"Infinitesimal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... words of Phoebe rang in the ears of the big doctor as he bent over Mother Bab's sightless eyes and began the tedious operation. His hands moved skilfully, with infinite precision, cutting to the infinitesimal fraction ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... procession of the ages, man was developed on this planet, the change worked by his appearance was at first slight. Further ages passed, while he groped and struggled by infinitesimal degrees upward through the lower grades of savagery; for the general law is that life which is advanced and complex, whatever its nature, changes more quickly than simpler and less advanced forms. The life of savages changes and advances with extreme slowness, and groups of savages influence ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... he took up arms, at the head of only one hundred and thirty men, in connection with the treacherous murder by a rival chieftain of his father and grandfather, who had ruled over a petty principality of almost infinitesimal extent; and he finally succeeded three years later in securing from the Chinese, who had been arrayed against him, not only the surrender of the murderer, but also a sum of money and some robes of honour. He was further successful in negotiating a treaty, under the terms of which ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... than we—in a word, because they live more than we. Let us envy them, if at all, because they have more than we to give to God and men, and answer with a fuller and more eager impulse to the breath of inspiration, and can throw a less infinitesimal weight into the scale of the ...
— Strong Souls - A Sermon • Charles Beard
... send me with a rush back to my own naked land and the figures scattered upon it. While I was in the very act of yearning toward the new forms that Cleric brought up before me, my mind plunged away from me, and I suddenly found myself thinking of the places and people of my own infinitesimal past. They stood out strengthened and simplified now, like the image of the plough against the sun. They were all I had for an answer to the new appeal. I begrudged the room that Jake and Otto and Russian Peter took up in my ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... and their very name implies difference, and difference implies relation, not to the one, which is not, but to one another. And they are others of each other not as units but as infinities, the least of which is also infinity, and capable of infinitesimal division. And they will have no unity or number, but only a semblance of unity and number; and the least of them will appear large and manifold in comparison with the infinitesimal fractions into which it may be divided. Further, each particle will have the appearance ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... gold, while they were lighter than dust in their meaning to Philip's mind; words which such as the specksioneer used as counters to beguile and lead astray silly women. It was for him to prove his constancy by action; and the chances of his giving such proof were infinitesimal in Philip's estimation. But should the latter mention the bare fact of Kinraid's impressment to Robson? That would have been the natural course of things, remembering that the last time Philip had seen either, they were in each other's company. ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... nevertheless, differ completely in expression (if such a term may be allowed) one from the other; reflecting the various characters of their inhabitants by such fine varieties of effect in the furniture-features generally common to all, as are often, like the infinitesimal varieties of eyes, noses, and mouths, too intricately minute to be traceable. Now, the parlor of Mr. Thorpe's house was neat, clean, comfortably and sensibly furnished. It was of the average size. It had the usual side-board, dining-table, ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Eighth—Cuttle-fish, wafer cakes, Nipon tea. Here, if tired you can stop at the end of about two hours' ankle-ache. All is cleanly, well spiced with talk, and served with the utmost politeness. Sipping tea may be substituted for the infinitesimal whiffs of polite smoking. A grand dinner is much more elaborate; at least, so far as the variety of smokes is concerned. After dinner, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... couple made their appearance, I remarked silently, in regard to Grandma Keeler's hair, what proved afterward to be its usual holiday morning arrangement. It was confined in six infinitesimal braids which appeared to be sprouting out, perpendicularly, in all directions from her head. The effect of redundancy and expansiveness thus heightened and increased on Grandma's features was ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... transparent, and moves about by executing a vibratile motion with its long appendage. Within this speck of matter are hidden the multifarious forces which, under certain favorable conditions, result in organization. Magnify this infinitesimal atom a thousand times, and no congeries of formative powers is perceived wherewith to work out the wonders of its existence. Yet it contains the principle, which is the contribution on the part of the male toward the generation ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... be a slight tinge of calculation even in our highest purposes. But the misfortune about you is that you can see nothing but the calculation, though it may be only an infinitesimal ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... a light step above him, and involuntarily glancing up, saw the light shape of lady Arctura come round the curve of the spiral stair, descending rather slowly and very softly, as if her feet were thinking. She checked herself for an infinitesimal moment, then moved on again. Donal stood with bended head as she passed. If she acknowledged his obeisance it was with the slightest return, but she lifted her eyes to his face with a look that seemed ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... freedom. The basic principle of the Trade Union, the right and usefulness of collective bargaining, inheres in the conditions of machine-dominated and capitalized industry. In this form of labor organization the individual worker cannot bargain individually; his place in the factory is too infinitesimal and his power measured by that of his employer too invisible for such personal alignment. This fact is now not questioned by any but those so enamoured of old methods of control of the worker by those who hire him that they cannot see what has ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... as we pass from printed matter to life itself, as soon as we throw a glance at society, we are struck by the infinitesimal part played by the Government. Balzac already has remarked how millions of peasants spend the whole of their lives without knowing anything about the State, save the heavy taxes they are compelled to pay. Every day millions of transactions ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... should have been found in your reign able to know all the arts and to transmit them to posterity. Everything is here, from the way of making a pin to that of casting and of aiming your cannon; from the infinitesimal to the infinite. Thank God for having given birth in your kingdom to men who have thus served the whole world. Other nations are obliged to buy the "Encyclopaedia," or to imitate it. Take all I have, if you like, but give me ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... Aleck, who, following his custom, sprang upon Angela and licked her hand, and behind Aleck, looking somewhat confused, but handsome and happy—for his was one of those faces that become handsome when their owners are happy—came Aleck's master. And then there ensued an infinitesimal ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... 250,000,000 years: the being who commenced the task at the time that our solar system could have been no more than a formless nebula, would not yet have reached the end."[92] Biology, with its protoplasmic elements, its plastids, gemmules, hypotheses on hereditary transmission by means of infinitesimal subdivisions; the theory of evolution, which speaks off-hand of periods of a hundred thousand years; and many other scientific theses that I omit, offer fine material ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... abominably cruel and barbarous operation of stripping the sole is the exposure of all canker, and as this can be done with equal certainty with the aid of the hot iron, there can be no necessity for performing it. The pain of cauterizing cankered tissue, which is a necessary operation, is infinitesimal (canker largely destroying sensation), compared with the pain produced in the totally unnecessary process of tearing healthy horn from a ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... for the present he and Harold were content to go through life never saying anything about themselves to anybody. In fact, they hardly ever thought of Henrietta. She would have been astonished if she had known what an infinitesimal difference ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... intellects and plunged into the problem of creating an encephalograph that would record the infinitesimal irregularities that were superimposed upon the great waves. Their operation became large; they bought the old structure on top of the hill and moved in, bag and baggage. They cohabited but did not live together for almost a year; Paul Brennan finally pointed out that Organized Society might ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... Lady Caroom sighed, helping herself to an infinitesimal portion of a wonderful savoury. "Don't talk about the place. I know I shall have an attack of ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... telescope be able to see us? I doubted it. The pinpoint of the Planetara's infinitesimal bulk would ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... delicate wheels of our watches. The merchant, with his lens, examines the separate threads of woolen and silk fabrics to determine the strength and value of the material. The physician, with his invaluable microscope, counts the number of infinitesimal corpuscles in the blood and bases his prescription on that count; he examines the sputum of a patient to determine whether tuberculosis wastes the system. The bacteriologist with the same instrument scrutinizes ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... Infinitesimal waves broke on the sunny white sand with a low musical tinkle, across the bay one could see the delicate chain of islands rising with their feathery trees into the blue, warding off the breakers and the storms of the open sea beyond. In here, the peaceful water murmured to itself and repeated ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... of the earth, its components how formed, and of what—all animal creation—the mechanism of the universe, its motions—the exact perfection of every creation for the design of that creation; see and know God's will, and God's wisdom, and God's power in all of them; descend to the minor and most infinitesimal creation; learn its organization, and see God here with a design, and a perfect organization, to work it out—learn truth, where only truth exists, from God in all created nature, and teach this, that all may learn and conserve to the ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... moment they listened to the infinitesimal noises of the night, straining their ears in the stillness. The river wound past them with a faint, sibilant sound like a child chuckling in its sleep; an owl hooted somewhere in the far-off sanctuary of the trees. Betty drew her breath with a little sigh that was ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... part, but two kinds of men living in it, living on opposite sides of the same truths glaring at each other. On the one hand the anaemically spiritual, broad, big, pallid men, and on the other the funny, infinitesimal, provincial, matter cornered, ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the confines of the universe must ever remain concealed from us, and of the end we know no more than of the beginning. Inconceivable as is to us the lapse of "geological time," it is no more than "a mere moment of the past, a mere infinitesimal portion of eternity." Well may "the human heart, that weeps and trembles," say, with Richter's pilgrim through celestial space, "I will go no farther; for the spirit of man acheth with this infinity. Insufferable ...
— The Ancient Life History of the Earth • Henry Alleyne Nicholson
... it was bliss to be alive. The air was full of noteworthy work done by the older men of the place and of hopes that one might find a way to get a little working power one's self. One longed to be a doer of the word, not a hearer only, a creator of his own infinitesimal fraction of the product, bound in God's name to produce when ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... fall as he crossed an arroyo. The canteen, slung over his shoulder, struck a sharp point of rock that started one of the seams. The leak was infinitesimal. The felt cover of the canteen absorbed the drip, which evaporated. When he arrived at the water-hole, that was dry. His canteen felt strangely light. He could not remember having used so much water. He changed ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the whole, that it possesses one-tenth of the soul-forming properties claimed for it in the advertisement—which I take to be a generous estimate—its effect upon the world at large still remains infinitesimal." ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... been previously shown that an impacted colon is neither more nor less than a prolific hot-bed for the wholesale breeding of disease germs—microbes—those infinitesimal organisms which science has demonstrated to be the cause of many phases of disease, or rather, the toxins (poisons) they produce, cause disease. Of course, there are harmless micro-organisms as well ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... Mr Hazlit, nodding approval. "Now," he continued, with much gravity, "if I were to make the necessary calculation—which, I may remark, would be a question in proportion running into what I may be allowed to style infinitesimal fractions—I would probably find out that the proportion payable to one would be a shilling, to another half a sovereign, to another a pound or so, while to many would accrue so small a fraction of a farthing that no suitable coin of this realm could be found wherewith ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... of an enthusiastic Galilean youth, and let us not desire that it may ever come true. Let us rather gladly consent to be crushed into indistinguishable dust, with no hope of record: rejoicing only if some infinitesimal portion of the good work may be achieved by our obliteration, and content to be remembered only in that anthem which in the future it will be ordained shall be sung in our religious services in honour of all holy apostles and martyrs who ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... loose one hundred meter cable that attached it to its anchor, and which had had fifteen meters of slack when the ship first began its infinitesimal movement, ...
— Where I Wasn't Going • Walt Richmond
... to all who study the evening skies. He has succeeded in throwing out his measure-line to one of the fixed stars. Hitherto measurement has virtually stopped with our own solar system. The angles which form the basis of calculations for the remoter stellar spaces are so infinitesimal that human vision can take no certain and uniform cognizance of them. Until now science could only draw its great circle and say: Within this the millions of suns which shine upon the earth from all directions are not; how far they really are beyond, no one can tell, only ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, November 1887 - Volume 1, Number 10 • Various
... indemnity, signed guarantee indemnizacion, indemnity (compensation for loss) indicar, to indicate, to point out indigena, native industria, industry inercia, idleness, inertia infeliz, unhappy infimo, infinitesimal infinidad, an infinite number informe, report informes, information(s), references informar (de), to inform of, to acquaint with ingeniero, engineer ingratitud, ingratitude ingresos netos, net revenue ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... utility. Beyond and above this range, there is an unlimited realm of truth, the knowledge of which is inestimably precious for the higher culture of the mind and character. In this realm, of which only an infinitesimal portion can be conquered during an earthly lifetime, there is no unfruitful region,—there is no department of nature, of psychology, or of social science, through which the mind may not be expanded, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... wrong. Besides, if it is wrong, wrong in some infinitesimal degree, one must put up with it. Sarah Thompson is very respectable; the only question is ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... however, in the division of the spoils. The Burgundian treasure was distributed among Rene's allies, and the ignorant soldiers received articles worth many times their pay, which they, in many cases, disposed of for an infinitesimal part of ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... long pause after this was said; every one present seemed to breathe more freely. I had heard of homoeopathy, and something about infinitesimal doses, but had never seen the medicine used, neither did I know any thing about the mode in which it was ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... it was a wild, grand upstirring of the modem democrat against the aristocratic, against the idea of caste and the privilege of living on the labor of others. This atom of humanity (how infinitesimal this drop in the ocean of humanity!) was feeling the name-less longing of expanding personality, and had already pierced the conventions of society and declared as nil the laws of the land-laws that were survivals ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... of, which could never have been if their existence included a contradiction in it; I answer that upon a thorough examination it will not be found that in any instance it is necessary to make use of or conceive infinitesimal parts of finite lines, or even quantities less than the minimum sensible; nay, it will be evident this is never ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... into its waterfront turmoil, an infinitesimal human atom added to it. His tiny craft fixed itself upon the outer edge of the wriggling river life like a coral cell attaching itself to a slow growing atoll. From there he worked his way inshore, crawling over the craft ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... character. You have no mathematics in you. You are fit for treason, stratagems, and spoils.—Shakespeare. Your narrow intellect cannot understand and appreciate a generous mind. There is all the difference between you and a Surd, if I may say it, which intervenes between an infinitesimal and an infinite. Why, I will even venture to say that you do not comprehend the Problem of ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... weak enough when awake, threatened several times to pull the house down, by her violence in this condition. She had strength like a lion, and no man could manage her. I saw the same thing in the hospital later. This aunt is now healthy; not cured by her own prescriptions or the magnetic or infinitesimal doses of Dr. Arthur Lutze, but by a strong emotion which took possession of her at the time of my great-aunt's death. She is not sorry that she has lost all these strange powers, but heartily glad ...
— A Practical Illustration of Woman's Right to Labor - A Letter from Marie E. Zakrzewska, M.D. Late of Berlin, Prussia • Marie E. Zakrzewska
... seizes its prey. When we think of the exceeding smallness of the creatures thus preyed upon, and consider the fact that each little thing must obtain food by making war upon some creatures still smaller than itself, we are led almost in spite of ourselves into that mysteriously metaphysical question—infinitesimal divisibility; which may be translated thus—the endless division and subdivision of atoms. This subject has puzzled the heads of the profoundest philosophers of all ages; we will not, therefore, puzzle our readers with ...
— The Ocean and its Wonders • R.M. Ballantyne
... gt^2/2. If Kepler and Newton could take liberties with the sun and moon, an obscure person in a remote wilderness like La Fayette Square could take liberties with Congress, and venture to multiply half its attraction into the square of its time. He had only to find a value, even infinitesimal, for its attraction at any given time. A historical formula that should satisfy the conditions of the stellar universe weighed heavily on his mind; but a trifling matter like this was one in which he could look for no help from anybody — he could look ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... segregation of industries has come an almost infinitesimal division and specialization of labour. Under a right industrial system this would be reduced, not magnified. The dignity of labour and the joy of creation demand that in so far as possible each man should ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... voice leaves shook, and a boy came striding into the sunlight. In one hand he trailed a gun, and at his heels trotted a waggish spaniel of immense importance and infinitesimal size. In his other hand the boy carried by the legs a splendid cock-grouse, ruffled and hunger-compelling. The boy, perhaps two years older than Aladdin, was big and strong for his age, and bore his shining ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... the curb, proceeded to superintend the unloading. A succession of hasty directions to the leading cabman, one of the most docile of men, ended in the performance of a marvellous piece of jugglery with the big trunk, which he first balanced for an infinitesimal period of time on his nose, and then ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... not the actual material cause of the world, as clay of a jar, but the illusory material cause, as a rope might be of a snake"; and the spirit of man "is that Spirit, personalised and limited by the power of illusion; and the life of every living spirit is nothing but an infinitesimal arc of the one endless circle of ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... thermal units. It is, even then, barely 10 per cent. of the total energy. The most convinced flesh eaters, those who buy 400 grs. of meat a day for their consumption, must learn, willingly or unwillingly, that the animal element enters only in an infinitesimal part into their real ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... by throat ailments, more or less serious, occurs with startling frequency, and no other reason is assigned for it than the irresponsible, indefinite one that the voice broke down under training. Of the infinitesimal number of successful students—that is to say, of those who, having completed their studies, come before the public as professional singers—so few escape the common lot that it would almost appear as if a fatality attended the following of the vocal art; ...
— The Mechanism of the Human Voice • Emil Behnke
... regaining by other processes. The fluid which is falling from a higher to a lower level, carries with it the velocity due to its revolution with the earth at a greater distance from its centre. It will therefore accelerate, although to an almost infinitesimal extent, the earth's daily rotation. The sum of all these increments of velocity, arising from the descent of all the falling waters on the earth's surface, would in time become perceptible, did not nature, by the process of evaporation, ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... scanty, small, diminutive, little, narrow, short, tiny, inconsiderable, mean, paltry, slender, trifling, infinitesimal, microscopic, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... of the infinitesimal order; that is to say, a coat, and yet as little of a coat as possible—very near a jacket, in fact. The seams, of course, were outside, and were it not for the extreme strength and evenness of the sewing and the evident intention of the thing, an ignorant person might ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... all the efforts of men who entrust to others the troublesome execution of humane intentions! The scales of earthly justice are poised in their quivering equilibrium, not by huge hundred-weights, but by infinitesimal grains, needing the most wary caution, the most considerate patience, the most delicate touch, to arrange or readjust. Few of our errors, national or individual, come from the design to be unjust; most of ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... named Gabriel Jean Anne Victor Benjamin George Ferdinand Charles Edward Rusticoli, Comte de la Palferine. The Rusticolis came to France with Catherine de Medici, having been ousted about that time from their infinitesimal Tuscan sovereignty. They are distantly related to the house of Este, and connected by marriage to the Guises. On the day of Saint-Bartholomew they slew a goodly number of Protestants, and Charles IX. bestowed the hand of the heiress ...
— A Prince of Bohemia • Honore de Balzac
... shivering by turns. It was cold—so cold that the snow which came sweeping and swirling with the wind was like granite-dust; it clicked, clicked, clicked against the glass—a bombardment of untold billions of infinitesimal projectiles fighting to break in. In the edge of the forest it was probably forty degrees below zero. Within the coaches there still remained some little warmth. The burning lamps radiated it and the presence of many people added to it. But it was cold, and growing colder. A gray ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... through the gates, and was approaching the door, when he saw an unwelcome sight which brought him to a sudden stop. That sight was a long feathery tail, waving above a clump of ferns to the left. Was it possible that the monster was loose? The gate was between Mr Bastian and that tail, in an infinitesimal space of time. Ignorant of the presence of the enemy, the wind being in the wrong direction, Jack finished at leisure his inspection of the ferns, and bounded ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... and examined the picture. It was almost finished, in that last stage where the artist can play with his creation, fondly touching and perfecting infinitesimal details, knowing that the thing has really been "pulled off." And it was triumphantly done! Even to Milly's untutored eyes, the triumph of it was indubitable. There the Russian stood on her thin, lithe haunches, her ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... series of works which run through the whole range of the art, from lowest relief to highest; from things of which the relief is so infinitesimal that they seem as if dreamed into existence rather than wrought in bronze or marble to things which are virtually engaged statues; from things which you fear a chance touch might brush away, like a pastel of Whistler's, to things as solid and enduring in ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... unimaginative and ill-disciplined as to prefer such immediate and tangible rewards as a half-crown for their vote, a donation to their football club or local charity, or a gracious word from an interested lady, to their distant and infinitesimal share in the direction of national government. This participation is, in fact, so minute to the individual voter and so intangible in its operation, that a high degree of education is required to appreciate its value; ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... the spirit and the flesh, between the seen and the unseen, the struggle infinite and always. Where life is, that must be. And the vision of man's little, misshapen existence,—the incomplete and infinitesimal unit he is,—and also the significance of him,—this material atom, the symbol, the weapon of the spirit, shone forth before them. This the woman had felt in giving herself to him, that the spirit within was freed by the touch ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... face toward that obscure quarter of the town where human beings who could not afford to rest or to dine might at least secure a corner in which to "lodge" and the right, if not the appetite, to "eat," for an infinitesimal sum; for it was in this quarter that strange as it might, seem, her instinct told her her search must be made—in this quarter that Edgar Poe, the rich merchant's pampered foster-child, Edgar Poe, the poet, the scholar, the exquisite in dress, in taste and in manners, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... hard to find a walk more solitary and at the same time more exciting to the mind. Crowds of ducks and sea-gulls hover over the sea. Sandpipers trot in and out by troops after the retiring waves, trilling together in a chorus of infinitesimal song. Strange sea-tangles, new to the European eye, the bones of whales, or sometimes a whole whale's carcase, white with carrion-gulls and poisoning the wind, lie scattered here and there along the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... down to hold on to the limber and think at the same time of the great game of which I had become an infinitesimal part. I was sitting on the right hand side of the limber close to the wheel and, before long, the effort to think and hold on at the same time was too much for me, and I fell into a fairly sound sleep, Sergeant Johnson, my ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... great tacit corporation of lawyers, would have to yield. The supremacy of Eldon was beginning to be shaken. Sir Robert Peel began to reform the criminal law about 1827, taking up the work upon which Bentham's friend and disciple, Romilly, had laboured for years with infinitesimal results. Commissions were appointed to work upon legal reforms. With parliamentary reform an era of rapid and far-reaching changes set in, though Bentham died on the eve of entering the land ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... like it at all," Mangan said, frankly. "People will think the book has something to do with the American civil war. However, don't take my opinion at all. My connection with literature is almost infinitesimal—I'm merely a ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... off your perch!" said the other man, who wore glasses. "Your premises won't come out in the wash. You wind-jammers who apply bandy-legged theories to concrete categorical syllogisms send logical conclusions skallybootin' into the infinitesimal ragbag. You can't pull my leg with an old sophism with whiskers on it. You quote Marx and Hyndman and Kautsky—what are they?—shines! Tolstoi?—his garret is full of rats. I put it to you over the ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... nearest that of most of us. And it is curious to notice how we rejoice in, rather than lament, this inevitable result of that great law of differentiation, which one may figure as a terrible machine hour after hour chopping up mankind into more and more infinitesimal fragments. We feel a pride in being spoken of as 'specialists'—and yet what is a specialist? The nine-hundred-and-ninety-ninth part of a man. Call me not an entomologist, call me a lepidopterist, if you will—though, ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... good is your money to you?" insisted Shirley. "You are able to spend only an infinitesimal part of it. You cannot even give it away, for nobody ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... of ours is so large but that His All-Ownership can meet it. "Do not two sparrows sell for a half-penny?" is our Lord's illustration on this point, "yet not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father's leave. But as for you," He reasons, in order that we may understand the infinitesimal nature of God's care, "the very hairs on your heads are all ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... far more liable to fatal attacks. But while large doses of alcohol are, of course, more obviously injurious, it would be absurd to imagine that lesser quantities are entirely without influence in the same direction. It has, indeed, been shown by Dr. Ridge, that even infinitesimal quantities of alcohol, such as one part in 5,000, cause a more rapid multiplication of the bacillus subtilis and other bacilli of decomposition, while, by the same quantities, the growth of both animal and vegetable protoplasm is retarded. Hence there can be no longer any question ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... from the purely reflex, through the consensual, to the voluntary. Taking the case Mr. Bain cites, it is manifest that from a heat of such moderate degree that the withdrawal from it is wholly voluntary, we may advance by infinitesimal steps to a heat which compels involuntary withdrawal; and that there is a stage at which the voluntary and involuntary actions are mixed. But the difficulty of absolute discrimination is no reason for neglecting the broad general contrast; any more than it is for confounding ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... bottom of the cylinder was a luminous speck like a fire seen from a long way off. Waves and jags of angry light burst from it ceaselessly, this way and that. The restless mass was alive, active, burning. Infinitesimal though its dimensions were it gave a sense of illimitable force and power, a ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... in a simple, unconventional gown of green linen, with a Puritan collar, and a wide white ribbon at the waist. A few superfluous touches to her hair, and equally superfluous tweaks to the bow of her ribbon belt, wrought some infinitesimal improvement in the picture, which no mere man, hungering for the sight and sound of her, would be the least likely to detect. Then half a dozen swift steps brought her to his door: the one that communicated with ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... glowed in its splendor, and million after million vanished with longing eyes fixed on the arch of light through which the ebbing sea would float them when its work was done. I felt no fear, only the deepest awe, for I seemed such an infinitesimal atom of the countless host that I forgot myself. Nearer and nearer came the flood, till its breath blew on my cheeks, and I, too, leaned to meet it, longing to be taken. A great wave rolled up before me, and through ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... be educated were four young girls from Philadelphia, older than the newcomer by two years, and who, also, had left America for the first time. They brought with them the unconquerable aversion to negro blood and that wonderful keenness in discovering it, even in the most infinitesimal degree, which distinguishes real Yankees. Little Lydia Chapron, having been entered as French, they at first hesitated in the face of a suspicion speedily converted into a certainty and that certainty into an aversion, which ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... either a very large evaporating-surface or steam jets are required. The small open vessels or saucers on which some people rely, even when located in the air-passages of a hot-air furnace, have only an infinitesimal influence. Vertical wicks of felt with their lower ends in water kept hot by the heating apparatus yield a rapid supply of moisture. Evaporation is greatly facilitated if the water or wicks are placed ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... voted a "pukka[12] bounder" by that isolated community of Englishmen, who played as hard as they worked, and invariably "played the game"; a code of morals which had apparently been left out of Kresney's desultory education. The fact revealed itself in a hundred infinitesimal ways, and each revelation added a fresh stone to the wall that sprang up apace between himself ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... whole..... From that point, from that position, there is a work to be done, which can be done from no other. The Lonely Eternal looks out through these eyes, because it must see all things; and there are things no eyes can see but these, no other hands do. This point is an infinitesimal part of the whole; but without its full and proper functioning, the Whole falls short in that much:—because of your or my petty omissions, the Universe limps and goes lame.—Into this position, as into all others impartially, the One Life which is Tao flows, adapting itself through aeons ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the case of the boy who, after promising not to drive over thirty miles an hour, goes speeding on the highway and gets arrested. The fine which has to be paid by father is an infinitesimal part of the harm and hurt which ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... Turning in the direction of the homely, familiar note, we beheld a garden. In this garden walked the cock—a two-legged gentleman of gorgeous plumage. If abroad for purely constitutional purposes, the crowing chanticleer must be forced to pass the same objects many times in review. Of all infinitesimal, microscopic gardens, this one, surely, was a model in minuteness. Yet it was an entirely self-respecting little garden. It was not much larger than a generous-sized pocket handkerchief; yet how much talent—for growing—may be hidden ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the woman's heart literally stood still when at last she detected an infinitesimal flurry of dust away on the far distance of the trail. A mad desire surged through her to flee for hiding to those vast purple solitudes she knew to lie in the heart ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... floating with the current. This caused some delay and gave the gnats time to accumulate. Before I had got one foot half dressed I was enveloped in a black mist that settled upon my hands and neck and face, filling my ears with infinitesimal pipings and covering my flesh with infinitesimal bitings. I thought I should have to flee to the friendly fumes of the old stable, with "one stocking off and one stocking on;" but I got my shoe on at last, though not without many amusing ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... produces excellent cotton, which is cultivated, however, only in infinitesimal quantities. Indigo, called by the natives anil, grows wild. The tobacco of the district is especially renowned, and in the Cordillera, the tops of which compose the background of the beautiful region lying to the east of the town, mate is grown successfully. The very name ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... ourselves that we are better equipped than animals can be to divine their cause; but, apart from the fact that this supposition rests on no very solid foundation, events of this nature are rare and infinitesimal, compared with the vast mass of others that elude comprehension; and all, the pettiest and the most sublime, the best known and the most inexplicable, the nearest and the most distant, come to pass in a night so profound that ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Maude's new life:—cleaning pans, washing jars, sorting herbs, scouring pails, running numberless infinitesimal errands, doing everything that nobody else liked, hard-worked from morning to night, and called up from her hard pallet to recommence her toil before she had realised that she was asleep. Ursula's temper, too, did not improve with time; and Parnel, the associate and contemporary of Maude, ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... straight from notes. Speaking of a rivulet, he says: "It was crossed by two bridges, one immensely old and terribly delapidated, the other old enough, but in better repair—went and drank under the oldest bridge of the two." The book is large and strong enough to stand many such infinitesimal blemishes. ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... lost in this immensity, felt themselves invaded by the universal tremor, oblivious to all that but a short time before had constituted their lives. They forgot the presence of the city on the other side of the mountain; the existence of humanity, of which they were infinitesimal parts.... Completely alone, penetrating each other through their pupils! Thus, thus forever! There was a crackling sound in the dark, like dry ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... possesses it, but I am equally certain I have never before enjoyed the honor of being presented to your lordship!" said John Steele. The words were punctiliously spoken, his accents as cold as the other's. An infinitesimal trace of constraint seemed to have crept into the box; Steele turned and holding out his hand, thanked Sir Charles and ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... transmitted to the offspring of the bird, which in turn develops its already improved legs by its individual efforts, and transmits the improved tendency. Generation after generation this is repeated, until the sum of the infinitesimal variations, all in the same direction, results in the production of the long-legged wading-bird. In a similar way, through individual effort and transmitted tendency, all the diversified organs of all creatures ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... Wolsey elected, he would be devoted more to English than to imperial interests; and he preferred a Pope who would be undividedly imperialist at heart. Pace was sent to join Clerk at Rome in urging Wolsey's suit, and they did their best; but English influence at the Court of Rome was infinitesimal. In spite of Campeggio's flattering assurance that Wolsey's name appeared in every scrutiny, and that sometimes he had eight or nine votes, and Clerk's statement that he had nine at one time, twelve at another, and nineteen at a third,[437] Wolsey's name only appears in one of the eleven ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... schools and education has also been arrested. Many States had adopted this principle before the year 1895, but few, if any, during the past fifteen years. The experience of Massachusetts, where sentiment was strongly for it, shows that the women take very little interest in the matter; an infinitesimal percentage of the total female population voting upon election day, even when a prominent woman was the leading candidate ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... to deny her that poor diversion, that miserable consolation for the tedium of her existence. Perhaps he had tried too much to be sympathetic; but who again would not have tried? He had given her nothing to go upon. What had he ever given her beyond some infinitesimal portion of his valuable time, at the most some luminous hour of insight, or perhaps a little superfluous piece of good advice that was of no possible use to himself? For these things she had given herself—given herself away. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... savants. They do not understand the simple sociology of Christ, yet they come to the miserable and the despised with the pomp of social redeemers. They have worked faithfully, but beyond relieving an infinitesimal fraction of misery and collecting a certain amount of data which might otherwise have been more scientifically and less expensively collected, they have ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... over-swayed. He yielded and ladled out in the old-fashioned way, on the point of a knife-blade, what he believed to be the right amount. Henry immediately sank into a heavy sleep. He died before morning. His chance of life had been infinitesimal, and his death was not necessarily due to the drug, but Samuel Clemens, unsparing in his self-blame, all his days carried the ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... admire the natural advantages of the place chosen by his captors for the meeting. Rolling hills surrounded the little pocket on all sides, and here and there a red scoria butte thrust its ugly height out of the plain. The chances of discovery were infinitesimal. ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... the air of the hold had glowed dull-red at the moment of the explosion. In the twinkling of an eye, in an infinitesimal fraction of a second since the first tilt of the bench, I was sprawling full length on the cargo. I picked myself up and scrambled out. It was quick like a rebound. The deck was a wilderness of smashed timber, lying crosswise ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... porcelain, the teapot and cream-jug were of chased silver and as delicate in their sway. The remnant of food consisted of morsels of French roll which had not even been allowed to crumble themselves in a disorderly fashion, and of infinitesimal pats of butter. If the morning meal of the two ladies had been as unsubstantial as the appearance of the fragments indicated, it must be presumed that they intended to lunch early. The countess herself was arrayed ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... there be much hesitation as to the second step which ought to be taken. The intrinsic importance of the moon, when compared with other celestial bodies, may be small; it is, indeed, as we shall afterwards see, almost infinitesimal. But in the economy of our earth the moon has played, and still plays, a part second only in importance to that of the sun himself. The moon is so close to us that her brilliant rays pale to invisibility countless orbs of ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... bad taste of a certain, and only a certain, perversion of mediaeval sentiment, the crowning instance of which is found in Guy of Warwick. Hartmann himself was no such simpleton; and (with only an infinitesimal change of a famous sentence) we may be sure that as he was a good lover so he made a good end ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... meeting them manfully on their own ground. 'We will not,' says he, 'give in to the absurdity of attempting to counteract a disease by a medicine that produces the same disease; but something good may be learned from your infinitesimal system. To that system you owe the fact that you are now at large: if you had given doses like ours of such medicines, you would have been in the hands of the turnkey or the mad-doctor long ago. Your ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... homoeopathic treatment of the 3-1/8 quadrature—remember, homoeopathic, similia similibus,[390] not infinitesimal—and at the imputation thrown upon it, I asked myself, what is vulgarity? No two agree, except in this, that every one sees vulgarity in what is directed against himself. Mark the world, and see if anything be so common as the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... of the orthodox Moslem, is the dominant force in the life both of every individual and of every separate community to which the individual belongs. Religion is, in fact, the basic element of Indian life, and morality apart from religion is an almost impossible conception for all but an infinitesimal fraction of Western-educated Indians. Hence, even if the attempt had been or were in the future made to instil ethical notions into the minds of the Indian youth independently of all religious teaching, ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... classical friends, are we going to submit to these disastrous results of your monopoly? Quousque tandem! How long are we going to stand this scandal of international illiteracy and ignorance, fraught with such ominous peril for the future? How long is this nation going to be hoodwinked by an infinitesimal minority of reactionary dons and obscurantist parsons, determined to force a smattering of Greek down the throats of a reluctant youth? How long is modern culture to be kept back under the vain pretence ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... not stand on the order of my going. I rocked perilously, and my crutches made a furious clatter, but I was outside in a truly infinitesimal space of time. Yes; there they were, chatting with Dunny, who had hurried to meet them. And at sight of me the Firefly of France ran forward with hands extended, greeting me as if I were his oldest friend, his brother, his dearest ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... part of the castle for the purpose of arming a million of retainers to make a deadly onslaught on the stronghold of his hated rival the Lord of Hardcheek, suddenly takes fire, and the castle, with both the interlocutors and all others who could possibly be present, is seen hurled into infinitesimal fragments,—there is some unavoidable curiosity in the mind of the reader, at this juncture, to know precisely how these very words and actions became known to the narrator, as well as how the gunpowder was ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... me. I mean that when you see a Woman, you ought—besides inferring her breadth—to see her length, and to SEE what we call her HEIGHT; although the last Dimension is infinitesimal in your country. If a Line were mere length without "height," it would cease to occupy Space and would become invisible. ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... and its frictional inertia when running in the form of wind cause the current to proceed on its course after a very slight check, which in point of time is momentary and in its effects almost infinitesimal. This being the case, and the principal expense attendant upon the construction of ordinary wind-engines being due to the need for providing a large diameter of wind-wheel, with all the attendant complications ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... or greater in the economy of Nature (Nature is God Manifest), the most infinitesimal mote in the universe is as perfect within itself as is the most gigantic sun. Size is but relative. The anatomy of the midget is as perfect and complex as is that of the mammoth, and so there exist in the universe inhabited worlds ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... own individuality. The silence and the darkness broke over him in long, soundless waves; but each time he emerged again, cold, cold as death, but still aware of self, aware of existence, albeit the world he knew had dwindled to an infinitesimal smallness, as an object very far away, and floating ever farther and farther from ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the jump out of warp was something not even a veteran took lightly. Rip's round face thinned while they watched. Jellico was still functioning. But if the Captain collapsed the whole responsibility for the snap-out would fall directly on Shannon. An infinitesimal error would condemn them to ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... in her piece-bag and produced an infinitesimal scrap of green voile. Young Mrs. Thompson accepted the offering with ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... Uncle Ben will judge for himself,' she said, reddening; thankful all the same to remember that among her uncle's reticent, old-fashioned ways none was more marked than his habit of destroying all but an infinitesimal fraction of his letters. 'He read all those speeches of yours, last year. You'll have to think—how you're going to get ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... may be safely trenched and freely knocked about, because not only does the process favour the deep rooting of the plants, but it favours also that disintegration which is one of the causes of fertility. Every pebble is capable of imparting to the soil a solution—infinitesimal, perhaps, but not the less real—of silica, or lime, or potash, or phosphates, or perhaps of all these; but it must be exposed to light and air and moisture to enable it to part with a portion of its substance, and thus it is that mechanical tillage is of the first ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons |
