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Subsistence   Listen
noun
Subsistence  n.  
1.
Real being; existence. "Not only the things had subsistence, but the very images were of some creatures existing."
2.
Inherency; as, the subsistence of qualities in bodies.
3.
That which furnishes support to animal life; means of support; provisions, or that which produces provisions; livelihood; as, a meager subsistence. "His viceroy could only propose to himself a comfortable subsistence out of the plunder of his province."
4.
(Theol.) Same as Hypostasis, 2.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Subsistence" Quotes from Famous Books



... peace party will be stronger still. Something has thus been gained; but the greatest gain ever yet won for the cause of peace was the refusal of the Catalonian reservists to serve in the war against the Riff mountaineers of Morocco in July 1909. "Risk our lives and the subsistence of our little families to secure dividends for shareholders in mining concessions illegally inveigled from a semi-savage chieftain? Never! We will raise hell rather, and die in revolution upon our native streets." So Barcelona flared to heaven, and for ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... little wooden bridge near a waterfall, Davy saw an object in the water, then in the air, and then in the water where the spray fell and where foam formed. Later, he was to know this little slate-colored bird as the water ouzel, a bird that was neither wader nor swimmer, yet took his subsistence ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... accordingly made with the Western Union Telegraph Company, under which active operations were commenced last spring, under surveys previously made. The grand train of four hundred men, one hundred great prairie wagons, and six or eight hundred mules or oxen,—a portion of the cattle for the subsistence of the party,—started westward from Omaha, Nebraska, in June last, and on the 4th of July commenced pushing on the construction at the point which it had already reached, some two or three hundred miles further ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... judiciary departments should be separate and distinct, so that no person should exercise the powers of more than one of them at the same time. BUT NO BARRIER WAS PROVIDED BETWEEN THESE SEVERAL POWERS. The judiciary and the executive members were left dependent on the legislative for their subsistence in office, and some of them for their continuance in it. If, therefore, the legislature assumes executive and judiciary powers, no opposition is likely to be made; nor, if made, can be effectual; because in that case they may put their proceedings ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... been adapted to feeding on the scant herbage which develops in rocky and mountainous countries. They do not seem able to make the perfect use of the resources of a pasture which sheep do. These inherited peculiarities in feeding enable them to pick up a subsistence where they may range over a considerable territory, even where it seems to afford no forms of food for the hungriest animal. Thus in that part of the city of New York known as "Shanty town," goats may be seen in fairly good condition, although the sole source of food, besides a few stray weeds, ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... the fine system, since punctuality and thoroughness are the result of educated intelligence. The largest number earn from two to two hundred and fifty dollars, and, as has been said, lose an average of thirty days in the year. The highest average wage, $6.91, is little more than subsistence, and the lowest, $4.05, is far less ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various

... eyes," her husband had deserted his people; and now on her return she was probably penniless, her inheritance sold until the year of jubilee, and she in her old age, unable by her own efforts to gain a subsistence. The poor in Israel were not forlorn, but it required genuine humility on Ruth's part, and a sincere love for her mother-in-law, to induce her to avail herself of the means provided. She hesitated not. It was "in ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... and Genoese on hearing this assurance consented to remain in Damietta; and, after an expenditure of three hundred and sixty thousand livres, Margaret provided for their subsistence. But the men who were thus bribed to remain as a garrison were not likely to make any very formidable resistance in the event of an attack taking place; and such an event was no longer improbable. Indeed rumours, vague but most alarming, reached ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar

... have a hard tussle with her practical sense if I tell her bluntly that I do not wish to write an opera for Paris. True, she would shake her head and accept that decision, too, were it not so closely related to our means of subsistence; there lies the critical knot, which it will be painful to cut. Already my wife is ashamed of our presence in Zurich, and thinks we ought to make everybody believe that we ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... S. Fifth Infantry: You are hereby appointed Assistant Commissary of Subsistence, and will forthwith join your regiment at Detroit, which is under orders to move to the Mississippi river and establish a military post at the mouth of the ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... diet—which he never did take—he yet would have inherited the flesh-eating instincts of his animal forebears. And no instinct is ever wholly eradicated. But man was a meat eater. By brute strength, by sagacity, by endurance he killed in order to get the means of subsistence. If he did not kill he starved. And it is a matter of record, even down to modern times, that man has ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... as Mr. Hector's guest for about six months, and then hired lodgings in another part of the town, finding himself as well situated at Birmingham as he supposed he could be any where, while he had no settled plan of life, and very scanty means of subsistence. He made some valuable acquaintances there, amongst whom were Mr. Porter, a mercer, whose widow he afterwards married, and Mr. Taylor, who by his ingenuity in mechanical inventions, and his success in trade, acquired an immense fortune. But the comfort of being near Mr. Hector, his old school-fellow ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... the Apache bears against the white frontiersman, seized the occasion to renew their inroads upon the lowland country. Year by year they descended from their mountain fastnesses, plundering and burning. Many noble Hindu families, ousted by the tax-collectors from their estates, began to seek subsistence from robbery. Others, consulting their selfish interests amid the general distress, "found it more profitable to shelter banditti on their estates, levying blackmail from the surrounding villages as the price of immunity from depredation, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... what did their peculiarity, as opposed to the country poor, consist? There was one and the same answer to both questions. There were a great many of them here, because here all those people who have no means of subsistence in the country collect around the rich; and their peculiarity lies in this, that they are not people who have come from the country to support themselves in the city (if there are any city paupers, those who have been born here, and whose fathers and grandfathers were born here, ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... after death, return to dust, and see corruption; but their souls (which neither die nor sleep) having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them. The souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies. ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke

... which astonishes you had not yet ripened—I saw it only as one of the possibilities of my life. Well, now, it's only too true that there's something of speculation in my purpose; I look to the Church, not only as a congenial sphere of activity, but as a means of subsistence. In a man of no fortune this is inevitable; I hope there is nothing to be ashamed of. Even if the conditions of the case allowed it, I shouldn't present myself for ordination forthwith; I must study and prepare myself in quietness. How the practical ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing

... intercepted, we found that our situation was altered; and that, separated from the mother-country, we were become the inhabitants of a distant colony, where we should be obliged to depend on our own resources for subsistence, till the peace. We learned, that it was L'Orient which blew up at ten o'clock at night, and L'Hercule the following morning; and that the captains of the ships of the line, Le Guillaume Tell and Genereux—and of the frigates, La Diane and ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) • James Harrison

... often to appearance wilful, served the critics for an excuse for their distaste. Fortunately, or the poor musician might have starved, he was not only a composer, but also an excellent practical performer, especially on the violin, and by that instrument he earned a decent subsistence as one of the orchestra at the Great Theatre of San Carlo. Here formal and appointed tasks necessarily kept his eccentric fancies in tolerable check, though it is recorded that no less than five times he had been deposed from his desk for having shocked the conoscenti, and thrown ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... were so completely impoverished and ruined by these exactions, that those who were not impressed into Xerxes's service and compelled to follow his army, abandoned their homes, and roamed away in the hope of finding elsewhere the means of subsistence which it was no longer possible to obtain on their own lands; and thus, when Xerxes at last gave orders to the fleet to pass through the canal, and to his army to resume its march, he left the whole region utterly depopulated ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... modern times, when population greatly outruns the demand for labor, whether it be under the stimulus of upright government, and just laws, justly administered, in combination with the manufacturing system (as in England,) or (as in Ireland) under the stimulus of idle habits, cheap subsistence, and a low standard of comfort—we think it much if we can keep down insurrection by the bayonet and the sabre. Lucro ponamus is our cry, if we can effect even thus much; whereas Rome, in her simplest and pastoral days, converted this menacing danger and standing opprobrium ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... the most solemn obligations, to promote the interests of millions of my own countrymen, who are indeed by no means in a state so miserable and degraded as that of the slaves in the United States, but who are toiling hard from sunrise to sunset in order to obtain a scanty subsistence; who are often scarcely able to procure the necessaries of life; and whose lot would be alleviated if I could open new markets to them, and free them from taxes which now press heavily on their industry. I see clearly that, by excluding the produce of slave labour from our ports, I should inflict ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... negative on acts of Parliament. But the Commons, had certainly shown a strong disposition to exact this security also. "Such a doctrine," says Mr. Hallam, "was in this country as repugnant to the whole history of our laws, as it was incompatible with the subsistence of the monarchy in anything more than a nominal preeminence." Now this article has been as completely carried into elect by the Revolution as if it had been formally inserted in the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement. We are surprised, we confess, that Mr. Hallam should attach so ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... on rout, and confounded confusion. A wagon was upset upon the bridge, it became impassable, and Panic found that she must get away as best she might. She left her congressmen's carriages, her wagons of subsistence, and her wagons of ammunition, her guns and their caissons, her flags and her wounded in ambulances; she cut the traces of the horses and freed them from pleasure carriage, gun carriage, ammunition wagon, and ambulance; with these horses and afoot, ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... stretch themselves for a chat or engage in some schoolboy games, such as nimble peg or quoits. The owner of the field was an easy-going man, who did not appear to be troubled by the visits of the boys, as long as they did not maltreat the peaceful cows who gathered their subsistence from the scanty grass ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger

... most truly at the sight. By the use of the needle, the naked may be clothed; ingenuity may economize her means, and have more to spare for those who need it; invention may multiply the ways of honest subsistence, and direct the ignorant to the use of them. Most glad was I, therefore, that the signal of industry drew more than one wanderer to the same pursuit, though not till much time had been consumed in going in and out, and up and down, in search of the materials. All were found at last; ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady

... all sorts, especially French and German, translating Wilhelm Meister so superbly well as to make it almost an English book. There was no greater intellect then in the British Islands than Carlyle's and very few with which it could be compared. Yet it was difficult for him to earn a bare subsistence for his wife and himself. Froude has brought out with wonderful power and beauty the character which in Carlyle was above and beyond all the gifts of his mind. If he was a severe critic of others, he was a still sterner judge of himself. It would have been easy for him to ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... provisions of all kinds; the inhabitants of the Island have had ample warning to move into the town, carrying with them everything of value; so the Turks will obtain but little plunder, and will be able to gather no means of subsistence on the island, as every animal has been driven within the walls, and even the unripe corn has been reaped and brought in. However long the siege lasts, we need be in no fear of being reduced to sore straits for food. Look ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty

... from the period of Elizabeth. It was to appropriate the land into the hands of a few, to create great landlords, to make individual men the owners, nay the tyrants, of vast areas. This meant depriving the common people of their natural means of subsistence. It forced them to maintain themselves where there was actually no room, with the outcrop of ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... for though his income, by pay and appointments, was handsome, his fortune was moderate and must be all his daughter's; but, by giving her an education, he hoped to be supplying the means of respectable subsistence hereafter. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... commonly called the queen-bee, who alone governs and has the superintendence of the whole hive, who distributes all their employments, encourages their industry, presides over the building of their little cells, takes care of the nourishment and subsistence of her numerous family; regulates the quantity of honey appointed for that purpose, and at fixed and proper seasons sends abroad the new swarms in colonies, to ease and disburthen the hive of its superfluous inhabitants. He remarks, with Aristotle, ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... bolts of the ponderous mahogany doors were strengthened, the stables and mills and outbuildings emptied and locked. Much that was precious in the house went with the family and horses and servants to New York. Yet be sure that proper means of subsistence for Williams and his two helpers were duly stowed away, for the faithful steward had to himself the discharge ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens

... entered it, but you will not have conquered the people. Our wives and children will go to the canons and take shelter in the mountains, while their husbands and sons will fight you. You will be without fuel, without subsistence for yourselves or forage for your animals. You will be in a strange land, while we know every foot of it. We will haunt and harass you and pick you off by day and by night, and, as God lives, we ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... ate and drank heavily. He was a carnivorous man, and liked plenty of thick, fat, underdone meat. As for Lydia, her appetite was as erratic as her own impulses. Her table, always wastefully elaborate, no doubt furnished subsistence for all the relatives of her household below stairs, and left sufficient for any ambitious butler to make a decent ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... it was therefore mutually agreed between them that she should accept the proffered services of Lady Wriothesly for an introduction to the royal notice, and that he in the mean while, should seek in his profession the means of their future subsistence. Secure in their mutual good faith, they parted, and it was on this occasion that he had given her a song, which in her insanity she was constantly repeating. The refrain, 'Addio Teresa, Teresa Addio,' I remembered to have heard murmured by the Duke of Buckingham with a very ...
— Theresa Marchmont • Mrs Charles Gore

... of earning reward by the withholding of the soul therefrom and the repenting thereof; but the command[FN105] is in the hand of Him who cloth what He will, and things by their contraries are distinguished. Thus subsistence is necessary to the body, but there is no body without soul, and the purification of the spirit is in making clean the intention in this world and taking thought to that which shall profit in the world to come. Indeed, soul and body are like two horses racing for a wager or two ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... of the northwest coast were seafarers; they inhabited the forest and worshiped the animals which were peculiar to the forest and took as their totems the eagle, wolf and raven, but they drew their subsistence in great part from the sea. They worshiped the animals of the seas, such as the shark, the whale and the sculpin. Their skill and courage as navigators have never been equaled. Taking their families and the few articles of commerce gathered ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various

... Sir Walter Raleigh left behind him."[30] This writer's remarks apply chiefly to Cork, Waterford, Kerry, and Limerick. He proceeds: "The feeding of cattle on large dairies of several hundred acres together, may be managed by the inhabitants of one or two cabins, whose wretched subsistence, for the most part, depends upon an acre or two of potatoes ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... history thus:—"His parents dying when he was very young, he soon squandered away his small patrimony, when he became, at first an attendant in Lord Oxford's library, and afterwards librarian; at whose death he was obliged to write for the booksellers for a subsistence." ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... Nature to confine itself within the Word,—a gigantic act on which the common mind reflects as little as it does on the nature of Motion, but which, nevertheless, has led the Indian theosophists to explain creation by a word to which they give an inverse power. The smallest atom of their subsistence, namely, the grain of rice, from which a creation issues and in which alternately creation again is held, presented to their minds so perfect an image of the creative word, and of the abstractive word, that to them it was easy to apply the same system ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... and imported into Ireland ground into flour. The consequence is, that the men who worked the soil, as well as the men who ground the corn, are thrown out of employment, and there is nothing left for them but subsistence upon the poor-rates, emigration to other countries, or employment in some new ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles

... life of progress! Ah, yes, when it is a question of feeding convicts, of providing for the maintenance of criminals, the government calls for bids in order to find the purveyor who offers the best means of subsistence, he who at least will not let them perish from hunger, but when it is a question of morally feeding a whole people, of nourishing the intellect of youth, the healthiest part, that which is later to be the country and the all, the government not only does not ask ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal

... means of subsistence was cat-hunting. El Bizco, who was endowed with no talent (his head, as Vidal said, was a salted melon) had a really great gift for catching cats. All he needed was a sack and a stick and he did famously. Every living cat in sight was ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... once more Mdlle. de La Force, and found herself without husband and money. I cannot tell how it was that the King and her parents, both of whom had consented to the marriage, did not oppose its dissolution. To gain a subsistence she set about composing romances, and as she was often staying with the Princesse de Conti, she dedicated to her that of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... lost. This done, Teach goes into the tender sloop, with forty hands, and leaves the Revenge there, then takes seventeen others and maroons them upon a small sandy island, about a league from the main, where there was neither bird, beast, or herb for their subsistence, and where they must have perished if Major Bonnet had not, two days after, ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various

... oysters. Grain, flour, fruit, butter, eggs, cheese, sugar, tea, and coffee, are brought to London daily in such quantities that the prices of these commodities all the world over are based upon what they will fetch in London. Whole nations and provinces and districts get their subsistence from industries that have for their end the supplying of some of this enormous food demand. Denmark, for example, owes its entire prosperity of recent years to its profitable manufacture of butter for the London market. Brittany and Normandy, ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various

... a great landholder possesses a hundred times the property that is necessary for the subsistence of a family; and each landlord has perhaps a hundred families dependent on him ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... of magnificent palaces, and of thousands of acres of the public domain, and of a revenue of millions of francs, while we dwell in hovels, and eat the coarsest food, and, by the most menial toil, obtain a bare subsistence? Citizen Orleans has given up his titles, as he ought to have done; now let him give up his enormous estates, and divide them among us, his brethren; and, if he is unwilling to do this, let us compel ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... former the tripe de roche is the most capable of supporting life. Here winter reigns with stern rigour for ten months in the year; and even in summer biting blasts, hail-storms, and rain frequently occur. Yet in this inhospitable region numerous herds of reindeer, musk-oxen, and other mammalia find subsistence during the brief summer, as do partridge and ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... accustomed range are rapidly contracting, and their means of subsistence undergoing a corresponding diminution. The white man is advancing with rapid strides upon all sides of them, and they are forced to give way to his encroachments. The time is not far distant when the buffalo will become extinct, and they will then be compelled to adopt some other mode of life ...
— The Passing of the Frontier - A Chronicle of the Old West, Volume 26 in The Chronicles - Of America Series • Emerson Hough

... The poor woman to whom it belonged, startled by the shot, went out and saw her hen dead; and following the young soldier, asked him to pay the price of the hen and chickens, for both were lost to her, and they formed a great part of her means of subsistence; but the unfeeling youth would not give her a farthing—threatening if she annoyed him he would send her after her hen; upon which the injured old woman predicted, "that as many people would one day gaze in wonder on his lifeless body as that hen ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton

... allowed to swerve him from his purpose. Since the death of his father, when the boy was but five years old, he had carried grist to the mill, chopped wood, followed the plow barefooted, clerked in a country store,—did everything that a loving son and brother could do to help win a subsistence for ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden

... commands is said to rival Switzerland in its picturesque beauty, but years later, when the romance of the Monongahela hills had faded in the actualities of life, Gallatin wrote of it that "he did not know in the United States any spot which afforded less means to earn a bare subsistence for those who could not live by ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... this, cavalry is absolutely necessary for the protection of convoys, and, from its celerity of movement, is the kind of force best fitted for guarding our communications, it is evident that the subsistence of an army is dependent, to a great extent, upon ...
— A Treatise on the Tactical Use of the Three Arms: Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry • Francis J. Lippitt

... were comfortably lodged in a large building he had secured for a chapel and mission house. For the rest, the missionaries hired such tenements as could be found; at the same time providing bread for those cut off from all means of procuring their own subsistence. Nor was any time lost in appealing for aid to evangelical Christians throughout the world; and responses were received from the United States, from England, from every country in Europe, and from India; and five ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... certainly does so, if it is true. It is, however, very extraordinary, that a man who was intrusted by such a commonwealth, with the command of a fleet of a hundred and thirty vessels, and an army of a hundred and forty thousand men, should have a family at home dependent for subsistence on the hired cultivation of seven acres of land. ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... it again: I have sufficient reason left in me, I think, to show these parvenus how we, of the old regime, bear every blow which fate chooses to deal to us. They have taken everything from us, these new men—our lives, our lands, our very means of subsistence—now they have taken to filching our sweethearts—curse them! but at least let ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... own part, I mean to carry up, in cash or credits, above eight, and nearly nine thousand pounds sterling, which I am enabled to do by funds I have in Italy, and credits in England. Of this sum I must necessarily reserve a portion for the subsistence of myself and suite; the rest I am willing to apply in the manner which seems most likely to be useful to the cause—having of course some guarantee or assurance, that it will not be misapplied to any ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... deportados reached Manilla in 1848-9, and being entirely destitute of all resources or means of subsistence, they had to be taken care of by the Colonial Government, who allowed them some rice and water every day, and had, finally, to charter vessels to re-ship them for the Peninsula. One of them was an Irishman, who having entered the ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... remarked, such buildings as these can only be raised under peculiar social conditions. The ruler must be a despotic sovereign, and the mass of the people slaves, whose subsistence and whose lives are sacrificed without scruple to execute the fancies of the monarch, who is not so much the governor as the unrestricted owner of the country and the people. The population must be very dense, or it would not bear the loss of ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... her short trance, and hastened with hurried steps to perform her well-known office. Then came a few minutes of exertion, during which the females transferred all that was necessary to their subsistence, and which had not been already provided in the block, to their little citadel. The glowing light, which penetrated the darkest passages among the buildings, prevented this movement from being made without discovery. The whoop summoned their ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper

... perhaps have done as well as some of my predecessors, or at least chalked out a way for others to amend my errors in a like design; but being encouraged only with fair words by King Charles II, my little salary ill paid, and no prospect of a future subsistence, I was then discouraged in the beginning of my attempt; and now age has overtaken me, and want, a more insufferable evil, through the change of the times, has wholly ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... little practice, by which he made a bare subsistence, chiefly by winning the esteem of the porters' lodges in his district. So he raised his eyes to heaven and thanked Mme. Cibot with a ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... says President Quincy, "is the remark of this historian! How forcible and full of noble example is the picture exhibited by these records? The poor emigrant, struggling for subsistence, almost houseless, in a manner defenceless, is seen selecting from the few remnants of his former prosperity, plucked by him out of the flames of persecution, and rescued from the perils of the Atlantic, the valued pride of his table, or the precious delight of his domestic hearth;—'his ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. I, No. 3, March, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... lived in fortified villages. Though the country has virtually no ancient history that is known to us, it has a recognized past extending back for some centuries. When the missionaries first came here about the year 1814, the main subsistence of the natives who lived around what is now Auckland harbor, was human flesh. The first white immigrants, as well as the seamen of chance vessels driven upon the coast, were invariably killed and eaten by the Maoris. Not only did cannibalism prevail here, but it was common in Brazil, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou

... closely, in its details at least, to any uniformly progressive series. And all generalizations which affirm that mankind have a tendency to grow better or worse, richer or poorer, more cultivated or more barbarous, that population increases faster than subsistence, or subsistence than population, that inequality of fortune has a tendency to increase or to break down, and the like, propositions of considerable value as empirical laws within certain (but generally rather narrow) ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... convinced that the first horn was impossible, if they were to "live decently." Bragdon began to think they might do better in New York, where the market for incidental art was larger and the pay better. Milly was eager for the venture. But both hesitated to cut themselves off from a sure, if lean, subsistence. The Star raised him during the presidential campaign, when he was quite happy in caricaturing the Democratic ass and the wide-mouthed Democratic candidate. (They always had a tender feeling for the gentleman after that!) All in all, he made nearly ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... tossing up his nose. Humh, says he, what, you are a-hatching some plot, says he, you are so early abroad, or catering, says he, ferreting for some disbanded officer, I warrant. Half pay is but thin subsistence, says he. Well, what pension does your lady propose? Let me see, says he, what, she must come down pretty deep now, she's superannuated, ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve

... existence: well-being, abundance, plenty: provision, nourishment, subsistence, food, meal, feast, ...
— A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary - For the Use of Students • John R. Clark Hall

... so to arrange, that the pressure of suffering, in event of either contingency occurring, shall be mitigated to as great an extent as possible, not only to himself, but also to those who are dependent upon him for their comfort and subsistence. Viewed in this light the honest earning and the frugal use of money are of the greatest importance. Rightly earned, it is the representative of patient industry and untiring effort, of temptation resisted, and hope rewarded; and rightly used, it affords ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... too late now to change the route for the rest of the army. Nearly half the force had already started on the road to Almeida, and the supplies for their subsistence had been collected at that town. Therefore it was necessary that the main body of the infantry should travel by that road, while three thousand were to act as a guard for the artillery and cavalry on the ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty

... religious body, agree in the propriety of grace before their meals, that is in the propriety of giving thanks to the author of every good gift for this particular bounty of his providence as to the articles of their daily subsistence, but they differ as to the manner and seasonableness of it on such occasions. They think that people who are in the habit of repeating a determined form of words, may cease to feel, as they pronounce them, in which ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... geese, which she proposed to sell to advantage at a neighbouring fair;—for it is well known that the fiend, however liberal in imparting his powers of doing mischief, ungenerously leaves his allies under the necessity of performing the meanest rustic labours for subsistence. The day was far advanced, and her chance of obtaining a good price depended on her being first at the market. But the geese, which had hitherto preceded her in a pretty orderly manner, when they came to this wide common, interspersed with marshes and ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... is absolutely necessary that you should immediately return home and look after what will one day be your property. You have no occasion to follow the profession with eight thousand pounds per annum. You have distinguished yourself—now make room for those who require it for their subsistence. God bless you. I shall soon hope to ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat

... her terms if they were not favourable. I had some money, for I had spent but a small portion of twenty sovereigns which Madame d'Albret had given me in a purse when I quitted her. I had therefore the means of subsistence for some little time, should I not come ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat

... ripple. He is thus enabled to approach the fish without giving them any notice of his arrival." "My son," said he, "it is impossible to look at that bird without recognizing the design, as well as the goodness of God, in thus providing the means of subsistence." "Yes" replied the boy, "I think I see the goodness of God, at least so far as the crane is concerned: but after all, father, don't you think the arrangement a little ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... people, and has lived so long, dies hard. Nor are there ever wanting specious excuses for the continuance of this, as of other reprobated systems,—of which the strongest is, that its abolition would not only deprive of their present means of subsistence numbers of persons employed in its administration, but would cut off certain charities dependent upon it, amounting to no less than forty thousand scudi annually. Among these may be mentioned the dowry of forty scudi ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... also the several castes whose origin is ascribed to the promiscuous intercourse of the four classes. To these, also, their several occupations were assigned; but neither are they restricted, by rigorous injunctions, to their own appointed occupations. For any person unable to procure a subsistence by the exercise of his own profession may earn a livelihood in the calling of a subordinate caste, within certain limits in the scale of relative precedence assigned to each; and no forfeiture is now incurred by his intruding into a superior profession. It ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... &c. Roberts assured me that he never would have entered this association, had he not been driven to it by extreme hunger. There was an apparent want of consistency in this dislike, as the members of these companies are not only relieved from all care as to their subsistence, but, even by his own account, the admittance into them is a distinction that many seek to obtain. I am therefore inclined to believe that it must be attended with the loss of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne

... varieties are growing in Asia and have as yet not been observed to occur in America, where the coconut is only of subordinate importance, being one of many useful plants, and not the only one relied upon by the natives for their subsistence. If therefore, De Candolle's opinion is the right one, the question as to whether the varieties are older or younger than the cultivated forms of the species, must always remain obscure. But if the proofs of an American origin should be forthcoming, the possibility, and even the probability ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... becomes conceivable on one only condition; namely, if it can be shown that the vis representativa, or the Sentient, is itself a species of being; that is, either as a property or attribute, or as an hypostasis or self subsistence. The former—that thinking is a property of matter under particular conditions,—is, indeed, the assumption of materialism; a system which could not but be patronized by the philosopher, if only ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... whether they were not somewhat afraid of a famine, because the spoils they had gotten by rapine would not be sufficient for them long; so he made use of this relaxation in order to compass his own designs. Accordingly, as the usual appointed time when he must distribute subsistence money to the soldiers was now come, he gave orders that the commanders should put the army into battle array, in the face of the enemy, and then give every one of the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... north branch; the Indians attached to it are a tribe of the Atnahs. Their lands are now destitute of fur-bearing animals, nor are there many animals of the larger kind to be found; they however find subsistence in the variety of edible roots which the country affords. They have the character of being honest, quiet, and well-disposed towards the whites. As soon as the young women attain the age of puberty, they paint their faces after a fashion which the young men ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean

... had the wisdom of Solomon, he could not help himself in the ill-usage that befalls him; but if he had, and were told, that it was necessary for our subsistence that he should be eaten, that he must be skinned first, and then broiled; if ignorant of man's usual practice, he would conclude that the cook would so far use her reason as to cut off his head first, which is not fit for food, as then he might be skinned and broiled without ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... of their dress, he told them that in Lombardy the common people wore as good clothes as they.—"How," they said, "can you procure them?"—"Through the Venetians and Amalfitan dealers," he replied, "who gain their subsistence by selling them to us." The foolish Greeks were very angry, and declared that any dealer presuming to export their ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various

... and disagreeable kinds of literary labor, and those which confer no personal celebrity, such as most of those connected with newspapers, or with the smaller periodicals, on which an educated person can now rely for subsistence. Of these, the remuneration is, on the whole, decidedly high; because, though exposed to the competition of what used to be called "poor scholars" (persons who have received a learned education from some public or private charity), they are exempt from that of amateurs, those who have other ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill

... which is as if a painter should represent an oak-tree bearing roses. The life of the North-American Indian, like that of all men who stand upon the base-line of civilization, is a constant struggle, and often a losing struggle, for mere subsistence. The sting of animal wants is his chief motive of action, and the full gratification of animal wants his highest ideal of happiness. The "noble savage," as sketched by poets, weary of the hollowness, the insincerity, and the meanness of artificial life, is really a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... being recognized by a Samian, who had met with him in Chios, he was handsomely received, and invited to join in celebrating the Apaturian festival. He recited some verses, which gave great satisfaction, and by singing the Eiresione at the New Moon festivals, he earned a subsistence, visiting the houses of the rich, with whose children he was ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... struggle for existence, the unfit naturally more than the fit, and the fit are preserved, not in consequence of the struggle, but in consequence of their fitness. Suppose two varieties of the same species are driven, by an increase of their numbers, to seek for subsistence in a colder region than they have been accustomed to, and that one of these varieties had a hardier constitution than the other; and let us suppose that the former withstood the severe climate better than the latter, and consequently ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes

... between members of different countries has taught two clear lessons. The first is this: that hardly any civilized nation is or can be economically independent in respect to essential supplies or industries. There is no European country that does not rely for the subsistence of its inhabitants upon supplies of goods and raw materials from foreign lands, mostly from countries outside the European continent. While Britain both leaned more heavily upon other countries and contributed most to other countries from her ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson

... thriving already, fell in love with Clarissa Gage, with her six thousand pounds fortune: there was no premeditation, or expediency, or cunning, in the matter; it was the luck of the man. But Will Locke could never have done it: he, who could never make a clear subsistence for himself, must attach himself to a penniless, cheery, quick little girl like Dulcie; and where he could not well maintain one, must provide for two at the lowest estimate. Will Locke was going, and there was no talk of his return; Dulcie was helping him to put up his ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... truth and love swelling in her bosom. With the view of possessing herself of the real state of Lord Bateman's affections, and with no sordid or mercenary motives, she has enquired of that nobleman what are his means of subsistence, and whether all Northumberland belongs to him. His Lordship has rejoined, with a noble regard for truth, that half Northumberland is his, and that he will give it freely to the fair young lady who will release him from his dungeon. She, being ...
— The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman • Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray

... they came to its boundary. The forest skirting the border of the prairie was a clump of stunted trees, and there was very little grass or shrubs growing around. Everything looked forlorn and desolate about them, offering but scanty subsistence for ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle

... and long intimately associated with them. Twenty years ago, all of these tribes, raised annually more corn, beans and other vegetables, than were needed for their own consumption. Now they are miserable, squalid beggars, without the means of subsistence. The faithlessness of the Government, the perfidy and avarice of its agents and citizens, have brought this race of people to the horrible condition, in which they are represented in the statement ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake

... Iranians and Hindus belonged to the great Aryan or Indo-European race, whose original settlements were on the high table-lands northeast of Samarkand, in the modern Bokhara, watered by the Oxus, or Amon River. From these rugged regions east of the Caspian Sea, where the means of subsistence are difficult to be obtained, the Aryans emigrated to India on the southeast, to Iran on the southwest, to Europe on the west,—all speaking substantially ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... the leading economic causes, which had led to the failure of a certain class of the Italian peasant-proprietors, was the competition to which they were exposed from the provinces. Rome herself had begun to rely for the subsistence of her increasing population on corn imported from abroad, and many of the large coast-towns may have been forced to follow her example. The corn-producing powers of the Mediterranean lands had now definitely shifted from the regions of the East ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... ligue and confederation complotted far the subversion and ruin of religion upon the subsistence whereof his Majesty doth judge the main welfare of your realms and of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... in which neither the railways nor the rivers could be used to supply them, troops were compelled to depend for subsistence, in a great measure, upon the country immediately about their cantonments, and as they exhausted the surplus provisions in different neighborhoods, they would shift their encampments. This was owing to the great lack of wheel transportation. ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... continue, while those of the eye, and so on, are not perceived. The work of the organs, inclusive of the manas, is to act as instruments of cognition and action, while the work of breath is to maintain the body and the organs. It is for the reason that the subsistence of the organs depends on breath, that the organs themselves are called prnas. Thus Scripture says, 'they all became the form of that (breath), and therefore they are called after him prnas' (Bri. Up. I, ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... amidst so many as I have! Thrown (by my own will, indeed) on the wide world at a very early age, not more than eleven or twelve years, without money to support, without friends to advise, and without book-learning to assist me; passing a few years dependent solely on my own labour for my subsistence; then becoming a common soldier and leading a military life, chiefly in foreign parts, for eight years; quitting that life after really, for me, high promotion, and with, for me, a large sum of money; marrying at an early age, going at once to France to acquire the French language, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett

... play. Actors, a venal crew, receive support From public bounty for the public sport. To clap or hiss all have an equal claim, The cobbler's and his lordship's right's the same. All join for their subsistence; all expect Free leave to praise their worth, their faults correct. When active Pickle Smithfield stage ascends, 200 The three days' wonder of his laughing friends, Each, or as judgment or as fancy guides, The lively witling praises or derides. And where's ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... As for the Emperor, he was fully sensible that he could neither deprive his soldiers of this fruit of so many toils, nor reproach them for securing it. Besides, the provisions concealed the booty, and could he, who could not give his troops the subsistence which he ought to have done, forbid their carrying it along with them? Lastly, in failure of military conveyances, these vehicles would be the only means of preservation for the ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... of the Potomac, numbering 120,000 effective men, crossed the Rapidan en route for the Wilderness, each soldier carrying fifty rounds of ammunition and three days rations. The supply trains were loaded with ten days forage and subsistence. The advance was in two columns, General Warren being on the right and General Hancock on the left. Sedgwick followed closely upon Warren and crossed the Rapidan at Germania Ford. The Ninth Corps received its orders on the 4th, whereupon General Burnside immediately put the Corps in motion ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson

... we traversed the mountains, picking up a scanty subsistence by the way. Pippity was considerably frightened by the condors that really seemed to threaten us when we reached great elevations; and I was astonished at the remains of the once stupendous works of the ancient dwellers in this land. Bridges stretching from mountain ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various

... the service in all that relates to the expenditure of money, supply of arms, ordnance and ordnance stores, clothing, equipments, camp-equipage, medical and hospital stores, barracks, quarters, transportation, Military Academy, pay, and subsistence: in short, everything which enters into the expenses of the military establishment, whether personal or material. He will also see that the estimates for the military service are based on proper data, and made for the ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... he is, he lives in daily dread of the next phase of extortion to which he will be obliged to open an unwilling purse. How different from the literati of China who live day by day almost from hand to mouth, eking out a scanty subsistence by writing scrolls for door-posts, and perhaps presenting themselves periodically at the public examinations, only to find that their laboured essays are thrown out amongst the ruck once more! Yet these last are undeniably the ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles

... paid Avery a visit at Bideford, where, after strong protestations of honor and integrity, he delivered them his effects, consisting of diamonds and some vessels of gold. After giving him a little money for his present subsistence, they departed. ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... audience, with deep earnestness, against the crime of debt; dwelling with powerful invective on the cruelty and selfishness with which, too often, the son wasted in his follies the fruits of his father's labor, or the means of his family's subsistence; and involved himself in embarrassments which, said the Bishop, "I have again and again known to cause the misery of ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin



Words linked to "Subsistence" :   living, survival, livelihood, bread and butter, endurance, existence, subsistence farming



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