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Modify   /mˈɑdəfˌaɪ/   Listen
Modify

verb
(past & past part. modified; pres. part. modifying)
1.
Make less severe or harsh or extreme.  "He modified his views on same-gender marriage"
2.
Add a modifier to a constituent.  Synonym: qualify.
3.
Cause to change; make different; cause a transformation.  Synonyms: alter, change.  "The discussion has changed my thinking about the issue"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Modify" Quotes from Famous Books



... destroyed not only elevation of sentiment but martial virtues. Literature declined in spirit and taste, and was directed to frivolous subjects. Christianity had not become a power sufficiently strong to change or modify the corrupt institutions controlled by the powerful classes. The expensive luxury of the nobles was almost incredible. The most distant provinces were ransacked for game, fish, and fowl for the tables of the great. Usury was practiced at a ruinous ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... expected, if the principles which he lays down be correct. Take the case of the races which are known to be produced by the operation of atavism and variability, and the conditions of existence which check and modify these tendencies. Take the case of the pigeons that I brought before you; there it was shown that they might be all classed as belonging to some one of five principal divisions, and that within these divisions ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley

... photographs, however (those obtained by Mrs. Dupont Lee), further evidence has caused me to modify my belief in their supernormal value, and I should now attach no "evidential value" to them at all, strictly speaking. In an excellent criticism of the Lee photographs, published in the Proceedings, Amer. S.P.R., vol. xiii. pp. 529-87, Dr. Walter F. Prince has shown the undoubtedly fraudulent ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... think that for a year after the publication of this article every association and every conference or religious body of any kind, of my race, that met, did not fail before adjourning to pass a resolution condemning me, or calling upon me to retract or modify what I had said. Many of these organizations went so far in their resolutions as to advise parents to cease sending their children to Tuskegee. One association even appointed a "missionary" whose duty it was to warn the ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington

... professional vocalist's point of view. The tonsils are phonatory or vocal organs and play an important part in the mechanism of speech and song. They influence the surrounding muscles and modify the resonance of the mouth. Enlarged by disease, they may cripple these functions and if so, their removal may increase the compass of the voice by one or more octaves; but it is a capital operation and a dangerous one in which a fatal result is by ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... Fearing that you may hear of the comment my invitation to you to speak in my pulpit is causing and fearing that you may either decide at the last minute not to come or that you will modify your remarks out of consideration for me, I write to say that while of course I may not agree with everything you advocate, yet my pulpit is a free pulpit and I cannot consent that you restrict its ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... that age alone, but for its universal abolition. Hence the important object of its author was to gain it a lodgment in every part of the known world; so that, by its universal diffusion among all classes of society, it might quietly and peacefully modify and subdue the evil passions of men; and thus, without violence, work a revolution in the whole mass of mankind. In this manner alone could its object, a universal moral revolution, be accomplished. For if it had forbidden ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... definitions, or distinctions, or points of view. But while these special ideas are being added, the rest of your knowledge stands still, and only gradually will you 'line up' your previous opinions with the novelties I am trying to instil, and modify to some slight degree ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... him. I must see and know him. It might be of service to him and to all, Probus, methinks, if he could be brought to associate with those whose juster notions might influence his, and modify them to the ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware

... This latter kind of selection is closely analogous to that which man unintentionally, yet effectually, brings to bear on his domesticated productions, when he preserves during a long period the most pleasing or useful individuals, without any wish to modify the breed. ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various

... later on: "Pryer and I continue our walks, working out each other's thoughts. At first he used to do all the thinking, but I think I am pretty well abreast of him now, and rather chuckle at seeing that he is already beginning to modify some of the views he held most strongly when ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... veracity, what to think of the Nile. It is claimed that there are really two Niles, which take their rise either in the Mountains of the Sun or of the Moon, or in the rugged Sierras of Ethiopia. The waters of these streams, whatever be their source, modify the nature of the land they traverse. One of the two flows to the north and empties into the Egyptian Sea: the other empties into the southern ocean. What conclusion shall we draw? We are not puzzled by the Nile of Egypt, and the southern Nile has been discovered by the Portuguese, who, in the ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... you will say may modify my judgment. I did not say that I shall decide according to my judgment as it is now, but as it will be after I have heard what you will have to say. I shall be influenced perhaps by your reasons, but I shall decide myself. ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott

... Senator Sumner, one of the most philosophic and accomplished living American statesmen, that "State secession is State suicide," but modify the opinion I too hastily expressed that the political death of a State dissolves civil society within its territory and abrogates all rights held under it, and accept the doctrine that the laws in force at the time of secession ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... (if it be possible for the latter to be in a sane state when we fall in love), the buoyancy of youth or the decrepitude of old age,—these, and numerous other causes which I cannot at present enumerate, serve to modify to infinity the form and character of the sentiment. Thus we do not love at eighteen as we do at forty, nor in the city as we do in the country, nor in spring as we do in autumn, nor in the camp as we do in the court; nor does the ignorant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various

... attention, B. coming so close on Greeley." Mr. Dolby was in consequence sent express to Washington with power to withdraw or go on, as enquiry on the spot might dictate; and Dickens took the additional resolve so far to modify the last arrangements of his tour as to avoid the distances of Chicago, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, to content himself with smaller places and profits, and thereby to get home nearly a month earlier. He was at Philadelphia on the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... the carriage is too heavy. I can only renew the representations contained in my letter of January 1, 1898, to the Adjutant General, accompanying drawing, etc., of my proposed carriage for machine guns. I would now, based on experience, modify my theory of organization as then proposed, and would make several changes in the model of carriage then proposed without departing ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... expedition of exploration. They were prepared to meet any conditions on those other worlds—no atmosphere, no water, no heat, or even an atmosphere of poisonous gases they could rectify, for their transmutation apparatus would permit them to change those gases, or modify them; they knew well how to supply heat, but they knew too, that that sun would warm some of its planets sufficiently ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell

... must say that the church had either no supreme body which could speak in its name and modify its creed, its ritual, its discipline, or the details of its organisation; or else, that the only body which had in theory a right to interfere was doomed, by sufficient considerations, to absolute inaction. The church, from a secular point of view, was not so much a department of the state as ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... convinced that peace between the powers is in the hands of Great Britain. If his Majesty's Government announced that England would come to the aid of France in the event of a conflict between France and Germany ... there would be no war, for Germany would at once modify her attitude.—(British "White Paper" ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various

... wife understands me." And he went out then and there to his Council. His conviction of her submissiveness (and of other things about her to modify it) may be gauged by the fact that he never saw her again (except ceremonially) until a certain moment ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... broken by great dangers, or demanding great exertions. A moral system, to govern society, must accommodate itself to common characters and mingled motives. It must be capable of influencing natures that can never rise to an heroic level. It must tincture, modify, and mitigate where it cannot eradicate or transform. In Christianity there are always a few persons seeking by continual and painful efforts to reverse or extinguish the ordinary feelings of humanity, but in the great majority of cases the ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... year,—exaggerating their activity in some latitudes, and diminishing it in other latitudes. In this latitude, the months of May, June, and July are marked by more energetic action than August, September, and October. The activity of one vortex also, in one place, seems to modify the activity of another vortex in another place. But the great question to decide is: Do these vortices really exist? Do they follow each other in the order indicated by the theory? Do they pass ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... consequences, with economic changes and the reaction of these changes on administrative work; it has either accepted existing intellectual conditions and political institutions as beyond its control or assumed that they will obediently modify as economic and administrative necessity dictates.... Achieve your expropriation, said the early Fabians, get your network of skilled experts over the country, and your political forms, your public opinion, your collective ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... Charles II., while distinctly asserting his intention of maintaining the ritual of the Church in his own chapel, was ready, with his usual complaisance, to indicate a willingness to accept a compromise and to modify some of the usages of the Church, which, under Laud's rule, had become a part of her constitution. But in doing so he really went beyond, not only the terms of the Declaration, but the power of his own prerogative. ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... of La Rochefoucauld was to make people ashamed of their egotism, and so to help them to modify it. He saw France deadened by a universal sycophancy, and tyrannized over by a court life which made a lie of everything. He insisted upon the value of individual sincerity, but in a voice so harsh and bitter, and in such sardonic phrases—as when he says: "Sincerity is met with in very ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... abetting, the materialistic hypothesis of Haeckel, unless we make nature at once the creator and modifier of her own archetype. And even then the variability of species remains unaccounted for, except as we attribute to nature a purpose to modify persistent forms under a law that is immutable even in its variability. For the assumption of an archetype carries with it an archetypal plan and purpose, with a degree of intelligence, either in or above nature, capable at once of conceiving the type and determining the limits of its ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright

... to modify that rather rash statement, General Waymouth, when I tell you that I suggested the ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... essential chemical constituents of brewing waters enables brewers in many cases to treat an unsatisfactory supply artificially in such a manner as to modify its character in a favourable sense. Thus, if a soft water only is to hand, and it is desired to brew a bitter ale, all that is necessary is to add a sufficiency of gypsum, magnesium sulphate and calcium chloride. If it is desired to convert a soft water lacking in chlorides ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... how you spell peace. If you spell it p-i-e-c-e, it's been full of pieces," returned Jarley, with a smile; "but I say, my dear, I want to modify my statement last night that I had nothing to be thankful for. I ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs

... only work out our propositions and figures in space with mathematical precision by adopting such conditions as the above. But afterwards the artist or draughtsman may modify and suit them to a more elastic view of things; that is, he can make his figures separate from one another, instead of their outlines coming close together as they do when we look at them with only one ...
— The Theory and Practice of Perspective • George Adolphus Storey

... peculiar to this calculation. You have to consider not only the distinction between active and reserve, but also between men and munitions, between munitions available according to one theory of war, and munitions available according to another. You have to modify statical conclusions by dynamic considerations (thus you have to modify the original numbers by the rate of wastage, and the whole calculus varies progressively with the lapse of time as ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc

... know he was not lacking in genius; but you have not heard him speak, eye to eye and hand to hand. It was there his power came in, and there, too, perhaps, his greatest temptation. For he was one for women to love, and it is not always easy to modify a naturally magnetic look and tone because the hand that touches yours is shy and white, and the glance which steals up to meet your own has within it the hint of unconscious worship. Yet what he could do he did; for, unknown, perhaps, to any ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green

... general anesthesia an enormous element of danger. Concerning the treatment of multiple papillomata it has been my experience in hundreds of cases that have come to the Bronchoscopic Clinic, that repeated superficial removals with blunt non-cutting forceps (see Chapter I) will so modify the soil as to make it unfavorable for repullulation. The removals are superficial and do not include the subjacent normal tissue. Radical removal of a papilloma situated, for instance, on the left ventricular band or cord, can in no way prevent the subsequent occurrence ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... and furniture, were approved, the Crofts were approved, terms, time, every thing, and every body, was right; and Mr Shepherd's clerks were set to work, without there having been a single preliminary difference to modify of all that "This ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... by my Crescograph. Authorities expect this method of investigation will advance practical agriculture; since for the first time we are able to analyse and study separately the conditions which modify the rate of growth. Experiments which would have taken months and their results vitiated by unknown changes, can now be carried out ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose

... had been any partial paralysis or numbness in any part of the body. These things must be looked for in brain trouble. Then you can come down, ostensibly to prepare another prescription, and when you have reported, I have no doubt I can give you something which will modify, or I ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton

... character away, And no great harm, unless at grave expense Of what needs edge of proof, the moral sense; For man or race is on the downward path Whose fibre grows too soft for honest wrath, And there's a subtle influence that springs From words to modify our sense of things. A plain distinction grows obscure of late: Man, if he will, may pardon; but the State 10 Forgets its function if not fixed as Fate. So thought our sires: a hundred years ago, If men were knaves, why, people called them ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... disobedience, we will quit you." Such has always been the language of the Southern States. They were known to be capable of keeping their word; therefore, there ceased to be but one argument in America: secession. "Revoke the compromise, or else secession; modify the legislation of the free States, or else secession; risk adventures, and undertake conquests with us for slavery, or else secession; lastly and above all, never suffer yourselves to elect a president who is not our ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin

... will never change the fundamental principles and practices of Shakerism," said one of the older and official members, an uncommonly intelligent Shaker, to me. "Celibacy and the confession of sins are vital; but in all else we ought to be changeable, and may modify our practices; and we feel that we must do something to make home more pleasant for our young people—they want more music and more books, and shall have them; they are greatly interested in these weekly business meetings; and I am in favor of giving ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff

... was born, I will go on with my narrative. As every schoolboy knows, in the latter part of the nineteenth century the civilization of to-day, or anything like it, did not exist, although the elements which were to develop it were already in ferment. Nothing had, however, occurred to modify the immemorial division of society into the four classes, or nations, as they may be more fitly called, since the differences between them were far greater than those between any nations nowadays, ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... it is essentially different in character. The old Unions preserve the traditions of the time when they were founded, and look upon the wages system as a once for all established, final fact, which they at best can modify in the interest of their members. The new Unions were founded at a time when the faith in the eternity of the wages system was severely shaken; their founders and promoters were Socialists either consciously or by feeling; the masses, whose ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels

... not, like logical parts, by external relations, but in quite a new way, by "synthesis." "Parts" united by synthesis have not the logical characteristics of mutual distinction and externality of relations, they interpenetrate and modify one another. In a series which has duration (such a thing is a contradiction in terms, but the fault lies with the logical form of language which, in spite of its unsatisfactoriness we are driven to employ if we want to describe at all) the "later parts" are not distinct from the "earlier": ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen

... and the act of 1807 ought not to be construed as evincing any disposition in Congress to limit or restrain this constitutional authority. For greater certainty, however, it may be well that Congress should modify or explain this act in regard to its provisions for the employment of the Army and Navy of the United States, as well as that in regard to calling forth the militia. It is supposed not to be doubtful that all citizens, whether enrolled ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson

... king are feeble. A democratic Parliament with a growing Labour party has far more power to change Oxford than the Stuarts ever had, and even at this moment (1919) a third Royal Commission is beginning to sit. Will it modify, will it— ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells

... disunion did not differ from those that loosen the links of most such marriages," and writes several pages on the trite theme that great genius is incompatible with domestic happiness. Negative instances abound to modify this sweeping generalization; but there is a kind of genius, closely associated with intense irritability, which it is difficult to subject to the most reasonable yoke; and of this sort was Byron's. ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... was such and the quantity was so small that any appreciable variation of the proportion should not affect materially the treating processes finally adopted, yet its presence in varying proportions undoubtedly would modify to some extent the quality of the resulting paper product. Since the length of the ultimate bast fiber averages about 22 mm. and the length of the ultimate hemp wood fiber averages 0.7 mm., it is natural to assume that the bast fiber would tend to increase the strength of paper produced ...
— Hemp Hurds as Paper-Making Material - United States Department of Agriculture, Bulletin No. 404 • Lyster H. Dewey and Jason L. Merrill

... discoveries that alter the course or character of industry or commerce, or reverse the relative advantages of different nations in the competitions of life; the increase and, still more, the diffusion of knowledge; the many influences that affect convictions, habits and ideals, that raise, or lower, or modify the moral tone and type—all these things concur in shaping the destinies of nations. Legislation is only really successful when it is in harmony with the general spirit of the age. Laws and statesmen for the most part indicate and ratify, ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... domesticated, and some useful exotics have been cultivated for the purpose of testing their applicability to French agriculture or horticulture; but neither in the case of animals nor of plants has there been any systematic effort to modify the constitution of the species, by breeding largely and selecting the favourable ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... marriage, Camille distinctly told his mother that he intended quitting Vernon to reside in Paris. Madame Raquin protested: she had arranged her mode of life, and would not modify it in any way. Thereupon her son had a nervous attack, and threatened to fall ill, if she did not give way ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola

... and it is to implore you to modify them that we have come. Father, they are cruel terms—to be dead to each other for a ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard

... lady-fingers soon became exhausted, and the stock of crackers, too, showed signs of running out. As an experiment I ordered eggs for breakfast once—but only once. The cook had evidently tried to serve them in disguise, believing that a large amount of cold grease would in some way modify their taste. He did not seem to have the least respect for old age. It was the time of cholera; the boat might have become a pesthouse any moment. But the steward assured us that the drinking water had been neither boiled ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... life is such as those who rule over him make it; but they can only modify what he is. Yet, as all know, after their influence has ceased, the man himself has to deal with the effects of blood and breed, and, too, with the consequences of the mistakes of his elders in the way of education. For these reasons I am pleased ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... from your own severity.—Francis is safe from me, unless you are altogether unreasonable.—Allow me but what you cannot deny to any friend of your brother, the power of seeing you at times—suspend at least the impetuosity of your dislike to me, and I will, on my part, modify the current of my just ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... more rigid became all the habits and purposes of religion. Again and again he was tempted to soften them—to spend time with her that he had been accustomed to give to Catholic practice—to slacken or modify the harshness of that life of self-renouncement, solitude, unpopularity, to which he had vowed himself for years—to conceal from her the more startling and difficult of his convictions. But he crushed the temptation, guided, ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... protected by too hard a cuirass; they are evidence of tastes which are highly carnivorous, but not exclusively so, like those of the Praying Mantis, who refuses everything except game. The butcher of the Cicadae is able to modify an excessively heating diet with vegetable fare. After meat and blood, sugary fruit-pulp; sometimes even, for lack of anything ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... been eminently satisfactory. Circumstances, perhaps, have compelled me to modify the original idea of it, but nevertheless it has been a completely successful test. Since we started out, I have been doing a good deal of thinking, and I have come to the conclusion that what the Paterson Dyeing and Refining ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse

... old mansion, Cyril," Lord Oliphant said, when they had made a tour of the house; "and now that I see it and its furniture I am even more inclined than before to admire the man who could voluntarily resign them. I shall have to modify my ideas of the Puritans. They have shown themselves ready to leave the country and cross the ocean to America, and begin life anew for conscience' sake—that is to say, to escape persecution—and ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty

... go, no home, no place to which he could return as to his own. He found himself wishing that he had not torn up Cecily's letter; he remembered its general effect so well that he wanted to read the very words again, in the secret hope that they would modify and soften his memory. His own answer met and destroyed the hope; he knew that he would have responded to anything ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... if nobody will modify their attitude —Johnny, you ought to be ashamed of yourself, and [To MRS MARCH] so ought ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... material in the one place, clay was still employed, notwithstanding the abundance of stone, in the other. Being devoid of any great inventive genius, the Assyrians found it easier to maintain and slightly modify a system with which they had been familiar in their original country than to devise a new one more adapted to the land of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... to be influenced at present by the French and Italian examples, we may be sure that she is too intelligent and too fond of freedom to long tolerate any system of chaperonage that she cannot control. She will find a way to modify the traditional conventionalities so as not to fetter her own free spirit. It may be her mission to show the world a social order free from the forward independence and smartness of which she has been accused, and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... building the body can, in turn, considerably modify its form, copying specially striking features found in the mother's thought; certain characteristic family traits, the Bourbon nose, for instance; those belonging to strangers in continual relationship with the mother, and those that a babe, fed and brought up away from home, takes from ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... dictum, that "the question whether a language can begin with inflections, implies an absurdity," may have seemed too strongly worded: but if he took inflections in the commonly received meaning, in the sense of something that may be added or removed from a base in order to define or to modify its meaning, then surely the simple argument ex nihilo nihil fit is sufficient to prove that the inflections must have been something by themselves, before they became inflections relatively to the base, and that the base too ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... death of Palmerston raised his colleague, Lord John Russell, to the premiership. With his chief—one of the heroes of the first successful struggle for parliamentary reform—he now drew up the Reform Bill of 1866 which was intended so to modify the qualifications for the franchise as to admit four hundred thousand new voters to the electorate. Though the government was defeated and went out of office on the question, the principle scored a singular victory, for in the ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy

... through a country may carry away impressions about its climate, products, and people, which residence for a considerable time would not merely modify but reverse. There are some things of which he can speak with some confidence. The great natural features of a country, its mountains and plains and rivers, do not undergo any marked change, and these may be truly described by the casual visitor. The general aspect of a people, ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy

... interdependent parts—body, thinking brain, and that higher mental function that we call spirit—the development of any one of which, beyond a certain stage, is found to be detrimental to the other two; and because (b) he is able possibly to control directly his own evolution, and certainly to modify it indirectly by modifying the environment in which he evolves. He is able to make mistakes in his ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds

... opera-house, the "organ" is not a musical instrument. At that time, electricity was employed only for a very few scenic effects and for the bells. The immense building and the stage itself were still lit by gas; hydrogen was used to regulate and modify the lighting of a scene; and this was done by means of a special apparatus which, because of the multiplicity of its pipes, was known as the "organ." A box beside the prompter's box was reserved for the chief ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... the work which they have done during the years at school, than on the work done on the few days of their examination. There are outside examiners appointed by Government to check the work done at schools and during the examinations; but the cases in which they have to modify or reverse the award of the master are extremely rare, and they are felt to reflect seriously on the competency or ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller

... run into the ground. We are tired of it. The people are getting tired of it. You are going to have a great influence in the legislature. We concede that fact. Now, what we want to do is to talk over some of these bills and get your influence to modify or ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon

... so you will learn to modify that judgment. More than half the days we were at Swakopmund a heavy pall of dampness hung over the place, and after a day or two of it one's system seemed to be badly affected. Maybe we were not acclimatised, but the fact remains that a very large proportion of us were down with a kind of dysentery, ...
— With Botha in the Field • Eric Moore Ritchie

... that my political feelings and convictions have never undergone any change. They are now what they became when I first began to have political feelings and convictions. Nor do I find in myself any tendency to modify them as I have found generally in men as they grow old. I consider myself to be an advanced, but still a Conservative-Liberal, which I regard not only as a possible, but as a rational and consistent phase of political existence. I can, I believe, in a ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope

... lecture form and remain as delivered with the exception of minor changes designed to remove obscurities of expression. The lecture form has the advantage of suggesting an audience with a definite mental background which it is the purpose of the lecture to modify in a specific way. In the presentation of a novel outlook with wide ramifications a single line of communications from premises to conclusions is not sufficient for intelligibility. Your audience will construe whatever you say into conformity with their pre-existing outlook. For this reason ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... irregularity of holdings, combined with the decrease in the number of holders whose interests had to be consulted, made it easier than it had formerly been to modify the traditional routine of husbandry. Even though the new land acquired by tenants from the demesne or from old bond-holdings did not happen to be adjacent to strips already in their possession, exchange could accomplish the desired result. ...
— The Enclosures in England - An Economic Reconstruction • Harriett Bradley

... the next General Conference adopt it as a substitute for our present General Rule on Slavery, we earnestly request that body to so modify the Chapter on Slavery as to prevent the admission of any slaveholder into the M. E. Church, and secure the exclusion of all who are now members, if they will not, after due labor, ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller

... the mind in exactly the same condition as it entered. Things become transformed and assimilated in the process of mental digestion. Consequently the discerning teacher knows that he is working in terms of life through the agency of the music. He is helping to modify, form, or transform the mind of the pupil through his memories, he is moulding his character: and his character weighs in the eternal scales. The teaching thus stands on a base that is wider than life itself, and such a teacher is invested with a dignity and worth that can ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt

... years had passed,—four, in this instance,—and there came a time, only a few weeks previous to the opening of our story, when Di found herself constrained to modify her view ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller

... important questions of dialectics—so important that Porphyry, touching on it in his Preliminaries, did not dare to take the responsibility of cutting the knot, but said, "It is a very grave point,"—Champeaux, who was obliged to modify his idea and then renounce it, saw his course fall into such discredit that they hardly let him make his dialectical lectures, as though dialectics consisted entirely in the question ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... the whole learned world as rigid and conclusive demonstrations. It is possible, also, for as complete a change to be effected by what is called the spirit of the age. The general intellectual tendencies pervading the literature of a century profoundly modify the character of the public mind. They form a new tone and habit of thought. They alter the measure of probability. They create new attractions and new antipathies, and they eventually cause as absolute a rejection of ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... period—a period as glorious as it is agitated—when the conditions of men are not sufficiently settled for the mind to be lulled in torpor, when they are sufficiently unequal for men to exercise a vast power on the minds of one another, and when some few may modify the convictions of all. It is at such times that great reformers start up, and new opinions suddenly change the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... by the proper authorities and be found necessary to the public weal. Until the appointment of the twelve censors the press was to remain idle! Nor was the suspension of the prohibitory ordinance to continue a day longer than the term required by the monarch to decide whether he preferred to modify its provisions or leave them unchanged. "Albeit on the thirteenth day of January, 1534,"[341] wrote this much lauded patron of letters, "by other letters-patent of ours, and for the causes and reasons therein contained, we prohibited and forbade any one from thenceforth ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... upon the course of trade and political expansion was conspicuous in the early history of the Mississippi Valley, before steam navigation began to modify the geographic influence of a river's flow. The wide forest-grown barrier of the Appalachian Mountains placed the western pioneers under the geographic control of the western waters. The bulkiness of their field and forest products, fitted only for water transportation, and ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... own chances, for the chance of your weaker brethren. The desirability, they say, of a great or clever man acquiring fame is small compared with the desirability of a weak and broken man acquiring bread. The strong man is a man, and should modify or adapt himself to the hopes of his mates. He that would be first among you, let him be the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... atom of one element in a group could be modified so as to become the atom of another element in the group, that one group could perhaps be transformed into another, and so on, if only I knew the force that would change the number or modify the vibrations of these ions composing ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... establishments under the control of the government. In debates in Parliament, in testimony before government commissions of investigation, in petitions, pamphlets, and newspapers, the conditions of factory labor were described and discussed. Successive laws to modify these conditions were introduced into Parliament, debated at great length, amended, postponed, reintroduced, and in some cases ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney

... than glimpses and touches; we are torn away from our theories; we are spun round and round and shown this or the other view of life, until only fools or knaves can hold to their opinions.... All our attributes are modified or changed; and it will be a poor account of us if our views do not modify and change in a proportion. To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser. It is as if a ship captain should sail to India from ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Socialistic experiments to tell us if they know of any other effective remedy. Surely all thoughtful men should study these theories of social redemption and learn why their advocates claim that putting them in practice would modify or abolish the evils of our ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... than to be called on to relate his adventures— and it must be added that there was nothing he found easier, for, when his genuine adventures were not sufficiently telling, he could without difficulty expand, exaggerate, modify, or even invent, so as to fit them for the ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne

... company, which has had a system of commutation fares in force for more than four years, shall abolish, alter, or modify the same, except for the regulation of the price charged for such commutation; and such price shall, in no case, be raised to an extent that shall alter the ratio between such commutation and the rates then charged for way fare, on ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... regarded steamers with the utmost contempt, and never spoke of them without quoting the remarks of Admiral Triton, who, however, in the course of time, learnt to modify his opinions. ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston

... indistinguishable, so thoroughly are they mixed, intertwined, interwoven, like the essential strands of the stuff itself: but these of the Puritan and the Southerner, though they run everywhere with the rest and seem upon a superficial view themselves the body of the cloth, in fact modify rather than make it. ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... lowest walk is the safest: 'tis the seat of constancy." The wind about the tower, coming who knows whence and whither?—could one enjoy its music, unless one knew the foundations safe, twenty feet below-ground? Always he loved to hear such words as "soften and modify the temerity of our propositions." To say less than the truth about it, to dissemble the absoluteness of its claim, was agreeable to his confidence in the natural charm, the gaiety, of goodness, "that fair and beaten path nature ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater

... occurred. But by this time Fox had learned that the argument which he had founded on it was in the highest degree unpalatable both to Parliament and to the nation; and for a moment he sought to modify it by an explanation that, though he had claimed for the Prince "the naked right, he had not by that expression intended to maintain that that right could be reduced into possession without the consent of Parliament;" an explanation not very ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... a very marked degree the confident obstinacy of feeble and timid spirits. She does not dare to dismiss an incompetent footman; and when she has once made up her mind, which is only possible in matters about which her opinions are rigidly formed, neither force nor persuasion can modify her. That is my reading of her character, and I think it the ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... was my conclusion; and yet I was quickly compelled to modify it, for, thinking to play with a rattle-brain, I asked him what were the books up to half a hundredweight he carried, and what were the writers he preferred. His library, he told me, among other things included, first and fore-most, a complete Byron. Next was a complete ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... being, which flows of necessity from the assumption, that the will and, with the will, all acts of thought and attention are parts and products of this blind mechanism, instead of being distinct powers, the function of which it is to control, determine, and modify the phantasmal chaos of association. The soul becomes a mere ens logicum; for, as a real separable being, it would be more worthless and ludicrous than the Grimalkins in the cat-harpsichord, described in the Spectator. For these did form a part of the process; but, to Hartley's ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... triumph for better government in Nevada. It is the most "male" State in America, perhaps in the world. The census of 1910 shows that there are two men to every woman. Law, custom, social life are more nearly man-made than those of any other country; consequently Nevada needs the help of her women to modify law, custom and social life, the help of those women whose pioneer mothers stood shoulder to shoulder with the men in building up a great commonwealth out of a wilderness. Owing to the transitory character of many of the industries, such as the construction ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... familiar with one class of agreeable sensations than another, will, undoubtedly, contribute to form the cause of that preference for particular qualities in objects by which the characteristics of the taste of different nations is discriminated. Although, of all the general circumstances which modify the opinions of mankind, climate is, perhaps, the most permanent, it does not, therefore, follow that, because the climate of France or Italy induces the inhabitants to prefer, in works of art, certain qualities of the excellence of which the people of England are not so sensible, the ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt

... stupidity, is this? It is very well to say to a general, 'Depart for Italy, gain battles, and sign a peace at Vienna;' but the execution that is not so easy. I never attached any value to the plans which the Directory sent me. Too many circumstances occur on the spot to modify them. The movement of a single corps of the enemy's army may confound a whole plan arranged by the fireside. Only fools can believe such stuff! As for Berthier, since you have been with me, you see what he is—he is a blockhead. Yet it is he who does ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... place of Mr. Podmore's first proposal it was eventually decided to modify the resolution of 7th November, 1883, by inserting the words 'to help on' between the words 'shall be' and the ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease

... subsequent legal action. If he did not eventually deposit the certificates before failure, some charge such as that of larceny might be brought against him. Still, he said to himself, he might not really fail even yet. If any of his banking associates should, for any reason, modify their decision in regard to calling his loans, he would not. Would Stener make a row about this if he so secured this check? Would the city officials pay any attention to him if he did? Could you get any district attorney to take cognizance of such a transaction, if ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... that is felt as sacred by the bystanders. Yet is my affliction, in truth, of the deepest grain—the heaviest task that was ever given to mortal patience to sustain. Time, that wears out all other sorrows, can never modify or soften mine. Here they must continue to gnaw as long at that ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... party would be outvoted. It was agreed that no one could infer from thence that his attendance would be useless, and that a respectable minority, though not able to carry measures of its own, might, nevertheless, modify injurious laws and counsels, by exposing their pernicious tendency. Some who held these opinions made efforts to bring the great orator, Chatham, to the charge again; but his gout prevented him from coming to the house, and little ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... heart warm and loving. Notwithstanding the stern realities that marked her path, there was a vein of romance in her nature which, unfortunately, attained more than healthful development, and while it often bore her into the Utopian realms of fancy, it was still impotent to modify, in any degree, the social difficulties with which she was forced to contend. Ah, there is a touching beauty in the radiant up-look of a girl just crossing the limits of youth, and commencing her journey through the checkered sphere of ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans

... his consideration. He had married in haste a child-bride. There was no blinking the fact. She had the strenuous religious fibre, and with it real Bohemian blood. She was also at the yielding age, when a dominant influence could do much to divert or modify every natural trait. He could not doubt that he had this power over her then. How far, and to what purpose, should he exert it? For himself he wished to discourage any hankering on her part for public life, ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes

... furnish one with universal judgments about women but it does provide the solitude and austere discipline which enable a man to coordinate his hitherto chaotic ideas about them. And women, if they only knew how they appear to the imagination of men on the rolling waters, would undoubtedly modify their own conceptions of life, and possibly profit by the change. Imogene, however, had no such moment of illumination. She lived in an enchanted world of imitation emotion and something in the author's manuscript ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... on his way the outraged husband had time to reflect, and the past few months rose vividly before him. He saw his own folly and did not spare himself in his condemnation; but this folly did not for an instant modify the guilt of the two fugitives. Every moment his injuries seemed more colossal, more unpardonable, more unendurable. He had been wounded in his affections and also in his vanity, which was far more dreadful, and an agonizing thirst for vengeance ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... not even the Turks, would patiently bear such a condition of affairs. Every where the sovereign would have been forced to change, or to modify, the personnel of his ministers and advisers; and Mr. Lincoln is in the hands of Messrs. Seward and Blair, both worse even than ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski

... only plausible reason for the deviation. However slight it had been, it had been sufficient to modify the trajectory of the projectile. It was a fatality. The audacious attempt had miscarried by a fortuitous circumstance, and unless anything unexpected happened, the lunar disc could no longer be reached. Would they pass ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne

... 1886 to mere expressions of contingent hope, such (to use Goldwin Smith's own words) 'as any Unionist might have subscribed,'[2] and that Macdonald voted against Mr Curran's substantive resolution in favour of Home Rule in 1887, when he could not modify it, was as well known to Goldwin Smith as to Mr Costigan. In addition, Goldwin Smith possessed indubitable evidence, at first hand, of Sir John Macdonald's sentiments on the subject of Home Rule. During the political campaign of 1886-87 Goldwin Smith said some ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope

... the general plan, The hero's name too in advance, Meantime I'll finish whilst I can Canto the First of this romance. I've scanned it with a jealous eye, Discovered much absurdity, But will not modify a tittle— I owe the censorship a little. For journalistic deglutition I yield the fruit of work severe. Go, on the Neva's bank appear, My very latest composition! Enjoy the meed which Fame bestows— ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin

... observations of physics all the senses are employed, and mathematical analysis and experiment assist observation. In the phenomena of astronomy human intervention was impossible; in the phenomena of physics man begins to modify natural phenomena. ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... these letters, originally intended as purely familiar correspondence, obtained a free circulation over a large part of Europe without the smallest agency on the part of the author, or any opportunity to correct and modify them as he certainly would have done had he ever possessed ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... Southern paper, in speaking of Dr. Roy, referred to him as a colored man. At the time we thought the writer was mistaken, but since looking over his itinerary, which our readers will find in another part of the magazine, we have been led to feel that we shall have to modify somewhat our opinion. The doctor himself explicitly declares that at one point in their journey he and his companions were all of the same color. At any rate he is not ashamed to call them brethren, and we may also add that they are not ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 39, No. 03, March, 1885 • Various

... Frank said, "we must modify the arrangement, and agree that none of us will go into a bar unless actually asked to go and take a drink—that wouldn't be very often, the invitation is generally given inside. We come back from work about the same time ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... country town. But I fancy you'll have to give up the lodging house. Elton Gwynne took me down the Peninsula one day, and—well—I don't fancy they would stand for it. Aristocracies are aristocracies the world over. They may talk democracy, and really modify themselves a bit, but there are certain things they'd choke on if they tried to swallow them, and they won't even try. Better give it up before they find it out and tackle you. I don't fancy you'd stand for that. It would be devilish disagreeable. You've got to know ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... came to speak of himself he said what he did not mean, or filled the picture with descriptions, situations or emotions, incongruous or inappropriate. And if in so reading they seem clear and connected, fanciful and far-drawn interpretations will not be adopted. We should not distort or modify their meaning in order to infer that they are imitations of Petrarch, or that the genius of the poet, cribbed and confined by the fashion of the time, forgot to soar, and limped and waddled in the footsteps of the inconspicuous sonneteers ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson

... to have been a most unreasonable one in point of amount, and Columbus was obliged to modify his demands upon these poor Indians, and in some instances to change the nature of them. It appears that, in 1496, service instead of tribute was demanded of certain Indian villages; and as the villagers ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps

... independently sought to give a mechanical explanation, on a quite new ground, of this modification of plant and animal structures by adaptation and heredity. He was impelled to his theory of selection on the following grounds. He compared the origin of the various kinds of animals and plants which we modify artificially—by the action of artificial selection in horticulture and among domestic animals—with the origin of the species of animals and plants in their natural state. He then found that the agencies which we employ in the modification of forms by artificial ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel

... believing in the slow rate of change in living forms is the fact that they persist through a series of deposits which, geology informs us, have taken a long while to make. If the geological clock is wrong, all the naturalist will have to do is to modify his notion of the rapidity of change accordingly; and I venture to point out that, when we are told that the limitation of the period during which living beings have inhabited this planet to one, two, or three hundred million years requires a complete revolution ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell

... suggested by sensations which, were conveyed from the surface of the body, through the nerves, until corresponding impression was produced on the mind. Upon the same principle, very strong impressions received during the day may modify and very materially influence the character of our dreams at night. Dr. Beattie states that once, after riding thirty miles in a very high wind, he passed a night of dreams which were so terrible, that he found ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various

... modify the milk for chronic constipation? This is difficult to overcome, and it is more frequent when infants are fed upon a plain milk diet, variously diluted, than when seven or ten per cent milk is used and diluted to a greater ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter

... has been simplified by about 30 affixes, which are used to modify the meanings of root words. The commonest are ...
— The Esperantist, Vol. 1, No. 3 • Various

... takes its name from an outward current of cold air which is so strong as to distinctly modify the temperature of the atmosphere at least 100 yards from the entrance. The opening and the front chamber are nearly 40 feet across, but the distance from the roof to the muddy floor strewn with large rocks is not more than 5 feet at any point. A creek ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke

... nothing occurred in his brief command of an army to prove or disprove the high estimate that had been placed upon his military ability; but after studying the orders and dispatches of Johnston I am compelled to materially modify my views of that officer's qualifications as a soldier. My judgment now is that he was vacillating ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... the state; absolute impartiality between the rival creeds, Catholic and Arian (to the latter of which Theodoric himself was an adherent); and a determination to abstain as much as possible from all fresh legislation which might modify the rights and duties of the Roman inhabitants of Italy, the legislative power being chiefly exercised in order to provide for those new cases which arose out of the settlement of so large a number of new-comers of alien blood within ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... Alfred looked like a grown man; coming towards you he looked more natural. Wherever there appeared a bunch or angle that seemed out of place, Lacy endeavored to modify the over abundance by tacking on one of the ornaments taken from the old uniform of which a great number were used. The shoulders of the jacket seemed to fit to suit Lacy, therefore she used the epaulets from the shoulders of the old soldier's ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... when, past all the temporary currents of worldly excitement, we shall, each of us, stand alone face to face with the perfect purity of our Redeemer. The thought of such a final interview ought certainly to modify all our judgments now, that we may strive to approve only what we shall ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... husband when she turned to himself, and that was to be understood—to be understood, if not to be pardoned. A woman might marry, thinking she cared, and all too soon, sometimes before the second day had dawned, learn that shrinking and repugnance which not even habit can modify or obscure. A girl might be mistaken, with her heart and nature undeveloped, and with that closer intimate life with another of another sex still untried. With the transition from maidenhood to wifehood, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... be regarded as unfortunate that the experiments which have been made on pigeons have been limited to their features of form, color, and slight peculiarities in their habits. If the breeders had sought to modify the intellectual parts with anything like the insistence which they have given to the development of these bodily peculiarities, we might now have a most valuable store of knowledge as to the limitations of animal minds. The facts gained in the ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler

... the natural order of nominative, verb, object, is usually preferable; and as a rule I find that adverbs and adverbial phrases fall best between nominative and verb. Still, the desirability of tying each period to its predecessor, as does the rhyme of the fourth and fifth lines of a sonnet, will modify arrangement. In reading another author, where such precaution as I name is neglected, a word misplaced in its relation to the others of the sentence runs my mind off the track, like an engine on a misplaced switch, and I dislike the ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... of heat, on arriving at this limiting emptiness, would be reflected back as surely as a ball is sent back when thrown against a solid wall. If this be the case, it will not affect our conclusions concerning such a tiny region of space as is occupied by the solar system, but it will seriously modify Sir William Thomson's suggestion as to the fate of the universe as a whole. The radiance thrown away by the sun is indeed lost so far as the future of our system is concerned, but not a single unit of it is lost from the universe. Sooner or later, reflected back in all directions, it must ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... is another thing about this talking, which you forget. It shapes our thoughts for us;—the waves of conversation roll them as the surf rolls the pebbles on the shore. Let me modify the image a little. I rough out my thoughts in talk as an artist models in clay. Spoken language is so plastic,—you can pat and coax, and spread and shave, and rub out, and fill up, and stick on so easily, when you work that soft material, that there is nothing like it for modelling. Out of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... armed resistance on the part of the insurgents as the only indispensable condition to ending the war," said the President, "I retract nothing heretofore said as to slavery. . . . While I remain in my present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the Emancipation Proclamation. Nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that Proclamation or by any of the Acts of Congress. If the people should, by whatever mode or means, make it an Executive duty ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... together in little groups or held their reunions and social banquets, as, to a certain extent, did organizations from all parts of the town. The experience of the coffee-house taught us not to hold to preconceived ideas of what the neighborhood ought to have, but to keep ourselves in readiness to modify and adapt our undertakings as we discovered those things which the neighborhood was ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... be done in connection with any plan with which I was associated in the earlier years, I usually found that I was selected to undertake it. I had a passion for detail which afterward I was forced to strive to modify. ...
— Random Reminiscences of Men and Events • John D. Rockefeller

... which Senor Montalvo has brought from Panama has caused me to very materially modify my plans. When you were preparing your dispatch to his Excellency the Governor of Panama, I gave you to understand that in the event of Don Silvio's refusal to entertain my proposals, I would sack and destroy the city of Nombre de ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood

... shows the heavy debt of the various sciences to Roman law and the influence which it has exerted on the vocabulary of political science, the concepts of moral philosophy, and the doctrines of theology. I must confine myself to two questions: how far did Maine develop or modify in his subsequent writings the main thesis of Ancient Law? to what extent has this thesis stood the test of the criticism and research of others? As regards the first point, it is to be remembered that Ancient Law is but the first, though doubtless the most important, of ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... the oldest man remembers in Parliamentary affairs. I have resigned my office, and my resignation has been refused. I have spoken and voted against the Ministry under which I hold my place. The Ministry has been so hard run in the Commons as to be forced to modify its plan; and has received a defeat in the Lords, [On the 25th of July the Archbishop of Canterbury carried an amendment on the Irish Church Bill, against the Government, by 84 votes to 82.]—a slight one to be sure, and on a slight matter,—yet such ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... greatest difference between the sane and the unsane is that the sane know when to release a destructive force before it does more than minimal damage; to modify or eliminate an emotional condition before it becomes a deadly compulsion; to replace one set of concepts with another when it becomes necessary to do so; to recognize that point when the mind must change its outlook or die. To stop the erosion, in other words, before it becomes so great ...
— What The Left Hand Was Doing • Gordon Randall Garrett

... to amend it."[256] Norton's next sentence, "Since which time I have not been advertised by any man of anything which they would require to be altered" probably expresses the fate of most of the many requests for criticism that accompany translations, but does not essentially modify the impression he conveys of unusually favorable conditions for such work. One remembers that Tyndale originally anticipated with some confidence a residence in the Bishop of London's house while he translated the Bible. Thomas Wilson, again, says of his translation ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos

... mechanical science, and is little better than those ancient superstitions which gave a personal identity to the winds. The momentum of ordinary winds is a feeble force in comparison with those forces of pressure and friction which continually modify it. Hence sudden changes in the direction and intensity of winds must primarily arise from similar changes in these forces. But there are no known forces which change so suddenly, except the pressure and latent heat of suspended ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... of the people resident in the Territory shall participate in the election of its officers or the making of its laws. It may take from them any right of suffrage it may previously have conferred, or at any time modify or abridge it, as it may deem expedient.... Their political rights are franchises which they hold as privileges, in the legislative ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid

... she had expected that he would seek to justify himself, would ask her to explain her decision and to modify it. This grim, silent acceptance of his fate terrified her. It seemed to throw upon her shoulders all the responsibility of an action which in itself was right, yet possibly burdened with consequences dangerous to another. For ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray

... is more nearly exact than the assertion. Every novelist whose work is to endure even for a generation must draw from life, sometimes generalizing broadly and sometimes keeping close to the single individual, but always free to modify the mere fact as he may have observed it to conform with the larger truth of the fable he shall devise. Most story-tellers tend to generalize, and their fictions lack the sharpness of outline we ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... is that suited to the role of a dapper young underling of vulgar mind habituated to vulgar companionships. I feel it due, if not to Graham himself, at least to the memory of the dignified orator whose name he inherits, so to modify and soften the hardy style of that peculiar diction in which he disguises his birth and disgraces his culture, that it is only here and there that I can venture to indicate the general tone of it; but in ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... difficult to persuade her to leave off. When urged to accept the services of an attendant, she replied, with a sad prevision of the vicissitudes of her future life, that she did not like to form a habit which she might have again to abandon. She suffered herself, however, to be persuaded gradually to modify her recluse and ascetic habits. It was well she did so, as a preparation for the great ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... water and acid drinks should be administered freely, so that sweat and other excretions may carry off poisonous materials. Care must be taken to watch the pulse, the breathing, the appearance of the feet, the evacuations from the bowels, and to modify therapy in accordance with these indications. The eruption is to be encouraged by external warmth and special care must be taken with regard to complications in the eyes, the ears, the nose, the mouth, ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... They were long ago defined as the investigator's language addressed to Nature, to which she sends intelligible replies. These replies, however, usually reach the questioner in whispers too feeble for the public ear. But after the investigator comes the teacher, whose function it is so to exalt and modify the experiments of his predecessor, as to render them fit for public presentation. This secondary function I shall endeavour, in the present instance, ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall

... obstruction—obstruction which need not be. There are no doubt obstructions to its action which are inherent in our mortality; things which have to do really with physical temperament, or again with external circumstances which we may be helpless to modify. But the Cause, in itself, tends always to the effects visible in this noble passage of Christian affection. The possession and knowledge of Jesus Christ, in spirit and in truth, tends always, by an eternal ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule

... of Almeida, the grand Marshal Coutinho declared that, having come to India with the intention of destroying Calicut, he intended to turn to account the absence of the Zamorin from his capital. In vain the new viceroy endeavoured to modify his zeal and induce him to take the wise measures recommended by experience. Coutinho would listen to nothing, and Albuquerque was obliged to follow him. Calicut, taken by surprise, was easily set on fire; ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... fanciful, elusive ideas. So he sighed and spoke no more. The medicine, whatever it might be, had the merit, rare in doctor's stuff, of being pleasant to take, assuasive of thirst, and imbued with a hardly perceptible fragrance, that was so ethereal that it also seemed to enter into his dream and modify it. He kept his eyes closed, and fell into a misty state, in which he wondered whether this could be the panacea or medicament which old Doctor Grimshawe used to distil from cobwebs, and of which the ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Chief's opposition came from Indians living eastwardly of Heywood Sound, the undersigned determined to modify the propositions of the Government, so as to meet in some degree the objections ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris

... without suffering materially thereby. This is the case particularly with forces that are persistent, concentrated, well seconded by their medium. It is the case with the physiological equilibrium, nervic force, psychic force, ideas, emotions, tendencies. These modify environing forces, without themselves disappearing. They are imperceptibly transformed, AND IF THE NEXT MAN IS OF A NATURE EXCEPTIONALLY WELL ADAPTED TO THEM, THEY GAIN IN ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... Hence we may understand the charm of that irregularity that prevails in the forms of vegetation. If we remove a branch from an Elm or an Oak, or even from an Ash, we destroy no positive symmetry; it is like removing a stone from a loose stone wall; we do but slightly modify ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... superficial, smiling little hair-dresser was a person of no importance, yet it happened to him to modify not only Helwyse's external aspect, but the aspect of his mind as well,—by the presentation of a new idea; for strange to say, Helwyse had never chanced to doubt that seraphim were higher than cherubim, or that independence was the only ladder to heaven. To be taught ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... weak, thin negative lacking in contrast and altogether flat; and second, a very dense negative in which the contrasts are hopelessly emphatic. Even in such cases, however, it may be possible to modify the negatives ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant

... That this Convention respectfully requests the several States to revise their respective enactments, and to modify or repeal any laws which may be found to be in conflict with the Constitution and laws of ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden



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