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Gradual   /grˈædʒuəl/   Listen
Gradual

adjective
1.
Proceeding in small stages.
2.
(of a topographical gradient) not steep or abrupt.



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"Gradual" Quotes from Famous Books



... changes in manners, habits, and forms of language, such as we have endeavoured to mark in this volume. The fact of such changes is indisputable, and sometimes it is difficult not only to assign the causes for them, but even to describe in what the changes themselves consist. They are gradual, and almost imperceptible. Scottish people lose their Scotchness; they leave home, and return without those expressions and intonations, and even peculiarity of voice and manner, which used to distinguish ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... communist Pathet Lao took control of the government, ending a six-century-old monarchy. Initial closer ties to Vietnam and socialization were replaced with a gradual return to private enterprise, an easing of foreign investment laws, and the admission ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... he had expected; the allurement of royal favour and greatness; the charm of amusement, and activity in recovered health; the cowardly dread of scorn, leading him not merely into the secular life, but into the gradual dropping of piety and devotion; the actual share he had taken in forbidden diversions; his attempts at plunder; his ill-will to King Henry; and, above all, his persecution of Esclairmonde, which he now regarded as sacrilegious; and he even told how he lay under a half engagement ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge

... be composed of vertical lines, Hobbema's are as startling in their positive vertical and horizontal lines combined. We are not likely to find elevations or gentle, gradual depressions in his landscapes, but straight horizons, long trunked, straight limbed trees; and the landscape seems to be punctured here and there by an upright house or a spire. It is startlingly beautiful, and so characteristic that after seeing one or two of Hobbema's pictures we are likely ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... failures of the early '90's and the gradual dry-farm awakening of the later '90's, Campbell's work was received with much interest. He soon became identified with the efforts of the railroads to maintain demonstration farms for the benefit of intending settlers. ...
— Dry-Farming • John A. Widtsoe

... in US markets. US firms are at or near the forefront in technological advances, especially in computers and in medical, aerospace, and military equipment; their advantage has narrowed since the end of World War II. The onrush of technology largely explains the gradual development of a "two-tier labor market" in which those at the bottom lack the education and the professional/technical skills of those at the top and, more and more, fail to get comparable pay raises, health ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... him the triumph of his gradual conversion. Be that as it might, it was neither of centralization nor of decentralization that the young Count proposed to speak to Madame de Tecle, when, at the appointed hour, he presented himself before her. He found her in the garden, which, like the house, was of an ancient, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... suitableness. In his conversation with the learned Nicodemus he plunged at once into the most profound doctrines, but when he talked with the ignorant Samaritan woman, his approach to the truth he would teach was most simple and gradual. No one ever failed to understand him, and he is a most remarkable example of the teacher suiting himself to the capacity of ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... turn, Adam entertains Raphael with a description of his amazement when he awoke on a flowery hillside, to see the sky, the woods, and the streams; his gradual acquaintance with his own person and powers, the naming of the animals, and his awe when the divine master led him into Paradise and warned him not to touch the central tree. After describing his loneliness on discovering that all living creatures went ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... the city is gradual. At Mount Airy it is more abrupt, and yet more steep at Chestnut Hill, where my aunt's house, on the right, looks down on broken forests, through which the centre marched by the Perkiomen road. The fight on our right wing I knew nothing of for ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... no!" She laid her cheek upon his hand. "Do something to make it easier. Must it be that when you go you go completely? Promise me at least that it will be gradual, that you will try to see me when you have taken up ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... one of olden Cairo, are real risks: some of the best houses have been destroyed by fire; and, as in Valparaiso and the flue-warmed castles of England, it is only a question of time when the inmates will be houseless. Thanks to the form of ground, the townlet is well laid out, with a gradual rake towards the bay. But there is no marine parade, and the remarkably uneven habitations crowd towards the water-front, like those of Eastern ports, thinning off and losing style inland. The best are placed to catch the 'Doctor,' or sea-breeze: here, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... and its dip at sea, the gradual appearance and disappearance of ships in the offing, cannot fail to incline intelligent sailors to a belief in the globular figure of the earth. The writings of the Mohammedan astronomers and philosophers had given currency to that doctrine throughout Western Europe, but, as might be expected, ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper

... of my declining years; a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me, by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... consciousness quickly elsewhere, to prevent an obtrusive reality from dimming this last addition to the picture. The gentle, unmistakable, velvet warble of a bluebird came over the hillside, again and again; and so completely absorbed and lulled was I by the gradual obsession of being in the midst of a northern scene, that the sound caused not the slightest excitement, even internally and mentally. But the sympathetic spirit who was directing this geographic burlesque overplayed, and followed the soft curve of audible wistfulness with an actual bluebird which ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe

... be very damp, or constantly dripping with water. Under such conditions successful commercial work is not possible. A place where it is possible to maintain a fairly moist condition of the atmosphere, and having such capability for ventilation as will cause at least a gradual evaporation, is necessary. With too rapid ventilation and the consequent necessity of repeated applications of water to the mushroom bed, no mushroom crop will attain the ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall

... or when so difficult as to demand the whole attention of the teacher, they may be given and afterward discussed. If long or easy, they may be discussed while the work is going on. Changes which take place slowly, as those which are brought about by the gradual action of heat, for instance, are best taken up in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various

... deep, hoarse voices muttering prayers, the tinkling of bells and clanging of cymbals. From time to time a drum was beaten, giving a hollow sound, and an occasional and sudden touch upon a gong caused the air to vibrate until the notes in a gradual diminuendo were carried ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... slope is very gradual, and you need have no fear of getting out of your depth suddenly. We will be off ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty

... two very good reasons why some classes of plants cannot be well grown continuously in the same piece of ground. One is the depletion of available plant food, the other the formation of injurious compounds by the plants, or the gradual increase of fungoid, bacterial or animate pests in the soil, which finally become abundant enough to seriously hinder growth. Different plants take the plant foods, as nitrogen, lime, potash, phosphates, etc., in different proportion. More important, perhaps, is the fact that the root ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson

... times before Love came, and with it the gradual dignifying of all realities which had been left so long to mere gross or cunning or violent men—the early Middle Ages have left behind them one of the most complete and wonderful of human documents, the letters of Abelard and Heloise. ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... fitted for one another? In this gloomy view endless years of incompatibility stretched ahead; and for the first time I began to rehearse with a certain cold detachment the chain of apparently accidental events which had led up to my marriage: to consider the gradual blindness that had come over my faculties; and finally to wonder whether judgment ever entered into sexual selection. Would Maude have relapsed into this senseless fit if she had realized how fortunate she was? ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... goes back into so dim a past that we can only know it by way of inference. In the absence of any show of reason to the contrary we should argue from the known to the unknown, and presume that even as our non-bodily organs originated and were developed through gradual accumulation of design, effort, and contrivance guided by experience, so also must our bodily organs have been, in spite of the fact that the contrivance has been, as it were, denuded of external evidences in the course of long time. This at least is the most obvious ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler

... road seemed to have no end and it never widened. The driving at last became dangerous, and they realized that the tired horse was drawing them up a long, gradual slope. The way became steeper, and the road rough with rocks and ruts. Her composure was rapidly deserting her, and he ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... and life merely a matter of occasional mountain peaks in flat country, the outstanding events alone need be chronicled with any excuse. But who knows the essential, since biographists must perforce omit the spade work of life on character, the gradual attrition or upbuilding of principles under experience, and the strain and stress, that, sooner or later, bear fruit in action? Even autobiography, as all other history, needs must be incomplete, since no man himself exactly appreciated the vital experiences ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts

... the highly educated; that the poor have no desire to surround themselves with graceful forms and harmonious colors. We wonder at and deplore their crude standards, bewailing the general lack of taste and the gradual reducing of everything to a commonplace money basis. We smile at the efforts toward adornment attempted by the poor, taking it too readily for granted that on this point they are beyond redemption. ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory

... reached, a very gradual reduction of pressure in the mocker cages was started; one that would cover a period of weeks. One pair of mockers survived and had two young ones that fall. The young mockers, like the first generation of Ragnarok-born children ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin

... belonged to their mothers in their youth, the attire of the men was often strange and variegated, and nearly half the officers present had empty sleeves or bandaged shoulders. But no one seemed to notice these peculiarities by eye or speech, nor was their gaiety assumed; it was with some the gradual contempt of hardship brought about by use and with others the temporary ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... commonly called Rationalism. It admits of natural division into three parts. The first, a period destructive in its tendency, extending to a little later than the end of the century, exhibits the gradual growth of the system, and its spread over every department of theology. The second, reconstructive in character, the re-establishment of harmony between faith and reason, extends till the publication of Strauss's celebrated ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... ago, calls us to be concerned chiefly with the practical and ethical aspects of our mission, urgent though the need and critical the pass, to which the abuses of the capitalistic system have brought both European and American society. In this day of those shifting standards which mark the gradual transference of power from one group to another in the community, and the merging of a spent epoch in a new order, neither the chief opportunity nor the most serious peril of religious leadership is met by fresh and energetic programs of religion in action. In such days, our chief gift to the ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... voices in the chorus. A room in the building had been hired for religious meetings, and tonight was the first of the series. A strange coolness dampened the merriment in the club-room, as the singing went on, and the gradual silence became a hush, till finally one member threw down his cards and declared, "If what they're saying is right, then ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth

... home was tempered by the infusion of mercy and reason into the iron regimen of terror. And this general diminution of brutality was not the only form of social amelioration. It was accompanied by a gradual but perceptible increase in decency, refinement, and material prosperity. Splendour diminished, and luxury remained the monopoly of the rich; but comfort—that peculiarly English treasure—was more generally diffused. In that diffusion the Evangelicals had their full share. Thackeray's ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell

... things are now, the prison inmate has no chance to learn to conform unless hope is constantly kept before him. He should be like the convalescing invalid, able from time to time to note his gradual progress in the ability to make the adjustments that are necessary to social beings. No patient in a hospital could be cured if he were constantly told that he could not get well and should not get well. His imagination should be enlarged by every means that science ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow

... ideas of marriage, with almost repulsive ideas about the family. Presumably, this rudeness is earlier than culture, and therefore this form of animal-worship is one of the earliest religions that we know. The almost limitless distribution of the phenomena, their regular development, their gradual disappearance, all point to the fact that they are all very early and ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang

... excitable tissue to its original condition, the current of action will gradually disappear.[3] The movement of the galvanometer needle during excitation of the tissue thus indicates a molecular upset by the stimulus; and the gradual creeping back of the galvanometer deflection exhibits ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose

... she, what a gradual and happy death God Almighty (blessed be his name) affords me! Who would have thought, that, suffering what I have suffered, and abandoned as I have been, with such a tender education as I have had, I should be so long a dying!—But see now by little and little ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson

... relations, gain their form and development? In the mother-pouch of the female, undoubtedly! And of course this improvement advanced with each succeeding generation, so that animals which originally only lived in water, through gradual efforts to go on dry land also, to which, perhaps, they were forced to preserve their species, thereby changed the original fins into legs and later into web-feet by which they were adapted to live in water as well as on ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various

... we may recall Goethe's reply to the botanist, Wolff, who had ascribed the metamorphosis of plant-organs from root to blossom to a gradual stunting or atrophy of their vegetative force, whereas it was clear to Goethe that simultaneously with a physical retrogression, there is a spiritual progress in the development of the plant. The fact that all Wolff's efforts to see clearly did not save him from ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs

... James Otis, in his argument against the Writs of Assistance, spoke so vigorously of the rights of black men as to leave no doubt as to his own position. To Patrick Henry slavery was a practice "totally repugnant to the first impressions of right and wrong," and in 1777 he was interested in a plan for gradual emancipation received from his friend, Robert Pleasants. Washington desired nothing more than "to see some plan adopted by which slavery might be abolished by law"; while Joel Barlow in his Columbiad gave significant warning to Columbia of the ills that she was ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... Dundonald, on the 7th of June, "which the naval service has made towards its present ameliorated state—yet far from perfection—has not permitted any one Board of Admiralty in my time to stand pre-eminently distinguished for decisive improvements. These have rather been effected by the gradual changes which time occasions, or by following the example of America, or even of France, than by encouraging efforts of native genius. This has arisen from causes easily remedied; one of which is, that the rejection or adoption of proffered ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, Vol. II • Thomas Lord Cochrane

... before a degree is given. Some schools require three years' study, and of these this school is one. Indeed, it was the first to establish such a course, the trustees including it in the statutes of organization in 1871. Transition from the earlier standards to the present one has been gradual but steady, and to-day the degree is conferred (save in exceptional cases) only upon those who have studied law at ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various

... more gradual and all four soon found themselves at the top of the chasm, wet and cold, but on the side where the ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman

... the civil authorities towards the mission system, and their dealings with it, we must remember that the Spanish government had from the first anticipated the gradual transformation of the missions into pueblos and parishes, and with this, the substitution of the regular clergy for the Franciscan padres. This was part of the general plan of colonization, of which the mission settlements were regarded as forming only the beginning. ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson

... breathes, and fills The breast with ominous fear, and disciplines For sorrow, pours into the afflicted heart The balm of resignation, and inspires With heavenly hope. Even as a Child delights To visit day by day the favorite plant His hand has sown, to mark its gradual growth, And watch all anxious for the promised flower; Thus to the blessed spirit, in innocence And pure affections like a little child, Sweet will it be to hover o'er the friends Beloved; then sweetest if, as Duty prompts, With earthly care we in their ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... paying off Mr Longestaffe's debts to tradesmen and debts to the bank. It would have been very pleasant to have had this at once,—but Mr Longestaffe felt the absurdity of pressing such a man as Mr Melmotte, and was partly conscious of the gradual consummation of a new era in money matters. 'If your banker is pressing you, refer him to me,' Mr Melmotte had said. As for many years past we have exchanged paper instead of actual money for our commodities, so now it seemed that, under the new ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... They propose at once to assume the non-existence of a disagreeable difficulty, and to take men as equal in a sense in which they are not, in fact, equal. To me the problem appears to be, not the instant introduction of a new system, but a necessarily long and very gradual process of education directed towards the distant goal of making men equal in the desirable sense; and that problem, I add, is in the main a moral problem. It is idle to make institutions without making the qualities by which they must be worked. I do ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen

... incorporated itself with those which had preceded it, until it finally became sole and predominant, just as certain plants of the tropical islands wind about and blend with and finally take the place of those of another species. And perhaps to this peculiarity of the mental economy, the gradual concentring of the mind in a channel, narrowing to that point of condensation where thought becomes sensible to sight as well as feeling, may be mainly attributed the vision I ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... they had endured such bitter hardships to establish, did not, in their minds, need any shielding and coddling to keep it alive, but thrived far better on Spartan severity and simplicity; hence, it took two centuries of gradual and most tardy softening and modifying of character to prepare the Puritan mind for so advanced a reform and luxury as proper warmth in the ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... fact that a moderate use of alcoholic liquors, continued over a number of years, produces a gradual deterioriation of the tissues of the body, and hastens the changes which old age brings, thus increasing the average liability to disease (especially to infectious disease,) and shortening ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... dead." How gently He thus breaks the sad intelligence! And it is His method of dealing still. He prepares His people for their hours of trial. He does not lay upon them more than they are able to bear. He considers their case—He teaches by slow and gradual discipline, leading on step by step; staying His rough wind in the day of His east wind. As the Good Physician, He metes out drop by drop in the bitter cup—as the Good Shepherd, His is not rough driving, ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff

... resolved to hold on to it. In that spirit the convention proceeded to fill the vacant offices. It was in sentiment strongly pro-slavery, as was shown by the fact that a proposal looking to the very gradual extinguishment of slavery was rejected by it in an almost unanimous vote, a circumstance that led the leading pro-slavery journal of the State to boast that the convention had killed emancipation "at the first ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... later, a traveller would lodge at her house, and that, as the said traveller owed him a thousand pounds, she could reclaim at that time this sum from his debtor. She must subsist in the meanwhile by the gradual sale of her ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton

... we must trace, step by step, the dawn, development, and gradual disappearance of myth. Since it is our business to consider science as well as myth, and their respective relations in the evolution common to both, we must, as briefly as possible in the present work, pause to consider these two factors of the human mind, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... require a detailed account of the Indian campaign to trace adequately the gradual rise of this officer in the service. For his was not a meteoric or spectacular rise. It was by gradual steps—but each step found him fully prepared. This, perhaps, is as near the secret of the great soldier's ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden

... conductors the property of possessing conductivity unaffected by lapse of time. Generally the permanency of conductors is very high. In some cases a slow annealing takes place which causes a gradual change with the lapse of time. Annealed German silver wire has been found to increase in conductivity at about .02 per cent. in a year. (Matthiessen.) Wire, whether annealed or not, is left in a strained condition after the ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone

... heathen religions were not the voluntary inventions of the peoples who cultivated them, but were gradual and almost unavoidable corruptions of the truths which had been at first taught by Noah; and, indeed, so palpable are these corruptions, that they can be readily detected and traced to the original form from which, however much ...
— The Symbolism of Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey

... for long in the dark, thinking.... Through her uncurtained windows she watched the obscure dying away of the storm, the calming of the trees, and the gradual clearing of the night sky. Between the upfurling clouds the stars began to show; tumult passed into a great tranquillity; and a breath of frost began to steal through the woods, and over ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and experience. Quinet speaks of the 'fatalistic optimism' of historians, of which there have certainly been some strange examples. We can only say that secularism, like other religions, needs an eschatology, and has produced one. A more energetic generation than ours looked forward to a gradual extension of busy industrialism over the whole planet; the present ideal of the masses seems to be the greatest idleness of the greatest number, or a Fabian farm-yard of tame fowls, or (in America) an ice-water-drinking ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... is the struggle of gradual suffocation, as in drowning; and, in the original Opium Confessions, I mentioned a case of that nature communicated to me by a lady from her own childish experience. The lady is still living, though now of unusually great age; and I may ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... conscious has it all its own way with us and the subconscious self is crowded to the horizon's edge, like Northern Lights still playing in the distance; but the result is the same—the dim presence of one of these moods in the other, when one's power is least effective, and the gradual alternating of the currents of the moods as power grows more effective. In the higher states of power, the moods are seen alternating with increasing heat and swiftness until in the highest state of power of all, they are seen in their mutual glow and splendour, ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee

... touches; so that in the interests of the community it becomes necessary to seclude her from society for a while, until the virulence of the infection has passed away, when, after submitting to certain rites of purification, she is again free to mingle with her fellows."[79] The gradual change of this ceremony, from a getting rid of a dangerous supernatural infection to returning thanks for a natural danger passed, is on all fours with what takes place in other directions in relation to ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen

... from all the cruel forces of nature and living in fraternal misery with the lower animals, the man of to-day was evolved, asserting his superiority to his ancestors, dominating all nature. From the men of to-day, in whom the passions of their former animalism are finding their equilibrium with the gradual unfolding of the mind, will arise that superior and perfect being indicated by philosophers, pure from all animal egoism, and endeavouring to change the actual cruel, restless, and uncertain life, into a period of happy ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... POPULAR ASSEMBLIES.—1. The Comitia Curiata, the Patrician assembly, had become a mere form as early as the First Punic War. The gradual decline of its power has been already traced. It continued to meet for the transaction of certain matters pertaining to the Patrician gentes, but was ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... to historians His early history His gradual elevation Friendship with Henry II. Becket made Chancellor Elevated to the See of Canterbury Dignity of an archbishop of Canterbury Lanfranc Anselm Theobald Becket in contrast His ascetic habits as priest His high-church principles Upholds the spiritual courts Defends the privileges of his order ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord

... History of England, speaking of the gradual and silent extinction of villenage, then, towards the close of the Tudor period, fast approaching ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various

... study of the Raven cycle of American Indian mythology indicated that these stories originated in the northern part of British Columbia and traveled southward along the coast. One of the evidences of the direction of this progress is the gradual diminution of complexity in the stories as they traveled into regions farther removed from the point ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... take an illustration, which can be stated in a few words, to show how the social end which is aimed at by a rule of law is obscured and only partially attained in consequence of the fact that the rule owes its form to a gradual historical development, instead of being reshaped as a whole, with conscious articulate reference to the end in view. We think it desirable to prevent one man's property being misappropriated by another, and so we make larceny a crime. The evil is the same whether ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

... of no value, and blessed with no success. Yet it is possible that its inward progress was not little. There may have been silent souls that lived saintly lives in that long past century, who owed their first awakening or their gradual edification to some word of his; it may be that the sturdy resistance of England to Papal aggression in the subsequent century had received its impetus from his unseen hand. Who shall say that he achieved nothing? The world wrote "unsuccessful" upon his work: did God write "blessed"? One thing ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt

... how you and me made all that money? It's a proof of what industry and economy can do when they can't help theirselfs. When Tug Patterson wished this range on me forty years ago I hated him sinful. Yet we run the ditches in from year to year, gradual, and here we are! ...
— The Man Next Door • Emerson Hough

... watch the folks assembling, and the gradual kindling of the flambeaux. In the windows on either side of the street were set candles; and a line of coaches was drawn up against the gutter on the further side. But still more strange and disconcerting were the preparations already made to receive the procession. An open space ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson

... Society[20] after his first impression had been confirmed by enlarged observation and discovery. Around, and north of Kuruman, he had found many indications of a much larger supply of water in a former age. He ascribed the desiccation to the gradual elevation of the western part of the country. He found traces of a very large ancient river which flowed nearly north and south to a large lake, including the bed of the present Orange River; in fact, he believed that the ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... moments the farmer could not speak, and his hand was raised rejectingly. The return of human animation to his heart made him look more sternly than he felt; but he had to rid himself of one terrible question before he satisfied his gradual desire to take his daughter to his breast. It came at last like a short roll of drums, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... ignorant we are. If we are much more ignorant than is generally supposed, most of these difficulties wholly disappear. Let the reader reflect on the difficulty of looking at whole classes of facts from a new point of view. Let him observe how slowly, but surely, the noble views of Lyell on the gradual changes now in progress on the earth's surface have been accepted as sufficient to account for all that we see in its past history. The present action of natural selection may seem more or less probable; but I believe in the truth of the theory, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin

... After his decision a gradual improvement was manifest. He had taken at least a step in the direction to which hope pointed, and he realized that the less he brooded upon her the better he would be able to give the desired impression when ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... must, however, be borne in mind in order to understand the gradual growth of the ill-feeling that sprang up between Cooper and his countrymen. To the change of view in himself and to the change of taste in the public, were soon added special circumstances that tended ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury

... feelings when he finds out that all they care for is the credit of the college?" But he was not so barbarous as to say this, and Warrender was left to find out by himself, by the lessening number of the breakfasts, by the absence of his name on the lists of the Rector's dinner-parties, by the gradual cooling of the incubating warmth, what had been the foundation of all the affection shown him. It was not for some time that he perceived the change which made itself slowly apparent, the gradual ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... Public Safety issued an order to the effect that the "red-light district" would no longer be tolerated, and that the common prostitute and street-walker would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. From that date on a gradual decline was noticeable in the emergency work, and the calls for shooting and cutting affrays were few. At this time I can safely say that emergency work coming from this source ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various

... mated To a strong warrior whom her heart held dear As friend to kind Akau. So she waited. In her slim hands she held a polished cup, The shell of cocoanut, which caught the light Like a brown pool. The toil of many days Had turned the tawny shade to warmest black In gradual depths as shaded Taka's cheek; With perfumed oil her fingers gave caress And waked the hidden pictures in the grain, The yellow sand, the dusky amber girl, The brown perfected in the shining globe. Earth's monotones are justified in this. ...
— The Rose of Dawn - A Tale of the South Sea • Helen Hay

... me that the coming of love is like the coming of spring—the date is not to be reckoned by the calendar. It may be slow and gradual; it may be quick and sudden. But in the morning, when we wake and recognize a change in the world without, verdure on the trees, blossoms on the sward, warmth in the sunshine, music in the air, ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... and of strata of rocks, formed by fire; and of stones, and of strata of rocks formed by means of water; there are some such, as have been slowly consolidated by the first kind of operation; namely by the gradual cooling or settling of the substances; which yet do contain imbedded in them, crystals formed by ...
— Remarks Concerning Stones Said to Have Fallen from the Clouds, Both in These Days, and in Antient Times • Edward King

... passed through certain well-marked phases. First there was a short period of prosperity, owing to an unusual demand for American products; this was followed by a longer period of depression; and then came a gradual recovery through acceptance of the new conditions ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... mighty city grow from comparatively small and mean conditions. And I have watched slowly growing here a new City of the Soul, the gradual development of civilization itself into a joyous religion whose God is Justice and Righteousness. Each year I have seen the streets cleaner, its parks more beautiful, its homes sweeter, its schools finer, its hospitals, asylums and play grounds more magnificent and all its charities ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon

... first man every where. Very moderate talents requisite to make a figure in the House of Commons. Dr. Young. Dr. Doddridge. Increase of infidel writings since the accession of the Hanover family. Gradual impression made by Dr. Johnson. Particular minutes to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... reign of Queen Victoria nothing strikes one more than the gradual growth of interest in children, and the many changes in the nation's ideas of their upbringing and education. At the beginning of her reign the little children of the poor were for the most part slaves, and were often punished more cruelly by ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne

... his explanation they heard the sound of what appeared to be an automobile behind them. At the time they chanced to be at the foot of a slight elevation, which rose for perhaps twenty feet in a gradual ascent. ...
— The Boy Scouts on Belgian Battlefields • Lieut. Howard Payson

... the other hand, is hardly felt during periods of excitement, and when food is scarce the excitement of seeking for it is at its greatest. It is probable, also, that when hunger presses, most animals will devour anything to stay their hunger, and will die of gradual exhaustion and weakness not necessarily painful, if they do not fall an earlier prey to some enemy ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... exclude From his mind every human sensation, save one The torture of doubt—had stray'd moodily on, Down the highway deserted, that evening in which With the Duke he had parted; stray'd on, through rich Haze of sunset, or into the gradual night, Which darken'd, unnoticed, the land from his sight, Toward Saint Saviour; nor did the changed aspect of all The wild scenery around him avail to recall To his senses their normal perceptions, until, As he stood on the ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... criticism or in anything else, but it is certain there has no critic appeared among us since who was worth naming beside him and his influence for good and for evil in literature and otherwise has been very great. Nothing in my time has so forwarded all this—the 'gradual uprise and rule in all things of roaring, million headed &c Demos'— "as Jeffrey and his once famous Edinburgh Review'—Ib ] But he is discreetly silent on their severity and short-sightedness. [Footnote: "You know", Byron ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... therefore, petitions for the abolition of slavery were presented to the legislature of Virginia, he did not frown upon the proposal as a mischievous agitation as did so many others. Madison looked forward to the eventual extermination of slavery through gradual methods of preparation for emancipation. Feeling that the thorough incorporation of the blacks into the community of whites would be prejudicial to the interests of the country, he had no other thought ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various

... repeal of the clause, in 1848, was one evidence of the harmonious operation of the union, and of a better feeling between the two sections of the population. Still later, provision was made for the gradual establishment of an elective legislative council, so long and earnestly demanded by the old legislature of ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... according to either of two different principles. One way is to take the mental process which is demanded by the industrial work as an undivided whole. In this case we have to construct experimental conditions under which this total activity can be performed in a gradual, measurable way. The psychical part of the vocational work thus becomes schematized, and is simply rendered experimentally on a reduced scale. The other way is to resolve the mental process into its components and to test every single elementary function in its isolated ...
— Psychology and Industrial Efficiency • Hugo Muensterberg

... more frequent in Paradise Lost than in either of the two later poems. In Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes the enhanced severity of a style which rejects almost all ornament was due in part, no doubt, to a gradual change in Milton's temper and attitude. It is not so much that his power of imagination waned, as that his interest veered, turning more to thought and reflection, less to action and picture. In these two poems, at the last, he ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh

... particularly those of the modern town, distinguished by its white walls and red roofs from the old buildings about the cathedral. Behind were sugar-loaf hills; and the mountain-sides across the gulf glowed with the richest purple. Then came gradual changes of colour, softer and deeper hues, till, at last, a steamy veil of mist from seaward stole over the gulf. A faint glimmer from the lighthouse at the entrance of the harbour was scarcely visible in the blaze left behind by ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... Since independence in September 1991, Lithuania has made steady progress in developing a market economy. Almost 50% of state property has been privatized and trade is diversifying with a gradual shift away from the former Soviet Union to Western markets. In addition, the Lithuanian government has adhered to a disciplined budgetary and financial policy which has brought inflation down from a monthly average of around 14% in first half 1993 to an average ...
— The 1995 CIA World Factbook • United States Central Intelligence Agency

... had dwindled to a slow, gradual slipping of the rope as it moved up the center pole inch by inch. But Phil's peril was even greater than before. The moment that heavy iron ring began pressing down on his head and shoulders with the weight of the canvas ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... Writers on this Point. Articles most easily digested. The most Unhealthful Articles result from bad cooking. Caution as to Mode of Eating. Reason why Mental and Bodily Exertions are injurious after a full Meal. Changes in Diet should be gradual; and why. Drink most needed at Breakfast; and why. Dinner should be the heartiest Meal; and why. Little Drink to be taken while eating; and why. Extremes of Heat or Cold; why injurious in Food. Fluids immediately absorbed from the Stomach. Why Soups are hard of Digestion. ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher

... "Dave Kelly" gang, and the death of his political career which came with that opposition, of his swinging round to the tides of the times and taking up with bucket-shop work, of his "shark" lawyer practices and his police-court legal trickeries, of his gradual identification with the poolroom interests and his first gleaning of gambling-house lore, of his drifting deeper and deeper into this life of unearned increment, of his fight with the Bar Association, which was taken ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... demonstrates the curvature of the earth in a very impressive manner to anyone who will take the trouble to understand it. Ptolemy mentions that travellers who went to the south reported, that, as they did so, the appearance of the heavens at night underwent a gradual change. Stars that they were familiar with in the northern skies gradually sank lower in the heavens. The constellation of the Great Bear, which in our skies never sets during its revolution round the pole, did set and rise when a sufficient southern latitude ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... a distinct employment and organisation must have preceded any explicit evidence of the fact. The gradual increase in the output of literature of all kinds from the days of Elizabeth necessitated the surrender to an independent craft of the envelopment of volumes in various liveries, more especially when the French and Italians had ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt

... the traveller passes the gates, these pleasing ideas are put to flight by the filth that abounds in every street, and more particularly in the open spaces which are left within the walls, by the gradual decay of the deserted habitations which once filled them. The principal building in the town is the residence of the dola, which is large and lofty, having one front to the sea, and another to a square. Another side of the square, which is the only regular place ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various

... two places down a ladder or stone steps, we came to a path cut through a high and broad embankment of sand, which very soon conducted us to the much talked of and anxiously looked for Winding Way. The Winding Way, has, in the opinion of many, been channeled in the rock by the gradual attrition of water. If this be so, and appearances seem to support such belief, at what early age of the world did the work commence? Was it not when "the earth was without form and void," thousands of years perhaps, before the date of the Mosaic ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt

... common material bears evidence of having already undergone similar treatment, before it passed out on those two lines of further development which resulted in the canonical Hebrew text and the Greek Version respectively. The signs of gradual compilation are everywhere upon the material which they share in common. Now and then a chronological order appears, and indeed there are traces of a purpose to pursue that order throughout. But this has ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... struggle; but the latter part was plain enough, and fully grasping the position and the emergency of the case, he sprang upon the contending couple just at the right moment, adding his weight, which from his position of vantage completely checked the gradual gliding movement in which Lennox was being drawn onward ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn

... observes: "All deaths from natural causes are attributed to the machinations of enemies, who are supposed to have sought for and burned the excrement of the intended victim, which, according to the general belief, causes a gradual wasting away. The relatives, therefore, watch the struggling feet of the dying person, as they point in the direction whence the injury is thought to come, and serve as a guide to the spot where it should be avenged. This is the ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... traced the history of his wife's family, shewing the gradual gathering of Fate to its culmination in the tragedy of her short life. Her father and grandfather had both been men of violent and tyrannical temper, and tradition gave the same character to their forefathers. Eleanor's mother was one of the meek and saintly women who almost ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... broad way of thinking which was as a tower of strength in the day of trouble. Yet for months after that awful time at Wimperfield her nights had been broken by dreadful dreams or too vivid reminiscences of her husband's evil fate, that terrible decay of mind and body, that gradual annihilation of the energies and powers of manhood which it had been ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... gradual elimination of class distinctions in England, or rather with the blurring of the lines which separate one class from another, a multitude of persons pass for "gentlemen" in England to-day who could not have dreamed—and ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... concealment, he tried to make Elisha suppose that his errand to Bethel and then to Jericho was but a common one, to be soon despatched. It was a little touch of tenderness in the strong, rough man. Note, too, the gradual disclosure to Elijah of the places to which he was to go. He is only bid to go to Bethel, and not till he gets there is he further sent on to Jericho, and, presumably, only when there is directed to cross Jordan. God does not show all the road at once, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... because there is but so much now told; but concludes that all is at hand, and accepteth of this first, as a first-fruits: so Christ, when he came into the world, began to pay, and so continued to do, even until he had paid the whole debt, and so increased in favour with God. There was then a gradual performance of duties, as to the number of them, by our Lord when he was in the world, and consequently a time wherein it might be said that Christ had not, as to act, done all, as was appointed him to do, to do as preparatory to that great thing which he was to do for ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... is 22 inches; and 6 feet above ground line circumference is 15 inches. To date, tree is sparse cropper. Started bearing in 1945, with three very large sized nuts in large fleshy burs. It has borne every year since, with gradual increase in number. In 1949 it matured 12 large nuts of 1-5/8 inch diameter. A good peeler and solid kernel. I have four other trees of similar size and all winter hardy this past winter, at 24 deg. below. Skioka is the most ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various

... unsatisfactory period. To them Napoleon the First was a living man, Queen Victoria unheard of. The decay of their minds had been slow, and it had been Christian Vellacott's painful task to watch its steady progress. Day by day he had followed the gradual failing of each ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman

... Huguenots of France—their wars until they obtained recognition and some measure of justice in the Edict of Nantes; the gradual infringement upon their guaranteed rights, culminating in the revocation of the edict, and the loss to the kingdom of the most industrious part of the population; their sufferings "under the cross" until the publication ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... a perfect social and industrial organisation in which the division of labour is far better adjusted than in many human organisations. This, of course, is the result of gradual growth and evolution just as it is in the human species. This can easily be proved among animals by their more primitive and savage habits. Monkeys, for example, in civilised monkey communities, differ very greatly from those of wilder and less trained districts. ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... seen much of mankind, and, in his deportment through life, showed that he was well versed in all those varied arts of easy, but still gradual, acquirement which singularly embellished the intercourse of society: these were the results of his excellent ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... to a natural day, but mean a period of any number of millions of years that may be necessary; even if they are driven to admit that the word "creation," which so many millions of pious Jews and Christians have held, and still hold, to mean a sudden act of the Deity, signifies a process of gradual evolution of one species from another, extending through immeasurable time; even if they are willing to grant that the asserted coincidence of the order of Nature with the "fourfold order" ascribed to Genesis is an obvious error instead of an established ...
— The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature - Essay #4 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley

... with noting from this balcony the gradual changes of the scenes below, according to the different ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... wide one, seeming to extend to the very base of the distant mountains of the interior, but our travellers were mistaken in their ideas about it. The plain was itself part of the mountain region into which they had already advanced, but by so gradual an ascent that they had scarcely perceived the rise in the land—a deception which was increased somewhat by the frequent descents they had to make when passing ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... in the very joy and healthiness of their young blood—and they catch sight of me, and rush to greet me, one and all. They lead me to their mother. How beautiful she has become in the subsidence of mental tumult, in quiet, grateful labour, and, more than all, in the sunlight of her husband's gradual restoration! She is busy with her needle, and her chair is at the window, so that she may watch the youngsters even whilst she works; and near her is the table, already covered with a snow-white cloth, and ready for "dear Warton" when he comes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... things-yields emotions both painful and pleasing;—painful for the demonstrations every where presented, of a love of darkness, rather than light; pleasing, that the worst evils are seen to be so remediable; and so clear the proofs of a gradual, but sure progress towards ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington



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