —whatever that may mean—is unquestioned, acknowledges that man adored the unknown power in the sun, and "in the moon, which bathes the night with ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... be stated as a general rule that history and folklore are not considered as complementary studies. Historians deny the validity of folklore as evidence of history, and folklorists ignore the essence of history which exists in folklore. Of late years it is true that Dr. Frazer, Prof. Ridgeway, Mr. Warde Fowler, Miss Harrison, Mr. Lang, and others have broken through this antagonism and shown that the two studies stand together; ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme

... add one-half teaspoon Anchovy Essence and two hard-cooked eggs cut in thin slices. Sprinkle all with finely chopped parsley. (For Drawn ...
— Fifty-Two Sunday Dinners - A Book of Recipes • Elizabeth O. Hiller

... fifteenth-century books, I had noticed that they were always beautiful by force of the mere typography, even without the added ornament, with which many of them are so lavishly supplied. And it was the essence of my undertaking to produce books which it would be a pleasure to look upon as pieces of printing and arrangement of type. Looking at my adventure from this point of view then, I found I had to consider chiefly the following things: the paper, the form of the type, the relative spacing ...
— The Art and Craft of Printing • William Morris

... fish stock, an onion we stew, And anchovy essence two spoonfuls we add; With butter, horse-radish, and lemons a few; Mushrooms, too, in ketchup is not very bad; And pickle of walnuts with onions chopped fine, To which there is ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]

... may be thus stated: Secrecy breeds suspicion; suspicion, doubt; doubt, distrust; and distrust produces lack of frankness, which is closely akin to secrecy. The result is a vicious circle, of which deceit and intrigue are the very essence. Secrecy and its natural consequences have given to diplomacy a popular reputation for trickery, for double-dealing, and in a more or less degree for unscrupulous and dishonest methods of obtaining ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... smiles and blushes. The divine poet whose volume she now held clasped caressingly in both hands had prepared the way for this, by sending through every vein and fibre of her being the sweet, subtile essence of passionate thought,—the spring-tide of youth and love, which makes the story of Romeo and Juliet glow and throb with immortal ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... problem has been solved in various ways in different countries; moderate democracies have adopted a low property qualification, while extreme democracy is based on the extension of citizenship to all adult persons with or without distinction of sex. The essence of modern representative government is that the people does not govern itself, but periodically elects those who shall govern on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... bread—no Victrola singing to me in the wilderness!—a thermos bottle, and one or two other things, and I can still spend the day in any wild place! I did not, of course, know, in those early days, what in his flavour attracted me. Afterward, I found that it was the very flavour and essence of Old France. Carlyle's impressions of historical persons interested me, but Montaigne was the most actual of living persons who spoke to me in a voice I recognized as wholly his. To be sure, I read him ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... so far only as it looks towards heaven. The fountain descends into two mirrors: the upper one reflects heaven, the lower receives earthly objects; thus is indicated the twofold character of art, which, on the one hand, in its spiritual essence comes with every good thought from above, and which, on the other, is derived from the outward forms of nature. This twofold sphere of art is signified by the position assigned to the assembled artists in relation to the two mirrors of water." Overbeck next proceeds to expound his pictorial judgments. ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson

... a good deal more likely that the other members of the syndicate were confederates in the murder as well as in the illicit trade. He must get his hands on them too. But if he arrested Archer he would thereby destroy all chance of accomplishing the greater feat. The very essence of success lay in lulling to rest any doubts that their operations were suspect which might have entered into the minds of the members of the syndicate. No, he would do nothing at present, and he once more felt himself up against the question which had baffled Hilliard ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts

... primitive and the eternal upon which a child starts and where she still lingered she saw her future before her, shining with new lights, and a wonderful conviction of bliss to come was over her. It was that conviction which comes at times to all unconquered souls, and which has the very essence of truth in it, since it overleaps the darkness of life that lies between them and that bliss. Suddenly Ellen felt that she was born to great happiness, and all that was to come was towards that end. Her heart beat loud in her ears. There was a ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... straight short course with hopeful interest, trusting it as a sign that the knowledge deposited in their minds by study, and transformed by conscience into inviolable convictions, was not only tolerated among Catholics, but might be reasonably held to be of the very essence of their system; who were willing to accept its principles as a possible solution of the difficulties they saw in Catholicism, and were even prepared to make its fate the touchstone of the real spirit of our hierarchy; or who deemed that while it lasted it promised them some immunity from the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... a sternness, an anger if need be—a power of destroying his own work, of altering his own order; but sunshine, fruitfulness, peace, and comfort, all show that love and mercy, beauty and order, are just as much attributes of his essence as awfulness and anger. ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley

... translation of Muller's words.)) I am convinced that if you can prove that a plant growing in a distant place under different conditions is more effective in fertilisation than one growing close by, you will make a great step in the essence of ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... before your pupils the practical duties of religion in all their details, especially their duties at home; to their parents and to their brothers and sisters. Do not, however, allow them to mistake morality for religion. Show them clearly what piety is, in its essence, and this you can do most ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... glimpse of the essence of his own life, had pointed the youth to the heart of all—for him to think of afterwards: he was not ready for it yet. He wanted eternal life: to love God with all our heart, and soul, and strength, and mind, is to know God, and to know ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... in conclusion, "is the home which God has given us. All that He—the One—has created is penetrated with His own essence, and bears witness to His Goodness. He who knows how to find Him sees Him everywhere, and lives at every instant in the enjoyment of His glory. Seek Him, and when ye have found Him fall down and sing praises before Him. But praise the Highest, not only in gratitude ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... this edition of the Holy Bible will be found to contain the essence of Biblical research and criticism, that lies dispersed through an immense ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman

... succeeded. I may call it the affectionately practical period. Instantly the blur vanishes. We were at our proper distance from the essence of things, and though infinity is something one yearns for passionately, one's normal condition has its meed of comfort. I remember once hearing a man in a Government office say that the pleasantest moment of his ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... France; no barrier will restrain him; no treaty will bind him; peace with him will never be other than a truce; he will use it simply to recover himself, and, as soon as he has done this, he will begin again;[12123] he is in his very essence anti-social. The mind of Europe in this respect is made up definitely and unshakably. One petty detail alone shows how unanimous and profound this conviction was. On the 7th of March the news reached Vienna that he had escaped from the island of Elba, without its being yet known ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... indeed, was there anything of such apparent revolutionary character in the facts which he unearthed; yet in their implications these facts were the most disconcerting of any that had been revealed since the days of Copernicus and Galileo. In its bald essence, Smith's discovery was simply this: that the fossils in the rocks, instead of being scattered haphazard, are arranged in regular systems, so that any given stratum of rock is labelled by its fossil population; and that the order of succession of such groups of fossils is always the same in any vertical ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... absolute scepticism, no logical argument can be advanced. But it is not difficult to see that scepticism of this kind is unreasonable. Descartes' 'methodical doubt', with which modern philosophy began, is not of this kind, but is rather the kind of criticism which we are asserting to be the essence of philosophy. His 'methodical doubt' consisted in doubting whatever seemed doubtful; in pausing, with each apparent piece of knowledge, to ask himself whether, on reflection, he could feel certain that he really knew it. This is the kind of criticism which constitutes philosophy. Some ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell

... worth dwelling upon—equally trivial in seeming, equally important in its essence—which is the selling of books by the great department stores, the big general shops, in America. Taking all classes of the British population together and both sexes—artisans and their wives, peasants in country districts, slum residents in London and other large cities,—what ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... loving-kindness towards all with whom he came in contact, he showed them what a Happy Land even the humblest, the youngest can create around them, what an atmosphere of love, what a foretaste of the existence whose essence is love, because God is its centre—that heaven wherein the pure in heart ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur

... of which trade, prosperity, and enlightenment would be introduced into the country, and their authority undermined. Indeed the Government itself, up to within a short time since, favored such a state of affairs; for bad roads belong to the essence of the old Spanish colonial policy, which was always directed to effect the isolation of the separate provinces of their great transmarine possessions, and to prevent the growth of a sense of national interest, in order to facilitate their government ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... not the round and rosy ones of the meadow, but the long, slender, dark crimson ones of the forest. One, two, three; no more on that vine; but each one as it touched my lips was a drop of nectar and a crumb of ambrosia, a concentrated essence of all the pungent sweetness of the wildwood, sapid, penetrating, and delicious. I tasted the odour of a hundred blossoms and the green shimmering of innumerable leaves and the sparkle of sifted sunbeams and the breath of highland breezes and the song of many birds and ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... another of her gifts. She could get the essence of a thing in a few words. "When we have won and set another frontier, the power of our nation will be such in the world that the Browns can never afford to attack us," he went on. "Indeed, no two of the big nations of Europe can afford to make war without our consent. We ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... we know that he who jumps about most actively will be the first to feel fatigue, Marquis," laughed Colville, pleasantly. "But you must not judge all England from these eastern people. It is here that you will find the concentrated essence of British tenacity and stolidity—the leaven that ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... see a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, and if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre; whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of reason itself, slays an immortality rather than a life. But lest I should be condemned of introducing license, while I oppose licensing, I refuse not the pains to be so much historical, as will serve to show what ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton

... Labbe? No? Well, then, it is the most Breton of all this Breton Brittany, which extends from the promontory of Raz to the Morbihan, of this land which contains the essence of the Breton manners, legends and customs. Even to-day this corner of the country has scarcely changed. I say 'even to-day,' for I now ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant

... sought an apothecary and asked him for some lozenges. "My poor master," she said, "can neither eat nor speak, and no one knows what his distemper is." She carried home the lozenges and returned next day weeping, and asked for an essence only given to those just about to die. Thus, in the evening, no one was surprised to hear the wretched shrieks and cries of Cassim's wife and Morgiana, telling everyone that Cassim was dead. The day after Morgiana went to an old cobbler near the gates of the town who opened ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various

... old monk live, practising all this with punctilious care as the essence of a holy life, and resting upon the fallacy that these cruel mortifyings of the flesh would greatly facilitate the acquisition of everlasting ease and joy in a better world; as if God knew not, better than themselves, what chastisements and afflictions were needful for them. We may sigh ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... he, But moulded in the rough With every fault and scar Ingrained, and plain for all to see: Even as the rocks and mountains are, Common perhaps, yet wrought of such true stuff That common nature in his essence grew To something which till then it never knew; Ay, common as a vast, refreshing wind That sweeps the continent, or as some star Which, 'mid a million, shines out well-defined: With honest soul on duty bent, A servant-soldier, President; Meekest ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop

... in the mathematical demonstration of universal gravitation, as it is in the atomic theory or in that of the survival of the fittest through natural selection. The English country doctor merely said in essence—"let me give you cowpox and you will not get smallpox." Unless the fact of this immunity is regarded as possessed by all the nations of the world for ever more there is nothing particularly impressive in it; and so it failed to impress his contemporaries. It is only when we contrast ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86

... these than in libraries of "Sludge the Medium" literature. Mere hard thinking does not involve profundity, any more than neurotic excitation involves spiritual ecstasy. De profundis, indeed, must the poet come: there must the deep rhythm of life have electrified his "volatile essence" to a living rhythmic joy. In this deep sense, and this only, the poet is born, not made. He may learn to fashion anew that which he hath seen: the depth of his insight depends upon the depth of his spiritual heritage. ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... this movement? From herself, since she is the great whole, outside of which consequently nothing can exist. Motion is a fashion of being which flows necessarily from the essence of matter; matter moves by its own energy; its motion is due to forces inherent in it; the variety of its movements, and of the phenomena resulting from them, comes from variation of the properties, the qualities, the combinations, originally found in the different ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley

... the Essence of the Common-wealth; which (to define it,) is "One Person, of whose Acts a great Multitude, by mutuall Covenants one with another, have made themselves every one the Author, to the end he may use the strength and means of them all, as he shall think expedient, ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... e'en to instinct are consign'd. I walk; I talk; I feel the sway Of power within This nice machine, It cannot but obey. This power, although with matter link'd, Is comprehended as distinct. Indeed 'tis comprehended better In truth and essence than is matter. O'er all our arts it is supreme. But how doth matter understand Or hear its sovereign lord's command? Here doth a difficulty seem: I see the tool obey the hand; But then the hand who guideth it; Who guides the stars in order fit? Perhaps each ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... it. We have recourse neither to miracles, nor to superior causes, above all when these effects are produced near, and at a short distance; but when the distance is great, the exhalation of the spirits, or essence, and of insensible corpuscles, does not equally satisfy us, no more than when we meet with things and effects which go beyond the known force of nature, such as foretelling future events, speaking unknown languages, i. e., languages unknown ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... may last, or how long the mind, so conditioned, can endure. It is not even how long the mind may continue to produce; for the mind, like a poor, half-exhausted field, urged with rain and fertilizers, may produce only potatoes, mullen, and cockle. The real question—the deep-down essence of it—is how long the mind, or soul, may retain the enthusiasm and passionate power of creation. That is the only true test of longevity; and when that ceases there is nothing left. The real duration of man-life ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... of wealth, or refinement, or name, or standing. Now, it does not follow that an Englishman is proud because he keeps liveried servants, and it by no means follows that an American lacks the essence of haughtiness because he finds fault ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... delicate or barbaric colors to the character of the Latin or French books he loved. And he would seclude himself in turn in the particular recess whose decor seemed best to correspond with the very essence of the work his caprice of the moment induced ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans

... perhaps no one has ever surpassed him in dissimulation, in profound hypocrisy, in indefatigable depravity. Derues was executed at thirty-two, and his whole life was steeped in vice; though happily so short, it is full of horror, and is only a tissue of criminal thoughts and deeds, a very essence of evil. He had no hesitation, no remorse, no repose, no relaxation; he seemed compelled to lie, to steal, to poison! Occasionally suspicion is aroused, the public has its doubts, and vague rumours hover ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... and memorable. As in the lecture room, those emblems, which are our symbolical as well as actual rallying points in all times of trouble or war, draped and covered the book shelves which contain the essence of almost all that human intelligence, human thought, human wit, man's invention and ingenuity has as yet brought to light. Here, historian and poet, geographer and engineer, humorist and preacher, dramatist ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... severally, produce on crossing a sterile progeny, there is a presumption that the sterility is due to the development in the hybrid of some substance which can only be formed by the meeting of two complementary factors. That some such account is correct in essence may be inferred from the well-known observation that if the hybrid is not totally sterile but only partially so, and thus is able to form some good germ-cells which develop into new individuals, the sterility of ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... sentences." Mellitus is used by Cicero, Horace, and Catullus. The editor of an English dictionary, as Lord Grenville has remarked, ought to know "that the ready conversion of our substances into verbs, participles, and participial adjectives is of the very essence of our tongue, derived from its Saxon origin, and a main source of ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray

... with a respondent beam on his countenance, "did you draw the ethereal essence that animates your frame? You toil for us—watch for us, and yet you never seem fatigued, never discomposed! How is this? What does ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... have crept into my heart; still, despite my efforts, they gather rapidly about me. I look forward, and feel sick at heart. Turbid are all the streams of earthly pleasures, and fully now I realize those lines, which once seemed the essence ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... black, who looked like a Will-o'-the-wisp. The Prime Minister was anxious about pin-making; a Bishop equally interested in a dissertation on the escapements of watches; a Field-Marshal not less intent on a new specific from the concentrated essence of hellebore. But what most delighted Popanilla was hearing a lecture from the most eminent lawyer and statesman in Vraibleusia on his first and favourite study of hydrostatics. His associations quite overcame him: all Fantaisie rushed ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli

... but liberty is the essence of senatorial disquisitions: liberty is the parent of truth; but truth and decency are sometimes at variance: all men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve; and there are many who have no claim either ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson

... the fact of occupying a throne, pretended to be of celestial origin, and had any of his subjects doubted the fact, he would have sent them into another world to discover it. He said that, being of a divine essence, he was not subject to terrestrial laws. If he ate, it was because he wished to do so; if he drank, it was because it gave him pleasure. It was impossible for him to drink any more. His ministers and his officers, all incurable drunkards, would have passed before ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne

... proved a genius in the invention of "plats," almost ruined his reputation. He proposed to fry the seal liver in penguin blubber, suggesting that the latter could be freed from all rankness.... The "fry" proved redolent of penguin, a concentrated essence of that peculiar flavour which faintly lingers in the meat and should not be emphasized. Three heroes got through their pannikins, but the rest of us decided to be contented with cocoa and biscuit ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... lasting than the issues of the moment. It is, indeed, true of Webster's speeches, as of all speeches, that they are known to posterity more by single brilliant passages than as wholes. In oratory the occasion is of the essence of the thing, and only those parts of an address which are permanent and universal in their appeal take their place in literature. But of such detachable passages there are happily many in Webster's orations. One great thought underlay ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... door-handle, was but the duration of a few brief seconds, and then making a tremendous call on his courage he felt his way to his fireplace, and picked up the poker. The tongs and shovel rattled treacherously, and he hoped that had not been heard, for the essence of his plan (though he had yet no idea what that plan was) must be silence till some awful surprise broke upon them. If only he could summon the police, he could come rushing downstairs with his poker, as the professional supporters of the law gained an entrance to his house, but unfortunately ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson

... Thou rather with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt Splitt'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, Than the soft myrtle; but man, proud man, Drest in a little brief authority, Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd, His glassy essence, like an angry ape, Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven, ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield

... alive under the appearances by which it is concealed. The inexhaustible volcano is at work amongst us, not only since 1848, but for three hundred years. The abjuration of law, and even of all principle of right, is only the form or expression; the essence of our malady is the denial of God and His Church. The revolution is apostacy, the disunion of the nation is schism, its anarchy Atheism. Whoever, like myself, has witnessed the public negotiations of Germany, knows full well that the political struggle was, ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... with age, whose spirit of romance is not yet quenched, who are content to ramble through the world in a pleasant dream, rather than ever waken again to its harsh realities. We are alchemists who would extract the essence of perpetual youth from dust and ashes, tempt coy Truth in many light and airy forms from the bottom of her well, and discover one crumb of comfort or one grain of good in the commonest and least-regarded matter ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... brimstone, to the full, if not worse, than Mr. Dryden's Verse, Whether inspir'd with a Diviner Lust his father got him, &c. [Footnote: Absalom and Achit.] which is spoken only in the figurative Person of David; yet he says 'tis downright defiance of the Living God, and the very Essence and Spirit of Blasphemy. [Footnote: Collier p. 184.] And here now his Stomach wambled more terribly than before; so that if his Friend were by, he must of necessity hold the Bason. Oh me! he reaches and reaches, and first up ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet

... captains. But then they are practical men, Jabaster; they have eyes and use them. They know the difference of times and seasons. But this Abidan, he has no other thought but the rebuilding of the temple: a narrow-souled bigot, who would sacrifice the essence to the form. The rising temple soon would fall again with such constructors. Why, sir, what think you, this same Abidan preached in the camp against my entry into what the quaint fanatic chooses to call "Babylon," because he had seen what he ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... of the universe are just intuitions put into words. You've carried out an enormous spiritual experiment to prove what all religions have always asserted however obscurely. All religion teaches that you can't eat your cake and have it. That's the essence of religion, and you, formerly a cut-and-dried scientist, have gone and proved it to the whole world for eternity. ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne

... should not have ventured to treat them afresh; the rest are personally known to me or are, like "Joseph the Dreamer," the artistic typification of many souls through which the great Ghetto dream has passed. Artistic truth is for me literally the highest truth: art may seize the essence of persons and movements no less truly, and certainly far more vitally, than a scientific generalization unifies a chaos of phenomena. Time and Space are only the conditions through which spiritual facts straggle. Hence I have here and there permitted myself liberties with these ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... of Vedrine. Rather than smooth away the force, he gives his work an unfinished earthy surface, as of something still in the rock. But as the spectator gazed and began to grasp, the huge form became distinct with that impressive and attractive power which is the essence of fine art. ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... considered efficacious in the most dangerous disorders. The apothecary inquired who was ill. She replied, with a sigh, Her good master, Cassim himself, and that he could neither eat nor speak. In the evening Morgiana went to the same druggist's again, and with tears in her eyes, asked for an essence which they used to give to sick people only when at the last extremity. "Alas!" said she, taking it from the apothecary, "I am afraid that this remedy will have no better effect than the lozenges; and that I shall lose ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... christian faith." To these words the inquisitor replied, "Thou art no christian, but an absurd heretic, and without conversion a member of perdition." The prisoner then told him, it was not consistent with the nature and essence of religion and charity to convince by opprobrious speeches, racks, and torments, but by arguments deduced from the scriptures; and that all other methods would with ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox



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