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More "Positiveness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... d'Orleans, plunged as he was in the most bitter grief. I made him traverse the chamber at once, and supplicated him to return to Paris. At last he consented. He wished me to remain and give orders, and begged, with much positiveness, Madame de Saint-Simon to be present when seals were put upon the effects, after which I led him to his coach, and he went away. I immediately repeated to Madame de Saint-Simon the orders he had given me respecting the opening of the body, in order that she might have them executed, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... at all," Dave replied, with a good deal of positiveness. "When we turned him out into the storm ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... of an opposite stamp to the dogmatist. The one knows and asserts with imperial positiveness, the other with childish trepidation and hesitancy. "It is so, it can't be otherwise, and you must believe it," is the dictatorial spirit of the dogmatist. "It may be so, I am not certain, I cannot vouch for its truthfulness: in fact, I am rather inclined to doubt it, but I would ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... of rent. The labourer gets less than he would if the products of the soil were equally distributed. Both wages and profits must fall as more is left to rent, and that this actually happens, he says, with unusual positiveness, is an 'incontrovertible truth.'[285] The fall enables the less fertile land to be cultivated, and gives an excess of produce on the more fertile. 'This excess is rent.'[286] He proceeds to expound his doctrine by comparing ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... expression, no relief in deeds. The substance of this warning essay is repeated, often word for word, but considerably amplified with new material, and rendered more convincing by increased breadth of outlook and positiveness of assertion, the fruit of six years of observation and reflection, as part of a treatise, entitled, "Von der nthigen Sorge fr die Erhaltung des Gleichgewichts unter den menschlichen Krften: Besondere Warnung vor dem Modefehler die Empfindsamkeit zu berspannen." It is in the ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... Industrial Combinations of the last few years has been more discussed than that of their influence upon prices. Opinions have differed widely, the opponents of the Combinations usually believing that they have increased prices materially, their defenders claiming with equal positiveness that they have reduced prices. Differences of opinion have probably originated largely from the fact that the subject has been approached from different points of view; and mistakes have also, in many cases, ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... froth from her mouth with her handkerchief and gave it to her aunt, saying, "Burn that, it is poison." This is perhaps a little less like epilepsy. It is plainly impossible for us to say with any positiveness that either these were or were not genuine convulsions, but it is nevertheless important to record them, because such phenomena are observed fairly frequently in dementia praecox cases but are practically ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... which also was root and flower itself of the great Revolution, underlying the impassioned contemplation of Wordsworth and giving wings and fire to the eagle-like flight of Shelley, and which in the sphere of philosophy, though displaced by the materialism and positiveness of our day, bequeathed two great schools of thought, the school of Newman to Oxford, the school of Emerson to America. Yet is this spirit of transcendentalism alien to the spirit of art. For the artist can accept no sphere ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... effects upon the national literature, one quickly discerns two main streams of influence. On the one hand, there is the influence of the original Puritans—whether of New England or of the South—, who came to the New World with a ready-made philosophy of the utmost clarity, positiveness and inclusiveness of scope, and who attained to such a position of political and intellectual leadership that they were able to force it almost unchanged upon the whole population, and to endow it with such vitality that it successfully resisted alien opposition ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... character, not to speak of the wonderful adventures he narrates, and the ease and facility with which he tells them. He kept us laughing a good part of breakfast time by the oddity of his remarks, as well as the positiveness of his assertions, often rather startling, and, like his books, ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... this man to write out the story of his life," declared Cap'n Sproul, with an authority in his tones and positiveness in his manner that did not fail to impress the marshal. "He is my brother-in-law, he is Colonel Gideon Ward, of Smyrna, a man with more'n a hundred thousand dollars, and any one that accuses him of bein' a thief is a liar, and I stand ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... me to remove all doubt as to the locality of the Spirit's 'home,' and to state with positiveness its exact location. But like the German philologist's example of the remarkable incongruity in English between spelling and pronunciation, that what was written 'Boz' was pronounced 'Charles Dickens,' so I cheerfully add to this list of incongruities that what is written 'bright stars' ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... and gave me to understand that he did not believe that his nation were the descendants of Attila and his people, though he acknowledged that they were probably of the same race. Attila and his armies, he said, came and disappeared in a very mysterious manner, and that nothing could be said with positiveness about them; that the people now known as Magyars first made their appearance in Muscovy in the year 884, under the leadership of Almus, called so from Alom, which, in the Hungarian language, signifies a dream; his ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... yard, likely, Dick," said Tom, but his tone lacked positiveness. It was evident that he had fears that such was ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... upon the will of this noble procrastinator had a very doubtful future. Every day at nine o'clock his lordship seated himself at his desk, and stayed there writing industriously, hour after hour, upon his dispatches; every day he foretold with much accuracy and positiveness of manner that these would surely be ready, and the ship would inevitably sail, on the next day. Thus week after week glided by, and still he uttered the same prediction, "to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow." Yet in spite of this wonderful industry of the great man his letters never ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... Bull taken to literature—the exaggerated John Bull of the caricaturists—with every quality, good or evil, at its highest? Here are the rough crust over a kindly heart, the explosive temper, the arrogance, the insular narrowness, the want of sympathy and insight, the rudeness of perception, the positiveness, the overbearing bluster, the strong deep-seated religious principle, and every other characteristic of the cruder, rougher John Bull who was the great grandfather of the present ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I said, "on every subject but one. His head must have been injured a little in his fall, and he imagines and asserts with positiveness that we found a young woman in the moon, the last of her race—a ridiculous idea, is ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... The mysterious positiveness of this assertion startled Razumov. Their eyes met. He looked away and, through the bars of the rusty gate, stared at the clean, wide road shaded by the leafy trees. An electric tramcar, quite empty, ran along the avenue with a metallic rustle. It seemed to him he would have given anything ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... overthrowing Reconstruction. Other questions practically dropped out. The whole discussion of the canvass turned on these two controlling propositions. No violence of design which the Republicans imputed to their adversaries exceeded their open avowals. The greater positiveness of General Blair, the keener popular interest in the Southern question and the broader realization of its possible dangers, made the issue on Reconstruction overshadow the other. The utterances of Southern leaders confirmed ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... avowed opinions of their candidate. The document asserted that he believed the Bible to be a tissue of fictions and fables; Jesus a sinful man like others, neither risen from the dead, nor sitting in the glory of his Father; no one can assert with positiveness a life beyond the grave; and the opinion that we are reconciled to God by Jesus Christ, merely a superstition and a day-dream. The authors of the circular besought the ecclesiastical council to deliver them and their children from the promulgation of such doctrines, and ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... (Q.E.D.) to support which we have living proofs in the numerous tribes of Indians that inhabit it. Secondly, that it has been peopled in five hundred different ways, as proved by a cloud of authors, who, from the positiveness of their assertions, seem to have been eye-witnesses to the fact. Thirdly, that the people of this country had a variety of fathers, which, as it may not be thought much to their credit by the common run of ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... here lies the difference. Before, my positiveness was founded, without examination, upon prejudice; but now, after ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... incredulously as my friend went on with increasing positiveness: "I know what I'm saying. I'll tell you how I know it in a minute. This thing has never been done before in the whole history of war and it will never be done again, but it's ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... baker's wife," cried Juffrouw Mabbel, with a positiveness in her tone which showed her intention to hold ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... the Havildar assured me that two buffaloes were amply sufficient to carry all they would bring. I now find that they have more than full loads for two buffaloes, two mules, and two donkeys; but when these animals fall down under them, they assure me with so much positiveness that they are not overloaded, that I have to be silent, or only, as I have several times done before, express the opinion that they will kill these animals. This observation on my part leads them to hide their things in the packs of the camels, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... it that this bearded patriarch, who now poses as the only original Adam, has never been able, with any degree of positiveness, to answer the question as to whether or not he was provided with a caudal appendage—a question which I am prepared to answer definitely, at any moment, if called upon by the proper authorities, and, if need be, to produce not ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... are those who teach that Satan will be ultimately extinguished. And they lay down that theory with great positiveness. While there are some hints to that effect in the Word of God, it does not seem to me that they are clear enough to warrant us in being positive. We would hardly expect so much. It is not our business to know much of "other ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... replied with equal positiveness. "The law is very clear, my friend. Your men may return willingly, but you cannot force them. When we reach Terra we will give them a choice. Those who wish to return to the Consolidation will be given ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... reigned in that family? I know many who seem to be excellent men in society, but who are any thing but amiable men at home. In one they are pleasant, affable, kind, and charitable; in the other, cross-grained, hard, unkind, and unjust. I declare with all positiveness, that when a family or a neighborhood of children is bad, there is a reason for it outside of the children. There are bad influences which descend upon them, and work out their ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... is heard naturally at the close of a complete statement, as "I am here"; and hence, words indicating completeness, positiveness, resolution, are appropriately uttered with downward intervals. In effecting a downward intonation the voice operates in one of two ways: either the weaker mode, in which it descends from a radical pitch at or near the current tone to a lower pitch; or the stronger mode, in which ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... something. Perhaps planted a suggestion when Brion's resistance was low. Or used subliminal vocalization like the villain in Cerebrus Chained. Brion could find no adequate reason on which to base his suspicions. But he knew, with sure positiveness, ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... gentleman more than to hear William Pitt called by his tardy honors; and yet, unwilling to give up what he thought his political opinions, he exclaimed, with an unanswerable positiveness of argument, ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... souls; the supply of our necessary temporal wants; and the extension of his kingdom. These are the kind of blessings that we are to ask; and the degree of confidence with which we are to look for an answer must be in proportion to the positiveness of the promises. Our Lord assures us that our heavenly Father is more willing to give good things, and particularly his Holy Spirit, to them that ask him, than earthly parents are to give good gifts to their children; and he declares expressly, that our sanctification is agreeable ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... emotion caused by the exertion of command, becomes agreeable and necessary to him. Thus many of the same causes which make a young man a pleasant companion abroad, tend naturally to make him a tyrant at home. This perversity and positiveness of temper, ultimately arise from the want of occupation, and from deficient energy of mind. We may guard against these evils by education: when we see a playful, active child, we have little fear of his temper. "Oh, he will certainly be good tempered, he is the most ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... not believe you," I said, not angrily nor resentfully, as might have been earlier in our acquaintance, but with a painful, slow positiveness. "Perhaps I was wrong in assuming the place I did in Wallencamp, but it was not in the way you think. I don't know—I can't see the way myself, clearly—always, but I believe that what you have said is ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... taproom to consult the driver of the Carlisle coach, who was taking a glass before going to bed—his hours of work being in the night and his hours of rest being in the day. That authority recommended, with the utmost positiveness of advice, that Robbie should take a seat in his coach when he left for the ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death. Anyway, man has always been afraid of this mathematical certainty, and I am afraid of it now. Granted that man does nothing but seek that mathematical certainty, he traverses oceans, ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... scene of all occurred in the case of an old maiden lady, who, having brought a cart-load of personal necessaries and comforts, which were positively essential to her continued existence, and having been firmly refused the transmission of the greater part of them, declared with the utmost positiveness that the lord chancellor had himself expressly informed all the guests at the banquet that each was at liberty to take an unlimited quantity of goods; nor could any explanation convince her of her mistake. Let them say what they pleased, she had heard the word unlimited with her own ears: ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... again instantly heard—the characteristics of the sounds in this instance being rapidity and energy, or positiveness. ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... not to be talked into such a scheme as that by the offer of any loan, by the mention of any number of thousands. He positively refused to consider the proposition; and his uncle, with equal positiveness, refused to hold any further converse with him on the subject of a profession. "Pritchett will pay you your present allowance," said he, "for two years ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... notwithstanding these declarations of the President. In like manner, they might declare war in the face of a treaty, and in direct infraction of it. Among other positions laid down by him, this was with great positiveness; that the constitution having given power to the President and Senate to make treaties, they might make a treaty of neutrality which should take from Congress the right to declare war in that particular case, and that under the form of a treaty they might exercise ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... is right in prosecuting his father has ever entered into his mind. Like a Sophist too, he is incapable either of framing a general definition or of following the course of an argument. His wrong-headedness, one-sidedness, narrowness, positiveness, are characteristic of his priestly office. His failure to apprehend an argument may be compared to a similar defect which is observable in the rhapsode Ion. But he is not a bad man, and he is friendly to Socrates, whose familiar sign he recognizes with interest. Though unable ...
— Euthyphro • Plato
... a high forehead, a small mouth, and a pair of cold blue eyes which had kept much of the freshness of youth. Madame de Bellegarde looked hard at him, and returned his hand-shake with a sort of British positiveness which reminded him that she was the daughter of the Earl of St. Dunstan's. Her daughter-in-law stopped playing and gave him an agreeable smile. Newman sat down and looked about him, while Valentin went and kissed the ...
— The American • Henry James
... he said with positiveness. 'That track shows a foot four times as big as any coyote's that ever scratched fleas. Wolf? Maybe. It would be a whopper of a wolf at that. Look at the size of it, man! Why, the ugly brute would be big enough to scare my prize shorthorn ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... to say—well, no, not exactly," replied Mr. Brown, beginning his sentence with an asperity and positiveness that somehow did not hold out to its end. "She did say to me, I confess, how fond she was of dancing, and how she had refrained from saying much about it to you"—Mr. Port here interpolated a sceptical ...
— The Uncle Of An Angel - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... chapter, the author describes his landing in Ithaca, and arrival at the rock Korax and the fountain Arethusa, as he designates it with sufficient positiveness.—This rock, now known by the name of Korax, or Koraka Petra, he contends to be the same with that which Homer mentions as contiguous to the habitation of Eumaeus, the faithful swineherd of Ulysses.—We shall take the liberty of adding to our extracts from Mr. ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... of faith, and the thirty-nine articles, contain the same points, even the doctrine of predestination.' JOHNSON. 'Why yes, Sir, predestination was a part of the clamour of the times, so it is mentioned in our articles, but with as little positiveness as could be.' BOSWELL. 'Is it necessary, Sir, to believe all the thirty-nine articles?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, that is a question which has been much agitated. Some have thought it necessary that they should all be believed; others have considered them ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... directly upon and into the mind of the other person whom you wish to influence. Sometimes, if the person is quite negative to you, this is a very simple and easy matter; but where the person is near your own degree of psychic positiveness you will have to assert your psychic superiority to him, and get the psychic "upper hand" before you can proceed further. This is accomplished by throwing into your psychic atmosphere some particularly strong mental statements accompanied by clear ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... for procuring the sum in question, and when he possessed confidence himself, it was rarely, indeed, that he failed to inspire it in others. For the second time, the landlord of the Gethin Castle found himself in doubt; he was staggered by the positiveness of the young man's assertions, and by the force and flow of his glowing words. In spite of himself, he began once more to think that he might have been mistaken in condemning him as an impostor, after all; as Richard had said, Carew was scarcely ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... that I should be pre- vailed upon, between your over-niceness, on one hand, and my mother's positiveness, on the other, to be satisfied without knowing how to direct to you at your lodgings. I think too, that the proposal that I should be put off to a third-hand knowledge, or rather veiled in a first-hand ignorance, came from him, and that it was only acquiesced in by you, as it was by me,* ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... evil, it forgets the elevation of his nature towards good. There is a tendency to depreciate human nature, and to overlook the joyousness of life. What is needed, therefore, is the expression of Christianity in a new form—a reconstruction which shall emphasise the positiveness, activity, ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... statures as those which I have here given. Belasco and Akop would be recognized as very tall Igorot in any part of the mountains. Two of the above are pygmy and all but seven are below 1600, and correspond to Topinard's "below medium" statures. We may say, then, with positiveness that the Igorot is one of the exceptionally short races of mankind. With three or four exceptions the arm-reach is greater than the height, usually by 40 to 50 mm. Thus, the short stature is somewhat compensated for by long arms, heavy, robust ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... Frank," Rouletta answered with positiveness. 'Poleon started. Through the gloom he ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... that delay may make it altogether too late or may possibly postpone part of the advantage to be gained or may permit some one else to get ahead. Decision oftentimes is also induced by a direct or indirect compliment to the individual's decisiveness, positiveness, and ability to take action when he sees that action is necessary. A very successful salesman often used this method: "You say rightly that you want to think it over. That shows that you are a wise man, because a man who acts without thinking ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... cause of its failure, silence would be a crime. When Lord Wolseley told the soldiers at Korti on their return from Metemmah, "It was not your fault that Gordon has perished and Khartoum fallen," the positiveness of his assurance may have been derived from the inner conviction ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... notion by transferring to the time of the trials his experience in connection with spiritualistic "circles" of his own day. It is curious to observe how readily this suggestion was adopted, and with what uniformity recent popular narratives of the delusion reiterate, with increasing positiveness of phrase, the unfounded assumption. The expression, to "try projects," is therefore taken by Mr. Drake from modern folk-lore. Fowler's address, entitled "An Account of the Life and Character of the Rev. Samuel Parris, of Salem Village, ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... be cultivated by yet another means, namely, by the acquirement of the characteristic known as positiveness. There is a beautiful legend in which it is related of Christ Jesus, that He, with others, passed the dead body of a dog. The others turned aside from the hideous sight, but Christ Jesus spoke admiringly of the creature's beautiful ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... respect: and he joined in the petitions for light and instruction, that were offered up on the occasion, with the deep reverence with which he ever drew near to the footstool of the Almighty; but he did both in a temper into which too much positiveness of spiritual pride had entered, to open his heart to that sympathy and charity, which, as they are the characteristics of our mild and forbearing doctrines, should be the study of those who profess to follow their precepts. ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... mistaken, till the Day of Judgment, or whether any of us be so (for there may be different Ways to the same End, and I am not for circumscribing God Almighty's Mercy:) This I am sure of, one shall meet with the same Positiveness in Opinion, in some of the Priests of all these Sects; The same Want of Charity, engrossing Heaven by way of Monopoly to their own Corporation, and managing it by a joint Stock, exclusive of all others (as pernicious ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... to all; the simplicity of its organization and teachings; the great appeal which it made to the emotional side of human life; the hope of a future life of reward for the burdens of this which it extended to all who were weary and heavy laden; the positiveness of conviction of its apostles and followers; and the completeness with which it satisfied the religious need and longings of the time, first among the poor and among women and later among educated men—all ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... mate, with equal positiveness. "And a fine fellow he was, too, and one of the best for cheering of us up with his stories and songs; and not above a bit of a prayer, too, when the worst came to the ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Jeremy Taylor, "for a man to bring himself to believe any thing he hath a mind to." But what is this belief?—Analyse it into its constituents;—is it more than certain passions or feelings converging into the sensation of positiveness as their focus, and then associated with certain sounds or images?—'Nemo enim', says Augustin, 'huic evidentiae contradicet, nisi quem plus defensare delectat, quod sentit, ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... pictures on the walls, no photographs. In one corner, on the floor, was a stack of dilapidated books. These were mostly old novels and tomes dealing with geological and mathematical matters; laughter and tears and adventure, sandwiched in between the dry positiveness of straight lines and squares and circles and numerals without end; D'Artagnan hobnobbing with Euclid! Warrington was an educated man, but he was in no sense a scholar. In his hours of leisure he did not find solace in the classics. He craved for a ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... something true, which would exist just as much though we and all the world disbelieved it. The strength of belief comes from that which is believed in; if you separate it from that, it becomes a mere self-opinion, a sensation of positiveness; and what sort of strength that will give, history will tell us in the tragedies of the Jews who opposed Titus, of the rabble who followed Walter the Penniless to the Crusades, of the Munster Anabaptists, and many another sad page of human folly. ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... claim of infallibility put forth for eight hundred years by this haughty power? So far from being relinquished, this claim was affirmed in the nineteenth century with greater positiveness than ever before. As Rome asserts that the church "never erred; nor will it, according to the Scriptures, ever err,"(1000) how can she renounce the principles which governed her ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... measure. She had made up her mind to visit her aunt on the following day, and though the weather was bitterly cold and damp, she adhered to her resolution. Madame, at first politely, finally with provoking positiveness, told her "she would not permit her to risk her life, and a life still more precious, for ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... the arguments which Antiochus used to urge at Alexandria, and many years afterwards, with much more positiveness too, in Syria, when he was there with me, a little before he died. But, as my case is now established, I will not hesitate to warn you, as you are my dearest friend, (he was addressing me,) and one a good deal ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... will," Billy rejoined with great positiveness. "It's us for the San Joaquin. We don't know what's in our country. No wonder we're out on ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... phraseology of Roman contract-law had been largely drawn upon to describe that reciprocity of rights and duties which men had always conceived as existing between sovereigns and subjects. While the world was full of maxims setting forth with the utmost positiveness the claims of kings to implicit obedience—maxims which pretended to have had their origin in the New Testament, but which were really derived from indelible recollections of the Caesarian despotism—the consciousness of correlative rights ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... classic art. The facts of our history, ideal and social, will be grand and of new import; it is perfectly natural to the American to mould in clay and carve in stone. The permanence of material and solid, relief in the forms correspond to the positiveness of his nature better than the mere ephemeral and even tricky methods of the painter,—to his need of motion and action, better than the chambered scribbling of the poet. He will thus record his best experiences, and these records will adorn ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... force of will, firmness of conviction, energy of character are conducive to strength. Where these exist there will be directness of aim, and the style will be clear, unwavering, and strong. There will be positiveness of statement, and sometimes intolerant dogmatism. Carlyle and Macaulay are among our strongest writers, the former being rugged, and the latter more polished in his strength. Macaulay's broad-shouldered, stout-limbed constitution is reflected in such passages as the following from ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... head with a quaint, fascinating expression of positiveness. "Now, my friend," said she, "drop that fancy. It isn't sensible. And it threatens to become silly." Her smile suddenly expanded into a laugh. "The idea of you and me married—of ME married to YOU! I'd drive you crazy. No, I shouldn't ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... cried with abrupt positiveness. "Before the year is out I'll put an even hundred of those little yellow-boys into your hand. I don't ask you to believe me. All you have to ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... may answer an end perhaps as useful, in discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not make us knowing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from error, it may at least from the spirit of error; and may make us cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much labor may end in ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... to fear, why do you object to bringing a certificate?" "I have nothing to fear, but I demand that you respect me and trust me sufficiently to believe that I am telling the truth when I declare a thing with such positiveness. If you do not have that much confidence in me now, our future life does not hold much promise of success." One word led to another, and then he broke the engagement, as any self-respecting man under the circumstances would. He ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... him, simply show their ignorance and shallowness." An uncomfortable pause fell upon, the company, for two of the best informed people present were entirely convinced that some one other than Shakespeare wrote the plays. It was simply lack of tact that betrayed this lady into a positiveness and obtrusiveness of statement that made others uncomfortable and aroused their antagonism. Here is still another instance: One lady was introduced to another lady who was the wife of a gentleman much older than herself. After catching the name the lady said: "Are ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... "I imagine his positiveness is the secret of his success." Marian knew that Segur was half in jest and was fond of Howard. But she ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... tell you one thing, Henriette," I returned, with more positiveness than I commonly show, "I will not marry a lady's maid, and that's all there is about it. You forget that I ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... no account be moved,' said the dark little Belgian doctor, whose eyes seemed to peer so quizzically through his spectacles; and he said it with much positiveness. ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... shock at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... sufficiently to deposit the letter in front of the dressing table. The thing was manifestly out of the question, even had the window of the girl's room been wide open. And Mrs. Morton had assured him with the greatest positiveness that it had been open, at the time the letter was found, but a few inches. He returned the letters to his ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... with a peremptory positiveness that was almost an accusation. He rose calmly, raising his eyebrows ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... a quick, clear, penetrating, searching, knowing, sagacious mind, and also a scold; indicate warmth of love, hate, generosity, moral sentiment—indeed, positiveness in everything. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... most satisfactory to him. I thought then that this was due to the authority of Brownson's masterful tone, the definiteness of his views, the force of his 'understanding,' as the word was then philosophically used in distinction from the reason. Brownson's mental vigor and positiveness were very agreeable to a candid mind which was speculatively adrift and experimenting, and, as it seemed to me, which was more emotional than logical. Brownson, after his life of varied theological and controversial activity, was drawing toward the Catholic Church, and ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... of hostile Hoggs and nameless surgeons—the baby. I wish we had the baby's testimony; and yet if we had it it would not do us any good—a furtive conjecture, a sly insinuation, a pious "if" or two, would be smuggled in, here and there, with a solemn air of judicial investigation, and its positiveness would wilt into dubiety. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the words with a cool positiveness that bred belief. Martin, in almost as vengeful a mood as the other, was grimly cheered by ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... seemed unimpressed. "In this country," she said with a certain snug positiveness that was the keynote of her personality, "it's the women that have the courage. They wouldn't be here if they didn't have. Think how close we are to the Mexican border, for instance. Anything that is horrible to woman can come out of Mexico. Not that I look down on them over there," she ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... rattled these symptoms off with great volubility. The Count looked at him with open-eyed wonder. The professor was not less astonished at the positiveness with which Dr. Jones thus detailed the Count's symptoms without any previous knowledge ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... be done," replied Tom, with gentle positiveness. "It wouldn't be in American nature to go away and leave a fellow creature to die of helplessness when a little care and nursing ought to put that man on his feet again. But I won't argue with you, for I see the excitement is bringing a deeper flush into your ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... weather, the hard winter, the prospects of the Cause, a criticism upon the commander-in-chief's management of affairs, the attitude of Congress, etc., between Mr. Blossom and the count; characterized, I hardly need say, by that positiveness of opinion that distinguishes the unprofessional. In another part of the room, it so chanced that Mistress Thankful and the baron were talking about themselves; the assembly balls; who was the prettiest woman in Morristown; and whether Gen. Washington's ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... the canvas. An equivalent of such a line is a gradation, often the shadow from the figure serving to effect this union. If the shadow unites the outline with the background in such a tone as to subdue or destroy this outline, the attachment becomes stronger and at the same time the positiveness of outline on the light side finds its contrast and balance in this ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... a coward," said Goward, with a positiveness born of conviction. And with that remark Goward took his place in my affections. Whatever the degree of his seeming offence, he was at least a gentleman himself, and his unwillingness to place any part of the ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... sentence falls on the ear with the accent of some golden-tongued oracle of the wise gods. His stride is the stride of a giant, from the sentimental beauty of the picture of Marie Antoinette at Versailles, or the red horror of the tale of Debi Sing in Rungpore, to the learning, positiveness and cool judicial mastery of the Report on the Lords' Journals (1794), which Philip Francis, no mean judge, declared on the whole to be the "most eminent and extraordinary" of all his productions. But even in the coolest and driest of his pieces there is the mark of greatness, of grasp, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... them," cried Hermon, interrupting his companion with angry positiveness. "The city of Alexandria, which is growing with unprecedented vigour, is their home. There, the place to which every race on earth sends a representative, the pulse of the whole world is throbbing. There, whoever does not run with the rest is run over; there, but one ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... criticize, because his defects are pleasing defects. Dogmatism is commonly offensive, and Mr. Reade's dogmatism is of the most uncompromising, not to say insulting character; yet it is exhibited in connection with insight so sure and vivid, that we pardon the positiveness of the assertion for the truth of what is asserted. Then he has a way of forcing Nature, much against her wish, to be epigrammatic,—of producing startling effects by artifices almost theatrical; and though his devices are obvious, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... the old order of things makes so poor a figure when confronted with the new, why churches can never reform, why most political changes are made blindly and convulsively. The great crises in the history of nations have often been met by an ecclesiastical positiveness, and a more obstinate reassertion of principles which have lost their hold upon a nation. The fixed ideas of a reactionary statesman may be compared to madness; they grow upon him, and he becomes possessed by them; no judgement of others is ever admitted by him to be weighed in the balance ...
— The Republic • Plato
... from all that hinders and impedes and fixed on a positive goal. In formulating particular suggestions, however, we are always skating on the thin ice round our faults and ailments, always touching on subjects which have the most painful associations. So that our ideas have not the same creative positiveness. However that may be, it is a matter of experience that the general formula is the basis of the whole method, and that all else is merely an adjuvant, an auxiliary—useful, but ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... Evelina," Nell answered with the positiveness that only a very young person can get up the courage to use, "I have forgot that I was ever influenced by his narrow-minded, primitive personality at all. If I ever love and marry it will be a man who can appreciate and further my real ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the field to-morrow,"—his habitually calm, unfeeling positiveness left no ground for objection; "I cannot support you ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... their propositions. We can see also, what is still worse, its tendency to place individual robustness and initiative in the light of superfluities, with which a world that goes by evolution can very well dispense. Men easily come to consider clearness and positiveness in their opinions, staunchness in holding and defending them, and fervour in carrying them into action, as equivocal virtues of very doubtful perfection, in a state of things where every abuse has after all had a defensible origin; where every error has, we must confess, ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... the narrowness with which he defines "virtue," the broadness with which he defines "vice," his failure to recognize any intermediate ground between "virtue" and outright "vice," or any shades or degrees of either, the positiveness with which he assigns to eternal damnation all who depart in any degree from "virtue" as he defines it, is therefore to accept Mandeville as a genuine exponent of a rigorism too austere and too grim ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... the havoc wrought by present- day university methods. The elder Anthony's wealth and position made it good copy. The yellow journals liked it immensely, and, strangely enough, notwithstanding the positiveness with which the newspapers spoke, the facts agreed essentially with their statements. Darwin K. Anthony and his son had quarrelled, they were estranged; the young man did prefer idleness to industry. Exactly as the published narratives related, he toiled not ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... said I, "show me the marriage certificate, and I will acknowledge the marriage, and acknowledge the child;" but they could not, and I knew they could not; and I kept the estate for my darling boy,' cried the old gentleman, with the exultation of successful positiveness again appearing strong in his physiognomy; but suddenly changing and relaxing, his countenance fell, and he added, 'But now I have no darling boy. What use all!—all must go to the heir-at-law, or I must will it ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... authorship of the play, though I should be loth to speak with positiveness, I feel bound to put forward a claim for Thomas Heywood. Through all Heywood's writings there runs a vein of generous kindliness: everywhere we see a gentle, benign countenance, radiant with love and sympathy. On laying down one of his ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... answer in the words of Taliesin," said I; "none can say with positiveness whether I be fish or flesh, least of all myself. God ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... soon took on interest from the positiveness of the opinions discussed; but so thoroughly had Colonel Roosevelt covered his tracks that, although he wrote in his usual style, in not a single instance was his name connected with the department. Lyman Abbott was the favorite "guess" at first; then after various other public men had ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... attach itself more and more to the story his room was telling him. He knew that Shan Tung had left none of the marks of his presence out of bravado, but with a definite purpose. Keith's psychological mind was at all times acutely ready to seize upon possibilities, and just as his positiveness of Conniston's spiritual presence had inspired him to act his lie with Mary Josephine, so did the conviction possess him now that his room held for him a message ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... the Being who sitteth upon the circle of the heavens, and who impinges Himself upon the consciousness of men. This being so, it is plain that we can confront the ungodly pagan with the same statements with which we confront the ungodly nominal Christian. We can tell him with positiveness, wherever we find him, be it upon the burning sands of Africa or in the frozen home of the Esquimaux, that he knows more than he puts in practice. We will concede to him that the quantum of his moral ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... to America,' vol. i. p. 158," etc., referring to Rev. Charles W. Baird, D. D., New York. The reference given is a notable specimen of very bad historical work. Of Dr. Baird, one has a right to expect better things, and the positiveness of his reckless assertion might well mislead those not wholly familiar with the facts involved, as it evidently has more than one. He states, without qualification or reservation, that "among the passengers in the SPEEDWELL were several of the French who had decided ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... of the buildings, which mostly have the appearance of mere factories or human hives, I asked Elder Frederick whether, if they were to build anew, they would not aim at some architectural effect, some beauty of design. He replied with great positiveness, "No, the beautiful, as you call it, is absurd and abnormal. It has no business with us. The divine man has no right to waste money upon what you would call beauty, in his house or his daily life, while there are people living in misery." In building anew, he would take care to have more light, ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... two young men of his own age who were of similar ambition. But they were even poorer than Slosson, and what particularly grieved them was the fact that their lineage was obscured by dark clouds of doubt. That is to say, they were unable to determine with any degree of positiveness whether they were of noble extraction; their parents refused to inform them, and consequently they were deeply distressed, as you can well imagine. Slosson was much charmed with their handsome bearing, chivalric ways, and honorable aspirations, and his pity was evoked ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... great positiveness by Swedenborg's followers, and indeed, apparently by the seer himself, if we may take as authoritative, the translations of his works, that the revelations accorded to him covered a period of many years, whereas, we find in most ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... insistent letter from Messrs. Blair and Jamieson was answered with the same brief positiveness by Messrs. Ampersand, Boiling and Byrd. Thereafter, no more communications were exchanged by the attorneys. But a day or two after her second refusal, Sharlee Weyland received another letter about the matter of dispute, this time a more personal one. The envelope was directed ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... consequence of which he is a universal favourite. There is a mystery about him, which, wherever he goes, serves not a little to increase the sensation naturally created by his appearance and manner. Who he is, no one pretends to assert with downright positiveness: it is whispered, however, that he is a scion of royalty; and who can gaze for a moment upon that most graceful figure, that most intelligent but singularly moulded countenance, and those large and expressive eyes, without feeling as equally ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... that the other side are fools or knaves. Some such confusion of thought in the minds of some reformers, both eminent and obscure, accounts for the wake of bitterness which often follows the progress of reform. Modesty and toleration are as important as positiveness to the man who is to make a ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... state that is commonly and absurdly called "existence," is a flow, or a current, or an attempt, from negativeness to positiveness, and is intermediate ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... theory, I had not seen; but on reaching the Feejees, six months later, in 1840, I found there similar facts on a still grander scale and of a more diversified character, so that I was afterward enabled to speak of his theory as established with more positiveness than he himself, in his philosophic caution, had been ready to adopt. His work on coral-reefs appeared in 1842, when my report on the subject was already in manuscript. It showed that the conclusions on other points, which we had independently reached, were for the ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... the positiveness, the rationalism of youth, it seemed that the strikes and lockouts, the overproduction and misery could not possibly result simply from ignorance and want of thought and feeling. We needed more dramatic factors ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... number of objects of any color and form, and can arrange and rearrange them, study the effect and result before painting, and be working with actual objects and not by merely drawing them, gives a positiveness and actuality to composition that is of the greatest service to you. You can use (and should at times) the whole side or corner of a room, and so practise composition on the large scale, or you can make a small group on a table. That you are using furniture and drapery or ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... night a tall gentleman, wearing a top-hat and a coat with a hood, stops before the door of Marya Petrovna Koshkin, a midwife and an old maid. Neither face nor hand can be distinguished in the autumn darkness, but in the very manner of his coughing and the ringing of the bell a certain solidity, positiveness, and even impressiveness can be discerned. After the third ring the door opens and Marya Petrovna herself appears. She has a man's overcoat flung on over her white petticoat. The little lamp with the green shade which she holds in her ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... opinion, be of much use for the despatch of business, in those countries where senates have any share in the legislative power; beget unanimity, shorten debates, open a few mouths which are now closed, and close many more which are now open; curb the petulancy of the young, and correct the positiveness of the old; rouse the stupid, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... later editions give soit. This difference in the mode used in various editions is but another proof of the elasticity of the subjunctive in French. Either mode is here correct, the indicative expressing greater positiveness, and the subjunctive ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... surgeon in charge of us told of a symptom or two, to which they responded only "hmm," and began the examination. Miss Harper sent her three nieces away. I lay and listened in the busy stillness. Presently one of the examiners murmured with a certain positiveness to the other, who after a moment's silence replied with conviction; Miss Harper touched our surgeon's arm inquiringly and he looked back in a glad way and nodded. Miss Harper nodded to me; they had located the ball! Now the conversation turned upon men and events ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... another opinion, and says, 'The whole, or greatest part, of the merit of this treatise must and can only be ascribed to Gulliver.'[188] (Here, gentle reader! cannot I but smile at the strange blindness and positiveness of men, knowing the said treatise to appertain to none other but to me, Martinus Scriblerus.) We are assured, in Mist of June 8, 'That his own plays and farces would better have adorned the Dunciad than those of Mr Theobald, for he had neither genius for tragedy ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... the anthropomorphic expressions in the Bible. There is a different point of view in his exposition of the Mu'tazilite physics, which he presents in a more systematic and favorable light than Maimonides, defending it against the strictures of the latter. But everywhere Aaron ben Elijah lacks the positiveness and commanding mastery of Maimonides. He is not clear what side of a question to espouse. For the most part he places side by side the opposed points of view and only barely intimates his own attitude or preference. Under these ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... read that book." Stuart's champion tossed her head with the positiveness of conviction. "It's not the kind of novel that a rake could write. It's straight and clean minded, and if what a man chooses to write, indicates what he thinks, ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... closer daily intercourse between families. And it is questionable if the petty society of such a village can compensate for the freedom and purity of rural family life now existing. It may even be asserted with some degree of positiveness that the small village, on the moral and intellectual sides, is distinctly inferior ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield
... the truth of the case, there was evidence more than sufficient to convict him before Allworthy; indeed, much less would have satisfied a bench of justices on an order of bastardy; and yet, notwithstanding the positiveness of Mrs Partridge, who would have taken the sacrament upon the matter, there is a possibility that the schoolmaster was entirely innocent: for though it appeared clear on comparing the time when Jenny departed from Little Baddington ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... spectacular about Mr. Tilden. Not wanting the sense of humor, he seldom indulged it. In spite of his positiveness of opinion and amplitude of knowledge he was always courteous and deferential in debate. He had none of the audacious daring, let us say, of Mr. Elaine, the energetic self-assertion of Mr. Roosevelt. Either in his place would have carried ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... right shoulder, across the width of the deltoid muscle, and in figures about half an inch tall. "'Course yer couldn'," she repeated. "That's tattooin', if ever there was tattooin'; an', what's more," she went on, nodding her head with great positiveness, "I know who done it, leastways I know part of 'is name . . . Don't stare, now; lemme think . . . Yes, it's plain as plain. 'Four di'monds,' she said; an' di'monds they are, same as on a pack o' cards—me all the time thinkin' ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... during the entire day, Mr. Lorry," she said, slowly, looking him fairly in the eyes with cruel positiveness. Those eyes of his were wide with surprise and the glowing gleam of injured pride. His lips closed tightly; little red spots flew to his cheeks and then disappeared, leaving his face white and cold; his heart throbbed ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... time it was stopped!" declared Bud with as great positiveness as before. This time he picked up the hat he had dashed to the ground and dusted it off. "I'm going to do ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... his crestfallen look. It was plain that, in talking over myself and my situation, he had declared with the positiveness which I found was part of his character, that I had fallen into some trouble at school and ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... disappointed, somewhat peevish look in the eyes. Such was Henrietta. The fact that she had not been much wanted or appreciated hitherto began to show now she was eighteen. She was either shy and silent, or talked with too much positiveness for fear she should not be listened to; so that though she was not a failure at dances and managed to find plenty of partners, there were none of the interesting episodes that were continually occurring on Louie's evenings, and for a year or two her hopes were not realized. The Prince Charming ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... but that Posthumius, after the battle, spread the report of such an appearance. No person could deny it whilst it was said to last. No person, perhaps, had any inclination to dispute it afterwards; or, if they had, could say with positiveness what was or what was not seen by some or other of the army, in the dismay and amidst the tumult ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... the question with any degree of positiveness, and he went to bed wishing that he had never seen the valley of ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... evidence in a thing of this nature.... But whether the smaller themselves are the genuine writings of Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, is a question that has been much disputed, and has employed the pens of the ablest critics. And whatever positiveness some may have shown on either side, I must own I have found it a very difficult question" ("Credibility," pt. 2, vol. ii., p. 153). The Syriac version was then, of course, unknown. Professor Norton, the learned Christian defender of the Gospels, says: "The seven ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... repudiate the idea that the conscious subject is a mere phenomenon, or "series of phenomena," with more indignation than Hamilton. Notwithstanding the contradictory assertion, "that the subject is unknown," he still teaches, with equal positiveness, "that in every act of perception I am conscious of self, as a perceiving subject." And still more explicitly he says: "As clearly as I am conscious of existing, so clearly am I conscious, at every moment of my existence, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... about three hundred miles from each coast, of which the westerly one, bending round, embraces the Kalahari Desert and Bechuana countries; and then the central basin is very dark again. This opinion is not given with any degree of positiveness. It is stated just as it struck my mind in passing across the country, and if incorrect, it is singular that the dialects spoken by the different tribes have arranged themselves in a fashion which seems to indicate migration along the lines of color. The dialects spoken in the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... profound silence, leaning upon his walking-stick, whilst the committal was making out for Bampfylde the second. The fear of ridicule was struggling with the natural positiveness of his temper: he was dreadfully afraid that the story of his being taken in by the king of the gipsies would get abroad; and, at the same time, he was unwilling to give up his prejudice ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... physical competency attained in athletic games has its reaction upon every mental condition. Many boys who are hampered by unreasonable diffidence, a lack of normal self-confidence and self-assertion, find unexpected ability and positiveness through this avenue alone and, on the other hand, the physical test and encounter of the game serves to bring a ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... conversation with his guests. Indeed, it assumed the character of a monologue in which he frequently adverted to the weather, to be off on a tangent the next moment on a discussion of finance, politics, sociology, on which subjects, however, he was far from showing the positiveness and fixed opinion that he did while descanting upon the weather. In all the subjects he touched upon, he exhibited a certain skill in so framing his remarks that they would not run counter to any prejudices or opposite opinions of his auditors, but the feelings of the auditors having been elicited, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... world—the Eastern world, the world of the unafraid—and her determination to at least subordinate her "controls" had expanded swiftly to a most dangerous height during the few hours of her companionship with him. She felt that he would sympathize with her—that he would help her. The clear positiveness of his speech, his health, his humor, grew upon her each moment, and she resolved to confide in him when next ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... to stop here," Mr. Mouell broke in, with frank positiveness. "If I cannot have him at my own house,—and for certain reasons it is not advisable,—I shall at least have the satisfaction of knowing he is in the charge of the best ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... declare war, notwithstanding these declarations of the President. In like manner, they might declare war in the face of a treaty, and in direct infraction of it. Among other positions laid down by him, this was with great positiveness; that the constitution having given power to the President and Senate to make treaties, they might make a treaty of neutrality which should take from Congress the right to declare war in that particular case, and that under the form of a treaty they might exercise ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... her." The reply came with some positiveness and a slight touch of irony. He had made up his mind now that if the speaker had a pull, he would meet it by keeping strictly ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... well to avoid discursiveness, over-use of parentheses, and positiveness of statement. Keep your desires and feelings from over-coloring your views. A flexible attitude of mind is more likely to win an opponent ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... transcendentalism which also was root and flower itself of the great Revolution, underlying the impassioned contemplation of Wordsworth and giving wings and fire to the eagle-like flight of Shelley, and which in the sphere of philosophy, though displaced by the materialism and positiveness of our day, bequeathed two great schools of thought, the school of Newman to Oxford, the school of Emerson to America. Yet is this spirit of transcendentalism alien to the spirit of art. For the artist can accept no sphere of ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... used every effort to induce her to compose herself, and at length succeeded; but she only resumed her composure to express herself with the same positiveness as before. "No, Reuben, I'll bring disgrace hame to nae man's hearth; my ain distresses I can bear, and I maun bear, but there is nae occasion for buckling them on other folk's shouthers. I will bear my load alone—the back ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... gowned, was surrounded by friends the moment she came majestically upstairs. Susan thought her very attractive, with her ready flow of conversation, her familiar, big-sisterly attitude with the young girls, her positiveness when there was the slightest excuse for her advice or opinions being expressed. She had a rich, full voice, and a drawling speech. She had to decline ten pressing invitations in ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... To tell you plainly, Major Ab. denotes thy greater ability, and Major Will. thy greater willingness to carry on this lawsuit. It was but reasonable thou shouldst pay both for thy power and thy positiveness. ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... wondered, not that he had them, but that they had not crushed or dwarfed his soul. But in spite of Macaulay's brilliancy and his admirable faculty of making the commonplace seem fresh and picturesque, his positiveness wearied me at times, and his frequent sacrifices of truth to effect kept me in a questioning attitude very unlike the attitude of reverence in which I had listened to ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... blandishments, all saturated with fancy, were, so to speak, of azure hue. The birds when they fly up yonder, in the direction of the angels, must hear such words. There were mingled with them, nevertheless, life, humanity, all the positiveness of which Marius was capable. It was what is said in the bower, a prelude to what will be said in the chamber; a lyrical effusion, strophe and sonnet intermingled, pleasing hyperboles of cooing, all the refinements of adoration arranged ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... that the conscious subject is a mere phenomenon, or "series of phenomena," with more indignation than Hamilton. Notwithstanding the contradictory assertion, "that the subject is unknown," he still teaches, with equal positiveness, "that in every act of perception I am conscious of self, as a perceiving subject." And still more explicitly he says: "As clearly as I am conscious of existing, so clearly am I conscious, at every moment ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... hands with her. He received a rapid impression of a white, delicate, aged face, with a high forehead, a small mouth, and a pair of cold blue eyes which had kept much of the freshness of youth. Madame de Bellegarde looked hard at him, and returned his hand-shake with a sort of British positiveness which reminded him that she was the daughter of the Earl of St. Dunstan's. Her daughter-in-law stopped playing and gave him an agreeable smile. Newman sat down and looked about him, while Valentin went and kissed the hand of the ...
— The American • Henry James
... one quickly discerns two main streams of influence. On the one hand, there is the influence of the original Puritans—whether of New England or of the South—, who came to the New World with a ready-made philosophy of the utmost clarity, positiveness and inclusiveness of scope, and who attained to such a position of political and intellectual leadership that they were able to force it almost unchanged upon the whole population, and to endow it with such vitality that it successfully ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... effective is not susceptible to analysis. Was it the appeal that awakened the quixotic sense of honor; the helplessness arousing compassion; the irresistible quality of a brimming eye so fatal to masculine calculation and positiveness? Whatever it was, it dispelled the contraction on the land baron's face, and—despite his threats, vows!—he ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... spirits that are to unfold our destinies, too far-reaching to be clothed in words. Who does not feel the sway of such a voice? It makes the whole range of our capacities resound and tremble, and, when there is positiveness enough to give an answer, calls forth ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... difficulty that I succeeded in gently moving away M. le Duc d'Orleans, plunged as he was in the most bitter grief. I made him traverse the chamber at once, and supplicated him to return to Paris. At last he consented. He wished me to remain and give orders, and begged, with much positiveness, Madame de Saint-Simon to be present when seals were put upon the effects, after which I led him to his coach, and he went away. I immediately repeated to Madame de Saint-Simon the orders he had given me respecting the opening ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... to the catastrophe of Chopin's life, the rupture of his connection with George Sand. Although there is no lack of narratives in which the causes, circumstances, and time of this rupture are set forth with absolute positiveness, it is nevertheless an undeniable fact that we are not at the present moment, nor, all things well considered, shall be even in the most distant future, in a position to speak on ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... world is success in getting money and ingenuity in spending it. With all the rest she was a woman of some direct force of character which, in times of crisis as at the present moment, asserted itself with considerable positiveness. ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... confession of faith, and the thirty-nine articles, contain the same points, even the doctrine of predestination.' JOHNSON. 'Why yes, Sir, predestination was a part of the clamour of the times, so it is mentioned in our articles, but with as little positiveness as could be.' BOSWELL. 'Is it necessary, Sir, to believe all the thirty-nine articles?' JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, that is a question which has been much agitated. Some have thought it necessary that they should all be believed; others have considered ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... desirable accomplishment if it can be gained without too much cost, but not to be allowed the place of more valuable knowledge. A typical modern father, writing not long ago to a modern educator, after giving with equal positiveness the subjects that his boy must have and must not have included in his course of study, added by way of concession, "The boy might, if he has time, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... answer the question with any degree of positiveness, and he went to bed wishing that he had never seen ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... right," I said, "on every subject but one. His head must have been injured a little in his fall, and he imagines and asserts with positiveness that we found a young woman in the moon, the last of her race—a ridiculous idea, is ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... last few years has been more discussed than that of their influence upon prices. Opinions have differed widely, the opponents of the Combinations usually believing that they have increased prices materially, their defenders claiming with equal positiveness that they have reduced prices. Differences of opinion have probably originated largely from the fact that the subject has been approached from different points of view; and mistakes have also, in many cases, been made through lack of a careful ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... and nameless surgeons—the baby. I wish we had the baby's testimony; and yet if we had it it would not do us any good—a furtive conjecture, a sly insinuation, a pious "if" or two, would be smuggled in, here and there, with a solemn air of judicial investigation, and its positiveness would wilt ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tell you," the father insisted. Then he went on quickly, with a tone of utmost positiveness. "If you don't, what are you going to do the day your wife is thrown into a patrol wagon and carried to Police Headquarters—for it's sure to happen? The cleverest of people make mistakes, and ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... in a single decision, and that not a very long one. The amazing feature of the matter is that all these methods are lawful—made so, not by legislative enactment, but by the judges. Language can not be used with sufficient lucidity and positiveness to ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Sophist; no doubt that he is right in prosecuting his father has ever entered into his mind. Like a Sophist too, he is incapable either of framing a general definition or of following the course of an argument. His wrong-headedness, one-sidedness, narrowness, positiveness, are characteristic of his priestly office. His failure to apprehend an argument may be compared to a similar defect which is observable in the rhapsode Ion. But he is not a bad man, and he is friendly to Socrates, whose familiar sign he recognizes with interest. ...
— Euthyphro • Plato
... to how large an extent woman is a sexual organism, and how diffused and even unconscious the sexual impulses may be, it becomes very difficult to assert that she has never shown any manifestation of the sexual impulse. All we can assert with some degree of positiveness in some cases is that she has not manifested sexual gratification, more particularly as shown by the occurrence of the orgasm, but that is very far indeed from warranting us to assert that she never will experience such gratification or still less that she is organically incapable ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... these symptoms off with great volubility. The Count looked at him with open-eyed wonder. The professor was not less astonished at the positiveness with which Dr. Jones thus detailed the Count's symptoms without any previous ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... unknown to classic art. The facts of our history, ideal and social, will be grand and of new import; it is perfectly natural to the American to mould in clay and carve in stone. The permanence of material and solid, relief in the forms correspond to the positiveness of his nature better than the mere ephemeral and even tricky methods of the painter,—to his need of motion and action, better than the chambered scribbling of the poet. He will thus record his best experiences, and these records will ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... cannot be helped. There is no one to go with us." This came with some positiveness, yet with a note ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... caprice! But thirty is the jocund youth of character! On land or sea the Lord Almighty never made anything as radiantly, divinely young as—thirty! Oh, but thirty's the darling age in a woman!" he added with sudden exultant positiveness. "Thirty's the birth of ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... little below the right shoulder, across the width of the deltoid muscle, and in figures about half an inch tall. "'Course yer couldn'," she repeated. "That's tattooin', if ever there was tattooin'; an', what's more," she went on, nodding her head with great positiveness, "I know who done it, leastways I know part of 'is name . . . Don't stare, now; lemme think . . . Yes, it's plain as plain. 'Four di'monds,' she said; an' di'monds they are, same as on a pack o' cards—me ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... one thing, Henriette," I returned, with more positiveness than I commonly show, "I will not marry a lady's maid, and that's all there is about it. You forget that I ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... Orleans by the absence of her husband in the field, she returned to the parental roof, to beguile the time in the companionship of her mother. But the separation, with the anxiety it brought, became intolerable; besides, from the positiveness of her opinions and the warmth of her zeal, she soon became ill at ease in the land of her birth. So, with her mother's approval, she resolved to face all perils, and to return and share the fortunes of the Confederacy. Taking her little boy she set out for "Dixie," and, after ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... betrayed the fact of their having a secret. Then the thought came to her that Emmett's sin had found him out in as strange a way as that of the man who talked in his sleep or the chicken thief to whom the feather clung. It was one more proof added to the forty in Aunt Letty's book. Richard's positiveness made a deeper impression on her than she liked to acknowledge. She shut her eyes a moment, squinting them up so tight that her eyelids wrinkled, and hoped as hard as she could hope that everything would turn out ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... yourself whether he is worth the sacrifice," Grace answered with deep positiveness. Privately she did not consider that a young man, who took it upon himself to interfere with an enterprise which benefited many and harmed none, was quite worthy of her generous little comrade. "It's like this, Arline. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... commonly and absurdly called "existence," is a flow, or a current, or an attempt, from negativeness to positiveness, and is intermediate ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... little man, with surprising positiveness. "I know something will happen—to this boat. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Nobility - The Tragedy of the Ocean Tramp • Burt L. Standish (AKA Gilbert Patten)
... clergymen; the letter had a certain volubility about it, and the writer seemed to me to pull out rather adroitly one or two loose sticks in his opponents' bundle, and to lay them vehemently about their backs. But, alas! the acrimony, the positiveness, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... in the words of Taliesin," said I; "none can say with positiveness whether I be fish or flesh, least of all myself. ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... before not a word came to the ears which she strove futilely to make inattentive. A certain quality in the speaker's voice drew fresh speculation from her. He spoke quietly, with no single interruption from the others and with a positiveness that was like a command, as though he whom she had thought possibly a deputy were coolly telling both Pollard and Cole Dalton what they should do, when they should do it and how. The voice was ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... while his hesitance makes it the harder. Of his theology I will say more some other time. He, also, has been through the great distress, the "Conflict of Ages," but has come out at a different end from Edward, and stands with John Foster, though with more positiveness ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... replied Tom, with gentle positiveness. "It wouldn't be in American nature to go away and leave a fellow creature to die of helplessness when a little care and nursing ought to put that man on his feet again. But I won't argue with you, for I see the ...
— The Young Engineers in Mexico • H. Irving Hancock
... any discussion of such question, it might be, as it too often is, alleged that "the Lord looketh upon the heart," etc., let me be permitted to say—with as much positiveness as may express my deepest conviction—that, while indeed it is the Lord's business to look upon the heart, it is the pastor's to look upon the hands and the lips; and that the foulest oaths of the thief and the street-walker ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... uncomfortable pause fell upon, the company, for two of the best informed people present were entirely convinced that some one other than Shakespeare wrote the plays. It was simply lack of tact that betrayed this lady into a positiveness and obtrusiveness of statement that made others uncomfortable and aroused their antagonism. Here is still another instance: One lady was introduced to another lady who was the wife of a gentleman much older than herself. After catching the name the lady said: ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... be mistaken for the substance. Positiveness of manner, and redoubtable inner conviction stem only from the mastery of superior knowledge, and this last is the fruit of application, preparation, thoroughness and the willingness to struggle ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... shorter than mine? No body can tell which of us is mistaken, till the Day of Judgment, or whether any of us be so (for there may be different Ways to the same End, and I am not for circumscribing God Almighty's Mercy:) This I am sure of, one shall meet with the same Positiveness in Opinion, in some of the Priests of all these Sects; The same Want of Charity, engrossing Heaven by way of Monopoly to their own Corporation, and managing it by a joint Stock, exclusive of all others (as pernicious in ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... herself seemed proof against discomposure, I found something vaguely irritating in her soft, sweet positiveness. ...
— The Pension Beaurepas • Henry James
... crestfallen look. It was plain that, in talking over myself and my situation, he had declared with the positiveness which I found was part of his character, that I had fallen into some trouble at school and ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... said, there are those who teach that Satan will be ultimately extinguished. And they lay down that theory with great positiveness. While there are some hints to that effect in the Word of God, it does not seem to me that they are clear enough to warrant us in being positive. We would hardly expect so much. It is not our business to know much of "other world" ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... said Aunt Mary with a positiveness that was final. "I don't want her. My heavens, Lucinda, ain't we just had enough of her? Anyhow, if you ain't, I have. I don't want her, nor no livin' soul except my trunk; an' I want that just as quick as Joshua can haul it ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... editions give soit. This difference in the mode used in various editions is but another proof of the elasticity of the subjunctive in French. Either mode is here correct, the indicative expressing greater positiveness, and the subjunctive more doubt, ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... in the early summer the newspapers contained definite statements, authorized from Washington with increasing positiveness, that the cordon around the N.P.C. was tightening. In July Barclay's scorn of Inspector Smith grew into disquietude; for a letter from Judge Bemis, of the federal court,—written up in the Catskills,—warned him that scorn was not the only emotion with which he should honour Smith. ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... ever experiences any shock at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love is really ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... perhaps as useful, in discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not make us knowing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from error, it may at least from the spirit of error; and may make us cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much labour may end in ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... awful good-natured, but he isn't the sort of young man I would like," concluded Carrie, with amusing positiveness. ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... equal positiveness. "And a fine fellow he was, too, and one of the best for cheering of us up with his stories and songs; and not above a bit of a prayer, too, when the worst came to the worst. I ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... in his sides, with his usual humourous positiveness. "Why, then tell her she is a very saucy lady, for her last letter to you, and her lord and master is not to be trusted; and it is my absolute will and pleasure that you ask me no ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... of BALE'S coarseness, positiveness, and severity, he has done much towards the cause of learning; and, perhaps, towards the propagation of the disease under discussion. His regard for Leland does him great honour; and although his plays are miserably dull, notwithstanding the high prices which the original editions ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... I, "show me the marriage certificate, and I will acknowledge the marriage, and acknowledge the child;" but they could not, and I knew they could not; and I kept the estate for my darling boy,' cried the old gentleman, with the exultation of successful positiveness again appearing strong in his physiognomy; but suddenly changing and relaxing, his countenance fell, and he added, 'But now I have no darling boy. What use all!—all must go to the heir-at-law, or I must will it to a stranger—a lady of quality, who has just found out she is ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... of the measure. She had made up her mind to visit her aunt on the following day, and though the weather was bitterly cold and damp, she adhered to her resolution. Madame, at first politely, finally with provoking positiveness, told her "she would not permit her to risk her life, and a life still more precious, for any ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... with equal positiveness. "The law is very clear, my friend. Your men may return willingly, but you cannot force them. When we reach Terra we will give them a choice. Those who wish to return to the Consolidation will be given transportation ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... not believe that his nation were the descendants of Attila and his people, though he acknowledged that they were probably of the same race. Attila and his armies, he said, came and disappeared in a very mysterious manner, and that nothing could be said with positiveness about them; that the people now known as Magyars first made their appearance in Muscovy in the year 884, under the leadership of Almus, called so from Alom, which, in the Hungarian language, signifies a dream; his mother, before his birth, having dreamt that the child ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... this ought to make such a person modest in his enunciations; not so: too often it happens that, in proportion to the narrowness of his knowledge, is, not his distrust of it, but the deep hold it has upon him, his absolute conviction of his own conclusions, and his positiveness in maintaining them. He has the obstinacy of the bigot, whom he scorns, without the bigot's apology, that he has been taught, as he thinks, his doctrine from heaven. Thus he becomes, what is commonly ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... rapidly, bearing off toward the cairn which made the water sign. All at once Juan lifted his head, listened for a moment, and then said, with more show of animation than he had yet displayed and with positiveness in his ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... you had that terrible fear to contend against with all your other troubles?" asked Mr. Corbin, in a tone of compassion. "No, Miss Montague," he added, with grave positiveness, "I do not believe that Walter Dinsmore—and I knew him well—ever willfully committed a wrong against any human being. Now," he resumed, smiling, to see the look of trouble fade out of her eyes at his assurance, "I am going to ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... projecting your psychic power directly upon and into the mind of the other person whom you wish to influence. Sometimes, if the person is quite negative to you, this is a very simple and easy matter; but where the person is near your own degree of psychic positiveness you will have to assert your psychic superiority to him, and get the psychic "upper hand" before you can proceed further. This is accomplished by throwing into your psychic atmosphere some particularly strong mental statements accompanied by ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... came home yesterday—and with an escort, too. She brought a young man with her who was to be her future husband, she declared, and as he declared so too, with great positiveness, there was nothing left me but to say, yes ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... Erasmus Darwin's or Buffon's, and many other anatomists with a strong sense of form, his eyes were heavily overhung by a projecting forehead and eyebrows, and seemed at times to look inward. His lips were firm and closely set, with the expression of positiveness, and the other feature which most marked him was the very heavy mass of hair falling over his forehead, which he would frequently stroke or toss back. Occasionally he would light up the monotony of anatomical description by a bit ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... old man with gentle positiveness. "Because of the way of the white man, which is without understanding and never twice ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... two traits of character inward, in Himself. One was His purity. There was the absence of everything that should not be in Him. This is the negative side, though no part of His character called for more intense positiveness. Purity means sinlessness. He was sinless. But we must quickly remember what this means, or else there may seem to be no following for us, only a wistful gazing where we cannot go. It does not mean simply this, that through His peculiar birthright there was freedom from ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... to consult the driver of the Carlisle coach, who was taking a glass before going to bed—his hours of work being in the night and his hours of rest being in the day. That authority recommended, with the utmost positiveness of advice, that Robbie should take a seat in his coach when he left for ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... had acted in conformity with their obligations and honest convictions of duty in bringing in their verdicts. They had sworn to decide according to the law and the evidence. The law under which they were required to act was laid down with absolute positiveness by the Court. They were bound to receive it, and to take and weigh the evidence that was admitted; and to their minds it was clear, decisive, and overwhelming, offered by persons of good character, and confirmed ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Bristol to Ireland. I have had Mr. Jacob to tea; I could not yet arrange a dinner, and he was impatient for an introduction. I like him extremely: he has everything in his favour that can be imagined ; sound judgment without positiveness, brilliant talents without conceit, authority with gentleness, and consummate knowledge of science with modesty. What a blessing that such a character should preside over these inexperienced youths ! Mr. Jacob has aided us to remove. Time is a plaything to the diligent and obliging, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... seen; but on reaching the Feejees, six months later, in 1840, I found there similar facts on a still grander scale and of a more diversified character, so that I was afterward enabled to speak of his theory as established with more positiveness than he himself, in his philosophic caution, had been ready to adopt. His work on coral-reefs appeared in 1842, when my report on the subject was already in manuscript. It showed that the conclusions on other points, which we had independently reached, ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... it is serious," she rejoined with equal positiveness. "You do not know daddy. Nothing ever discourages him, and he meets everything with a smile—but he cannot stand any more losses. The explosion was bad enough, but if this 'fill' is to be rebuilt, I don't know what will be the end of it. Tell me over again, please—how did he look ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... other animals by inoculating them with tuberculous material of human origin and his success in causing progressive and fatal tuberculosis in the same kinds of animals when inoculated with tuberculous material of bovine origin. With such positiveness did he hold to the constant and specific difference between the human and bovine bacillus that he promulgated an experimental method of discriminating between them. Speaking of the etiology of intestinal ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... said, with great positiveness. "Sure. Before I speak English I know nobody but Greeks, and when I start learning English I got no time to learn Polish, or Italian, or whatever it is. English I got to speak, if I run a candy store, but ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... scowled at this frank reference to their looks; and a few in the encircling crowd laughed grimly. Plainly there could be no collusion between this witness and Ugger and Quinley; and this apparent fact gave almost the positiveness of proven truth to his testimony, in the ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... here again instantly heard—the characteristics of the sounds in this instance being rapidity and energy, or positiveness. ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death. Anyway, man has always been afraid of this mathematical certainty, and I am afraid of it now. Granted that man does nothing but seek that mathematical certainty, he traverses oceans, ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... the notion by transferring to the time of the trials his experience in connection with spiritualistic "circles" of his own day. It is curious to observe how readily this suggestion was adopted, and with what uniformity recent popular narratives of the delusion reiterate, with increasing positiveness of phrase, the unfounded assumption. The expression, to "try projects," is therefore taken by Mr. Drake from modern folk-lore. Fowler's address, entitled "An Account of the Life and Character of the Rev. Samuel Parris, of Salem Village, and of his Connection ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... is much Liszt in the score, and a good deal of Wagner. Only occasionally—as in the pianissimo passage for flutes, clarinets, and divided strings, following the first outburst of the full orchestra—does his own individuality emerge with any positiveness. MacDowell withheld the score from publication, at the time of its composition, because of his uncertainty as to its effect. He had not had an opportunity to secure a reading of it by one of the Cur-Orchester which had ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... on the modern college, in which he all but cited his own son as an example of the havoc wrought by present- day university methods. The elder Anthony's wealth and position made it good copy. The yellow journals liked it immensely, and, strangely enough, notwithstanding the positiveness with which the newspapers spoke, the facts agreed essentially with their statements. Darwin K. Anthony and his son had quarrelled, they were estranged; the young man did prefer idleness to industry. Exactly as the published narratives ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
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