"Negative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... child, who had been playing on the roof, ran after me, and reaching me just as my foot was set on the spring that opened the gate or outer door, caught me by the hand, and looking up into my face, expressed by glance and gesture a negative so unmistakable that I thought it expedient at once to comply and return to the house. There my time was occupied, for as great a part of each day as I could give to such a task without extreme fatigue, in mastering the language ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... reply to a negative on Crevel's part, "I have fouled my life, till now so pure, by a degrading thought; and I am inexcusable!—I know it!—I deserve every insult you can offer me! God's will be done! If, indeed, He desires the death of two creatures worthy to appear before Him, they must die! ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... to refer the last message to the Committee on Privileges and Elections was, after debate, determined in the negative; and the question recurring, Shall the bill pass, the objections of the President of the United States to the contrary notwithstanding? it was determined in ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... the negative, and in the examination of a few articles that were being prepared for her bridal-day she gradually forgot all unpleasant misgivings, and nothing but happiness could she ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... this cenotaph before?" the young lady suddenly asked, to Heideck's surprise. On his answering in the negative, ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... knowledge is locked up in those languages. And especially, I should require some ability to draw—I do not mean artistically, for that is a gift which may be cultivated but cannot be learned, but with fair accuracy. I will not say that everybody can learn, even this; for the negative development of the faculty of drawing in some people is almost miraculous. Still everybody, or almost everybody, can learn to write; and, as writing is a kind of drawing, I suppose that the majority of the people who say they cannot draw, and give copious evidence ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... very much better or very much worse. My mother once took in a paper which contained a Tact Problem every week, and she asked my sister and me to write down solutions and see if they were right; mine were wrong five times consecutively, so I gave up that competition, though in a negative sort of way I should have been of assistance to any competitor. I remember one of these wonderful problems was, 'At an evening party A tells B that C looks like a criminal. Shortly afterwards A finds ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... this exploration, Hudson had at his command a mass of information—positive as well as negative—that at once narrowed his search and directed it; and there is very good reason for believing that he actually carried with him charts of a crude sort on which, more or less clearly, were indicated ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... last negative attack we were set free. Vacation had begun in good earnest. What followed, think you? Mutual congratulations, flirtations and fumigations without ceasing; for there was much lost time to be made up, and here was a golden ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... of rewards that seemed to them to be fabulous failed in eliciting from the spies any information as to Edgar's whereabouts. He certainly was neither at Berber nor at Khartoum, nor had the people he was with returned to Metemmeh; but beyond this negative information Rupert could learn nothing. He continued to work assiduously with his interpreter, and by the middle of May he had, after three months' work, made such progress that he was able to converse in simple phrases ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... omission of which I take to have proceeded only from negligence: but it is a fault. I could lend him no assistance. You must know he is just now diverted from the pursuit of BELL LETTERS by a paradox, which he has heard his friend Frend [2] (that learned mathematician) maintain, that the negative quantities of mathematicians were merae nugae,—things scarcely in rerum natura, and smacking too much of mystery for gentlemen of Mr. Frend's clear Unitarian capacity. However, the dispute, once set a-going, has seized violently on George's pericranick; and it is necessary for his health that ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... piles—turkeys, geese, pullets, as fat as aldermen—cream as rich as Croesus—and three gallons of poteen, one sparkle of which, as Father Philemy said in the course of the evening, would lay the hairs on St. Francis himself in his most self-negative mood, if he saw it. So far so good: everything excellent and abundant in its way. Still the higher and more refined items—the deliciae epidarum—must be added. White bread, and tea, and sugar, were yet to be got; and lump-sugar for the punch; and a tea-pot and cups and saucers ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... many wild animals is so altered by confinement that they will not breed even with their own females, so that the negative results obtained from crosses are of no value; and the antipathy of wild animals of the same species for one another, or even of wild and tame members of the same species, is ordinarily so great, that it is hopeless to look for such unions in Nature. ...
— The Origin of Species - From 'The Westminster Review', April 1860 • Thomas H. Huxley
... terrestrial ones, may help materially to reveal the secret of the formation of complex elements from simpler ones. Physicists now believe that all of the elements are compounded of hydrogen atoms, bound together by negative electrons. Thus helium is made up of four hydrogen atoms, yet the atomic weight of helium (4) is less than four times that of hydrogen (1.008). The difference may represent the mass of the electrical energy released when the ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... enrichment of life, it feels impelled by the horrors on every side to take up the social system and attempt to put it right. This sterile pitfall is now the temptation of the greatest minds. Your Shelley, your Coleridge, even your Byron,—what did they do? Menaced by this same vortex of negative effort, sentenced to intellectual annihilation if they attempted to straighten out the muddle of modernity, they fled, or drowned themselves in water ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... of the founders.[254] Private charity, he thinks, would meet the distress which might afterwards arise, though humanity imperiously requires that it should be 'sparingly administered.' Upon this duty he writes a sensible chapter.[255] To his negative proposals Malthus adds a few of the positive kind. He is strongly in favour of a national system of education, and speaks with contempt of the 'illiberal and feeble' arguments opposed to it. The ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... exploration of Australia, so that whether the report of the river proved true or false, the results of the expedition would be, at least, useful in affording so much additional information; equally important geographically, whether positive or negative. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... not only represented by circles with a hard firm outline, whereas they have no such definite limits, but also there is a constant disposition to think of negative terms as if they represented positive classes. With words just as with numbers and abstract forms there are definite phases of human development. There is, you know, with regard to number, the phase when man can barely count at all, or ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... Miss Mally Glencairn on the eve of sitting down to her solitary tea. On seeing her visitor enter, after the first compliments on the state of health and weather were over, she expressed her hopes that he had not drank tea; and, on receiving a negative, which she did not quite expect, as she thought he had been perhaps invited by some of her neighbours, she put in an additional spoonful on his account; and brought from her corner cupboard with the glass door, an ancient French pickle-bottle, in which she had preserved, since ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... to the right and then to the left and making the stalks come out underneath the ears of corn. In order to reverse the position of the flowers thus, you will have to make two tracings of the spray, one negative and one positive. ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... discovery of a little misunderstanding now with a charming quiet courtesy?—that, shouting the discovery abroad to save their faces, they would have due regard for careful qualifications and for striking the right note? The reply was the negative: it was not at ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... wires extending from the bottom of the Tungar should be connected to the batteries. The wire on the left, facing the front panel, is marked (positive) and the other wire - (negative). The positive wire should be connected to the positive terminal of the battery and the negative wire to ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... pay him a trading visit, I started next day, leaving Mr. Lane in charge, accompanied by two men, and reached the chief's wigwam late in the evening. As soon as I was seated, he asked me if I had not met the Matawin Indians. On my replying in the negative, he informed me that they had passed his place early in the morning, loaded with furs, and that they expressed their intention of proceeding to the post before they halted. These Indians had all been supplied ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... was intended as an introduction to the negative guaranty or "self-denying covenant" which I desired to lay before the President as a substitute for the one upon which he intended to build the League of Nations. The memorandum was suggestive merely, but in view of the necessity for a speedy decision there was no time to prepare ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... divine patron of the art known to them, there has been a small number equally ready to assert that there were those who observed the cult of the goddess Kapo and worshiped her [Page 25] as the patron of the hula. The positive testimony of these witnesses must be reckoned as of more weight than the negative testimony of a much larger number, who either have not seen or will not look at the other side of the shield. At any rate, among the prayers before the kuahu, of which there are others yet to be presented, will be found several ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... make a snap-shot at one twenty-fifth of a second on a clear day, around noon, even in the dead of winter, in any part of Alaska that the writer has travelled in. There are those who write that they can always hold a camera still enough to get a sharp negative at even one tenth of a second. Probably the personal equation counts largely in such a matter, and a man of very decided phlegmatic temperament may have advantage over his more sanguine and nervous brother. The thing may be done; the writer has done it himself; but the point ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... Page inquired whether he had ever seen the ruby; to which the young man replied in the negative. The fire on the hearth had by that time sunk to a glowing bed of coals, and, save for the dim ruddy glow, the illumination was afforded by means of a single candle—just sufficient to make of the commodious library a place of ghostly shadows, and failing to relieve its farther ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... exotic idioms—1st, That they express what could not have been expressed by any native idiom; 2d, That they harmonize with the English language, and give a coloring of the antique, but not any sense of strangeness to the diction. Thus, in the double negative, "Nor did they not perceive," &c., which is classed as a Hebraism—if any man fancy that it expresses no more than the simple affirmative, he shows that he does not understand its force; and, at the same time, it is a form of thought so natural and universal, that I have heard English people, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... complaint;" he gets out of favour at once, and his observation is called "unlucky," being but a negative proof, and Dr. Macmichael adds, what everybody must agree with him in, that positive instances of contagion must outweigh all negative proofs:—to be sure:—but Dr. Macmichael's saying this, does not show that positive proofs exist. Give us but positive proofs, give even but a few, which surely may be done, if the disease be really communicable, and where contagion has been so ardently sought ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... in suspense, on the comparative happiness of their condition; true, the affections of the husband were divided—but they jointly catered for one man instead of two! It is said that they courted with flowers: an authenticated fact, proves that the female occasionally possessed a negative. Roomata (Bet) rejected the addresses of Trigoonipoonata (Jack); but she learned the worth of his affection. She was crossing a river, and became ill: he sprung to her relief, and carried her safely to land; ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... reflection I was again compelled to answer in the negative. I could not call to mind a single individual of my acquaintance who acted on the principle ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... endeavors, the French crown was now on the head of one of his enemies, who, if something of a renegade Protestant himself, had nevertheless granted qualified toleration to heretics. Nor were these failures of Philip's political and religious policies mere negative results to France. The unsuccessful interference of the Spanish king contributed to the assurance of French independence, patriotism, and solidarity. France, not Spain, was to be the center of European politics ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... which particles of matter in the ordinary state are attracted, and it is probable that those emitted from the sun immediately pick up loads in this manner and so grow in bulk. If they grow large enough the gravitation of the sun draws them back, and they produce a negative charge in the solar atmosphere. But it is probable that many of the particles do not attain the critical size which, according to the principles before explained, would enable the gravitation of the sun ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... of letters from our correspondents asking whether the groom pays for the wedding cards. This question we have answered so often in the negative that we think it well to explain the philosophy of the etiquette of weddings, which is remotely founded on the early savage history of mankind, and which bears fruit in our later and more complex civilization, still ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... by a loud chuckle, and a full display of his magnificent teeth, which Frank understood to signify a decided negative. ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne
... involuntarily builds theories, has ideas, or rather the ideas shape themselves about the object of interest, and take their coloring from him, one can not refrain from conjectures, surmises. Mine were necessarily of the most vague and shadowy description; more negative than active, less theories as to what he had been or done than inferences from what he let fall in talk or conduct as to what he ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... says, with Euclid. But the Church is as much in the right as Euclid. Why, then, should not every free inquirer agree with the Church? We could put many similar questions. Either the affirmative or the negative of the proposition that King Charles wrote the Icon Basilike is as true as that two sides of a triangle are greater than the third side. Why, then, do Dr. Wordsworth and Mr. Hallam agree in thinking two sides of a triangle greater than the third side, and yet differ about the ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... half a thousand starving men, as he once did, it was remarked that no cooler eye ever took the glint of sunshine on a rifle-sight. He had but one weakness, and even that, rising from out his strength, was of a negative sort. His parts were strong, but they lacked co-ordination. Now it happened that while his centre of amativeness was pronounced, it had lain mute and passive during the years he lived on moose and salmon and chased glowing Eldorados over chill divides. But when he finally blazed the corner-post ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... degree in the women of both people. I have often asked Native women whether it would be possible for any mother among them to distinguish her own new-born baby from a supposed "changeling" of the same sex and of the same general appearance, and the answer has always been negative. The Native and the white woman alike would continue to cherish the substituted child exactly as they would have cherished the issue of their own bodies. The desire to bear children is the same in all normally constituted women irrespective of colour or race, and there is no sign ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... 578 against a conference, while the small landlords were almost unanimously in its favour. A second appeal was then made to the Landowners' Convention through its president, Lord Abercorn, but an answer in the negative was received, for it went on to say—"It would be merely to give long-discredited politicians a certificate of good sense and of just views, we might almost say of legislative capacity to sit in an Irish Parliament in Dublin, were we to accept Captain Shaw Taylor's ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... incessantly jogging them to deliver the goods, they're bound to put the thing through! It's said that someone asked a Member of the Government point-blank whether there was any truth in the rumour, and was told, "The answer is in the negative-affirmative, Sir!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... of late, Mr. Lawson. I ask the women folks, and the answer invariably is in the negative. Now, if it were not that this little country girl is here I would carry you off ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... by reason." Before Hume, assaults on the miracles recorded in Scripture were numerous and varied. Spinoza and the Pantheistic School had started the question, "Are miracles possible?" and had taken the negative. Hume's question is, "Are miracles credible?" And as they are contrary to human experience, his answer is essentially that it must be always more probable that a miracle is false than that it is true; since it is not contrary to experience that ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... have been produced by these means there are thousands of instances to show. But are they testimony in favour of Animal Magnetism? - do they prove the existence of the magnetic fluid? Every unprejudiced person must answer in the negative. It needs neither magnetism, nor ghost from the grave, to tell us that silence, monotony, and long recumbency in one position must produce sleep, or that excitement, imitation, and a strong imagination, acting upon a weak body, will bring on convulsions. It will be seen hereafter ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... voted to proceed with a discussion of the Virginia plan. The small States became more and more discontented; there were threats of withdrawal. On July 2 the convention was deadlocked over giving each State an equal vote in the upper house—five States in the affirmative, five in the negative, one divided.[j] ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... as counsel for Stahl. The Commissioner then asked Stahl if he had any friends in the room, to which Stahl with a smile, replied in the negative. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... it can well compensate for failure in studies of perhaps less intrinsic importance. The neglect of these latter had no tendency to recommend him to the regard of those in authority. Positive faults were in course of time added to negative. A frolic in which he was engaged during his third year was attended by consequences more serious than disfavor. It led to his dismissal. The father took the boy's side, and the usual struggle followed between the parents and ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... had glistened at the mention of meat, and who was trembling with eagerness to devour it, replied in the negative; and a plateful of coarse broken ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... war will at any rate give us two broad and well-marked classifications. The first is simple and well known, depending on whether the political object of the war is positive or negative. If it be positive—that is, if our aim is to wrest something from the enemy—then our war in its main lines will be offensive. If, on the other hand, our aim be negative, and we simply seek to prevent the enemy wresting some advantage to our detriment, then the war ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... little soprano asked me in a shy, conscious way if my friend were quite well. Had I ever fancied his brain affected? I might have answered with a simple negative: I shall always think a little better of myself, Steve, that then and there, in the full bewitchment of Miss Sparrow's presence, I had manliness enough to speak a good word for Timothy—to tell her that, spite of some eccentricities, he had the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... it ever since this morning," Tom was saying. "We checked him from here to breakfast, and the record is absolutely negative. Same for the elevator operator. The barber is a wanderer, never stays in one shop for long. He's hunting another job right now. The machine is his, and it's the only one of its kind. We sent Mike Malone in for a treatment. He says the machine is good. Apparently it's nothing ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... that with sailors, their life delays growth, as shewn "by the great difference between the statures of soldiers and sailors at the ages of seventeen and eighteen years." Mr. B.A. Gould endeavoured to ascertain the nature of the influences which thus act on stature; but he arrived only at negative results, namely that they did not relate to climate, the elevation of the land, soil, nor even "in any controlling degree" to the abundance or the need of the comforts of life. This latter conclusion is directly opposed to that arrived ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... appointed carriage, to which were harnessed two horses who were pawing the ground, while the postilion sought patience in the bottle of Cahors wine he was emptying near the window-ledge. The first movement of him to whom this proposal was made was negative; nevertheless, after a second's reflection, the elder of the two travellers, as if he had reconsidered his first decision, made an interrogative sign to his companion, who replied with a look which signified, "You know that ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... boat that can swim?" and receiving a reply in the negative, shouted back: "Very well, then, I ...
— By Conduct and Courage • G. A. Henty
... out of Kars' eyes. The girl's final words shocked him momentarily out of his self-command. There was one other at least who held his breath for what was to follow that curt negative. But Bill Brudenell ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... printing. Its principle is that a solution of ferrous oxalate in neutral potassium oxalate is effective as a developer. A paper is coated with a solution of ferric oxalate and platinum salts and then exposed behind a negative. It is then floated in a hot solution of neutral potassium oxalate, when the ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt
... barometer. A smile made him jocund and hilarious, a frown abashed him almost to gloom. And in the April weather of her presence he was as variable as a weather-cock. It is, therefore, little to be wondered at that one ordinarily daring should tremble to ask a question which might be answered in the negative. True, Miss Barbar's partisanship heartened him a trifle, but he still feared for the result. Cupid, as well as conscience, makes cowards of us all—and Lucian ...
— The Silent House • Fergus Hume
... foreigner all will agree. "Any foreigners in your neighborhood?" asked the writer of a friend in a remote country hamlet. "O, yes," was the reply, "we have a colony of Italians." Of all such questions asked during months past not one has been answered in the negative. Go where you will, from Atlantic to Pacific Coast, the immigrant is there. In nineteen of the northern states of our Republic the number of the foreign-born and their immediate descendants exceeds the number of the native-born. In the largest cities the number is two thirds, ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... observed, was professedly not intended to be destructive of Christianity. Instead of being inimical, it originated with the clergy, and aimed at harmonizing Christianity with reason. But it contained its own death. The negative criticism ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... Funeral Oration of Bossuet. We have no grounds for asserting that the married life of Madame de la Fayette was unhappy, except through the inadequacy of a husband whose best qualities seem to have been of a negative kind. During the fifteen years which preceded the death of La Rochefoucauld her friendship for him was the centre of her existence. She seemed to bear about with her some secret grief; something remained veiled from other friends ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... scene into Mansfield Park, for, in a letter to her sister, of January 29, 1813, when turning from Pride and Prejudice to a new subject, she says: 'If you could discover whether Northamptonshire is a country of hedgerows I should be glad again.' Presumably, her question was answered in the negative, and her scrupulous desire for accuracy did not allow of her making use of ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... fastened upon King Hiram who stared at him maliciously, expressed well enough his desire for a negative reply. ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... attention. He began with Neb's report, repeating, word by word, as nearly as he could recollect, what had passed between Hawley and her father. He paused to inquire if she had ever heard the name Bartlett, but her reply was merely a negative shake of the head. When he described their missing the train, she was, apparently, not convinced as to the General's departure upon it, although finally agreeing that, if he really believed the report that the man sought was elsewhere, it would ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... Europe. Outbreaks have occurred, however, in Minnesota, New York, and New Jersey. So far the causal agent of the disease has never been isolated, and inoculation experiments with the view of artificially reproducing the disease have proved negative in every case. In spite of the foregoing statements the consensus of opinion of eminent investigators points to malignant catarrh as being of specific origin; that is, due to some form of microorganism the contagious character of which is poorly developed. ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... was so elevated with his good fortune, that he forgot all his misfortunes, and passed the evening as cheerfully as if he was neither a slave nor a prisoner. The captains inquired if he had been sold to a planter before he made his escape; he replied in the negative, when they informed him, that unless his captain came and demanded him, he would be publicly sold the next court-day. When they took their leaves, they told him they would see ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... especially subject to propoganda of the four-flusher for their home influence is, to say the least, negative. Their opportunities limited, their education neglected and they are easily aroused by the meddling influence of the vote-getter and the traitor. I would to God that their eyes might be opened to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... moody silence. He broke it once, crossing the West Street Bridge, to observe that he would like to know if I called myself a friend of his—a question which I was able to answer with a whole-hearted negative. After that he did not speak till the car drew up in front of the Majestic Hotel in ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... capitulation, and the Spartans had promised that no one should be punished without a trial; but the Spartan judges demanded of every prisoner if during the war he had rendered any service to the Peloponnesians; when the prisoner replied in the negative, he was condemned to death. The women were sold as slaves. The city of Mitylene having revolted from Athens was retaken by her. The Athenians in an assembly deliberated and decreed that all the people ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... professing christian people. Yes to Jesus sometimes, but at other times, when it suits circumstances and inclinations better to do otherwise—well, a pushing of the troublesome question aside. And that means a decided yes to self, with as positive a negative to Jesus' desires implied thereby. That is the ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... the portion of the idols. When these things are performed, they again skip and dance in honour of the idol, singing and making a horrible noise; and then ask the possessed priest whether the idol is now satisfied. If he answer in the negative, they prepare to obey any farther commands; but if he answer that the idol is satisfied, they sit down to table, and eat the flesh which was offered to the idol and drink the liquors; after which, the magicians ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... preventing others from levying contributions upon us in this new region. The Tuaricks here—all the strangers—are very civil; on account, I believe, of our being with the old man. He is of great negative utility. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... in the way of negative argument as against the reputed differences between Biological and other methods. No such differences, I believe, really exist. The subject-matter of Biological science is different from that of other sciences, but the methods of all are identical; ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... dwelt on this matter a great deal during the day. Thoughts of manual labor flitted through his mind, but were cast aside as impracticable. Then other means of acquiring property suggested themselves. These thoughts were photographed on the delicate negative of the brain, where it is a rule to preserve all negatives. At night these thoughts were reversed within the think resort, if I may be allowed that term, and muscular action resulted. Yielding at last to the great ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... not identity; the very essence of it lies in coincidence in some points, with diversity in others; if the two were identical, there were no longer an analogy. Take two pictures of a person printed from the same negative photograph; you do not say they are like each other, they are the same. It is most dangerous to fasten on any point of the depicted human procedure, and found on it the affirmation that the divine must be precisely ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... nonentity, while the Commons proceeded, as the substantial and sovereign House, to define the powers of the Protector. On the 18th of February, the Republicans, having challenged a settlement of this difference by moving that the question of the negative voice of the Protector in passing laws should have precedence of the question of the Other House, were beaten overwhelmingly by 217 votes to 86; and then for more than a month the question of the Other House ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... then, that the mode of the energy in a living thing implies a continual change in its elements; and a period for its end. So you may define life by its attached negative, death; and still more by its attached positive, birth. But I won't be plagued any more about this, just now; if you choose to think the crystals alive, do, and welcome. Rocks have always been called "living" in ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... in the habit of daily intercourse. It might be so. Still, the sympathy was very impassioned; though, but for his rashness in self-exposure to danger, he might never have known it. A few days ago, he would not press Miss Gryll for an answer, because he feared it might be a negative. Now he would not, because he was at least not in haste for an affirmative. But supposing it were a negative, what certainty had he that a negative from Morgana would not be followed by a negative from ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... succeeded in restoring for a time the credit of the country, still even he only warded off difficulties,—like Sir Robert Walpole,—instead of bravely meeting them before it should be too late. His timid rule was a negative rather than a positive blessing. But with his death ended all prosperity, and the reign of mistresses and infamous favorites began,—the great feature of the times, on which I shall presently speak more fully, as one of the indirect causes ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... last ball, her fine dress and showy jewellery having completely eclipsed the more solid and modest beauty of the poor telegraph girl. Miss Smith inquired casually if Cissie were going to the Oddfellows' ball, an affair which was then on the tapis, and when the latter answered in the negative, explaining that her small salary would not allow her to purchase the necessary finery, Miss Smith laughed and called her a silly little goose. Taking her by the arm, Anna then let her into a secret, and explained how she obtained ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... young people,—happy, but not always very attentive. Boys, in the background, more or less quiet. Dull faces here, there,—in how many places! I don't say dull PEOPLE, but faces without a ray of sympathy or a movement of expression. They are what kill the lecturer. These negative faces with their vacuous eyes and stony lineaments pump and suck the warm soul out of him;—that is the chief reason why lecturers grow so pale before the season is over. They render LATENT any amount of vital caloric; they act on our minds as those cold-blooded ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... what he had regarded as a very pleasant, but impossible, dream. Would his father consent to the squire's proposal, and, if so, ought Tom to consent to expose him to the risk of losing so considerable a sum of money? If he had been older and more cautious he would probably have decided in the negative; but Tom was hopeful and sanguine, and the stories he had heard of California had dazzled him. There was, of course, an element of uncertainty in his calculations, but the fact that there seemed to be no prospect before him in his native ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... rather than condemn him. Nay, he enters deeply into what even scepticism has to say for itself; he puts himself into the infidel's state of mind, in which the world, as a great fact, seems to give the lie to all religions, converting them into phenomena which counterbalance and negative each other, and he goes down into that lowest abyss and bottom of things, at which the intellect undercuts spiritual truth altogether. He enters into the ordinary common states of mind just in the same way. He is ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... of the neck to a little above the place of the eyes, full eighteen; while a single plate belonging to the lower part of the head measures thirteen and a half inches by seven and a half. I have remarked, in my little work on the Old Red Sandstone,—founding on a large amount of negative evidence, that a mediocrity of size and bulk seems to have obtained among the fish of the Lower Old Red, though in at least the Upper formation, a considerable increase in both took place. A single piece of positive evidence, however, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... is also cut through by a magnificent valley, which extends for many miles beyond the limits of the formation. There is a fine central mountain, on which M. Gaudibert discovered a crater, the existence of which has been subsequently verified by Professor Weinek on a Lick observatory negative. ...
— The Moon - A Full Description and Map of its Principal Physical Features • Thomas Gwyn Elger
... seven or so go to the theatre—sometimes to two theatres, sometimes to three. We get home about twelve, light the fire, and drink lemonade, to which I add rum. We go to bed between one and two. I live in peace, like an elderly gentleman, and regard myself as in a negative state of ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... detective faculty of his—felt in a moment the unspoken complaint—the scarce-thought reproach. He asked quietly if I was offended. I shook my head as implying a negative. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... something when there's nothing to be said.' Mr. Burney then asked him whether he had seen the letter Warburton had written in answer to a pamphlet addressed 'to the most impudent man alive.' He answered in the negative. Mr. Burney told him it was supposed to be written by Mallet. A controversy now raged between the friends of Pope and Bolingbroke, and Warburton and Mallet were the leaders of the several parties. Mr. Burney asked him ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... any real danger for him in her presence? If he asked himself this question nowadays, he was able to answer boldly in the negative. There might have been a time of peril, just one perilous interval when he was in some danger of stumbling; but he had pulled himself up in time, with an admirable discretion, he thought, and now felt as bold as a lion. After that morning with Lady Geraldine in the garden, ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... the only justification of his writing at all is that he shall present a brief, reasoned, and memorable view. By the necessity of the case, all the more neutral circumstances are omitted from his narrative; and that of itself, by the negative exaggeration of which I have spoken in the text, lends to the matter in hand a certain false and specious glitter. By the necessity of the case, again, he is forced to view his subject throughout in a particular illumination, like a studio artifice. Like Hales with Pepys, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the things he had taken, beginning with the mastiffs, embroidered sweet bags, the case of combs and razors, and so forth; saying, with a smile, "You would not have me to restore these things, and I am delighted with them?" To which I answered in the negative. He then mentioned two glass-cases, as mean and ordinary, asking me for whom they were intended. I answered, that one was intended for his majesty, and the other for Noormahal. "Why then," said he, "you will not ask me for that I have, but will be satisfied with one?" To this ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... that he has learned breaks a negative commandment; for it is written (Deut. iv. 9), "Take heed to thyself ... lest thou ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... gone all to a white silken floss with age. He sat at his desk in persistent silence with his strong blue eyes fixed steadfastly upon me while I slowly and carefully recounted the story. Two or three times I paused inquiringly; but he faintly shook his head in the negative, a slight frown of mental effort gathering for a moment between the eyes that never left mine. But suddenly he leaned forward and drew his breath as if to speak. ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... farmhouse and of every person whom he encountered. Shortly after crossing the branch, he met a young negro with a cartload of tubs and buckets and piggins, and asked him if he had seen on the road a young white woman with dark eyes and hair, apparently sick or demented. The young man answered in the negative, ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... has proved to be the case between you and Sir George, and myself," observed Mr. Dodge, glancing obliquely and pointedly at the rest of the party, as if he thought they were in a decided minority; "but in this instance, I feel constrained to record my vote in the negative. I believe America has as good a climate, and as good general digestion as commonly falls to the lot of mortals: more than this I do not claim for the country, and less than this I should be reluctant to maintain. I have travelled a little, gentlemen, not as much, perhaps, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... the negative. Three minutes later he was seated in the trap, Josephus at his feet. He turned up the collar of his mackintosh, and pulled down his tweed ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... to sign it," she said, "and unless you accept my conditions, you are welcome to be incarcerated for life in the debtor's prison. You have only to choose. If you decide in the negative, I will exert myself that your creditors do not free you. I should trust in the justice of God having sent you there, and that man in miserable pity should not act against His will in freeing you. Now decide; will you sign the ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... should have established, what a ruby nose I should have coloured for myself, so that everyone would have said, looking at me: "Here is an asset! Here is something real and solid!" And, say what you like, it is very agreeable to hear such remarks about oneself in this negative age. ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... that as he has arrived at the conclusion that there is no personal God, and no life after death, it would seem to follow that the question, Have we still a religion? "must be answered in the negative." But as he makes the essence of religion to consist in a sense of dependence, and as he felt himself to be helpless in the midst of this whirling universe, he had that much ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... also because he fully certified their intentions to the King for his advantage." This document (for ignorance of which no former historian may deserve blame, though its existence should caution every one against drawing hasty conclusions from negative evidence,) proves that at the Exchequer the Lollards were considered as having been lately rebellious, and as having had designs against the King. In a deed too, signed and sealed by the tenants of ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... took the side of the poor and weak. It was the secret, at once, of his philosophy and his politics. He got endless abuse for his eternal tirades against the great and the "respectable,"—against big-wigs of every size and shape. But the critics who attacked him for this negative pole of his intellectual character overlooked the positive one. He had kindness and sympathy enough; but he always gave them first to those who wanted them most. And as humorist and satirist he had a natural tendency to attack power,—to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... nations between Germany and Russia, beginning with the Finns and going as far down as Greece, making a series of eighteen small nations. German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian imperialism suffered shipwreck. The small nations are freed. The war's negative task is fulfilled. The positive task awaits—to organize east Europe and this with mankind in general. We stand on the threshold of a new time when all mankind feels in unity. Our people will contribute with full consciousness its part in the realization of this ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... size, under the arm of his slumbering son. The foremost of the searchers, who kept a phial of vinegar to his nose all the time he remained in the room, then demanded in a low tone whether there were any other of the household infected? The grocer replied in the negative. Upon this, Chowles, whose manner showed he was more than half intoxicated, took off his hat, and bowing obsequiously to the grocer, said, "Shall I prepare you a coffin, Mr. Bloundel?—you are sure to want one, and had better give the order in time, for there is a great ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... stately carriage; by a rigid expression of features; by a hard, severe intonation of voice; by set speeches of contempt for poverty and rags, and rhapsodical braggadocio about rank and breeding. My father's pride had nothing of this about it. It was that quiet, negative, courteous, inbred pride, which only the closest observation could detect; which no ordinary observers ever ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... their deeds he was more than a match. Their caprices, their follies, their faithlessness, their treachery even, he had learned long since to calculate and to cope with. Women, also, he had known: many women; experienced, innocent, negative, or wicked. And those who had ventured upon his ground, he had not failed to conquer. It was in the knowledge of these experiences that he had stood; by its light preparing a coup that was to carry the last fortress ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... rebuke of the rashness of youth, spoke the caution of age. The negative view is notoriously the safe view, all the world over, and the Pentecost philosophy is, as a necessary ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... step in this direction is a thorough understanding of the creature's life-history. This understanding many able mien are working for. But there is another line of thought that should not be forgotten, though it is negative—many animals are immune. Which are they? Our first business is to list them if we would learn the why ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and fairly orthodox opinion concerning book-collectors is that their vices are many, their virtues of a negative sort, and their ways altogether past finding out. Yet the most hostile critic is bound to admit that the fraternity of bibliophiles is eminently picturesque. If their doings are inscrutable, they are also romantic; if their vices ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... the romantic poet stressed most, however, was a negative one. In a sense in which Wordsworth probably did not intend it, the romantic poet betrayed ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... regiments. Each is in a wheat field, up to its eyes in dust. In order of precedence they come One, Two, and Five; in order of personal splendor of uniform they come Five, One, Two; in order of exploits they are all in the same negative position at present; and the Second has done rather the most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 46, August, 1861 • Various
... answered with "Los Apaches," and a shake of the forefinger in front of the nose—a negative sign over ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... and on every hand there are miracles of rapid construction. The business is overshadowing all other activities. A leading merchant of Detroit asked a contractor the other day if he could do some work for him. On receiving a negative reply, he asked the reason, whereupon the man said: "These automobile people keep me so busy that I can't do anything else. I have a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... learned respecting the meaning of certain parts of the scriptures, our friend asks, 'upon what subject are they (the learned) not at variance, even when Greek and Hebrew are not concerned? Have chemists been always of one opinion?' &c. which must be answered in the negative. Nevertheless I may take liberty to observe that inasmuch as they have disagreed, it shews that the subjects about what they have disagreed, are as yet obscure, and therefore perhaps none of them are entitled ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... influence that strength gives. As the brute dies out of man, the conditions of life's warfare become so complex that no one living could frame a generalization without finding himself at once faced by a million of exceptions that seem to negative his rule. Who was the most powerful man in England in Queen Anne's day? Marlborough was an unmatched fighter; Bolingbroke was an imaginative and masterful statesman; there were thousands of able and strong warriors; but the one who was the most respected and feared was that tiny ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... eager to meet Gade, and an opportunity soon occurred. Gade expressed a willingness to look at some of his compositions, and asked if he had anything to show him. Edward modestly answered in the negative. "Go home and write a symphony," was the retort. This the young composer started obediently to do, but the work was never finished in this form. It became later Two Symphonic ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... single lantern, and maintained a rigid silence while the offending papers were consumed. That done—the blazing eyes in that grim circle of patriots watching the blazing writs—"they called a vote whether they should huzza; but, it being Sunday evening, it passed in the negative!" ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... brain is usually at low ebb at three o'clock in the afternoon. Do not have your desk so that you have to look side-wise at persons approaching you. It blunts your personality. By no means have people enter behind you, it is the most negative psychic influence possible. Let your position in your office be such that when anyone approaches your eyes will fall upon them as near a straight level as possible. Plan your workroom for efficiency. No matter how small, how large, or if it be but a bench. Put your character stamp ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft
... country." She then commenced to pack up her wardrobe and valuables. Her plan was soon arranged. She then descended to the drawing room and rang for old Reynolds, who answered the summons. "Has Mr. Russell left the house?" she enquired, and on receiving an answer in the negative, desired that he might be informed that she wished to speak to him, "and return yourself, Reynolds, for I have something of importance to communicate to both ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... negative, and Stafford begging to be excused, left the room, signing to Howard to follow him. He did not mean it, but his manner, in the abstraction of his grief was as lordly as if he had inherited an earldom of five centuries. When they ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... looking into space. She had almost always been happy in a negative way, or, better, contented. Now she was positively happy. But she could not have explained why. She had closed the locket gently and tenderly, revering the white hairs and the filial piety that had enshrined them in gold ("triple-plated ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... muddling, gentle way to find out where the mystery lay, and what it was all about. But his limited French and his constitutional hatred of active investigation made it hard for him to buttonhole anybody and ask questions. He was content to observe, and watch, and remain negative. ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... the negative argument which at that point in that book was enough for Mr. Belloc's purpose. He proceeds to explain the material accidents and causes which nullified this argument. But we must attempt further to discover from the general trend of Mr. Belloc's character ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... because certain genera or families have not been found beneath a certain stage, that they did not exist before that stage. In all cases positive palaeontological evidence may be implicitly trusted; negative evidence is worthless, as experience has so often shown. We continually forget how large the world is, compared with the area over which our geological formations have been carefully examined; we forget that groups of ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... the beet-root in France yield a greater percentage of sugar? Will future varieties of wheat and other grain produce heavier crops than our present varieties? These questions cannot be positively answered; but it is certain that we ought to be cautious in answering by a negative. In some lines of variation the limit has probably been reached. Youatt believes that the reduction of bone in some of our sheep has already been carried so far that it entails great delicacy of constitution.[595] But seeing the great improvement within recent times in our ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... my ears were greeted with one of our national airs. It was well played, and when I said so they told me its history. On hearing of my arrival the governor summoned his chief musician and asked if he knew any American music. The reply was in the negative. The governor then sent the band-master to search his books. He soon returned, saying he had found the ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... (Persoenlichkeit) is ever holy to us: a certain orthodox Anthropomorphism connects my Me with all Thees in bonds of Love: but it is in this approximation of the Like and Unlike, that such heavenly attraction, as between Negative and Positive, first burns-out into a flame. Is the pitifullest mortal Person, think you, indifferent to us? Is it not rather our heartfelt wish to be made one with him; to unite him to us, by gratitude, by admiration, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... between embryologists of different persuasions. It is perhaps easy to underestimate the impact and general importance of Harvey's work in view of these qualifications, and so it should be remarked that both positive and negative features of De Generatione influenced profoundly subsequent ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... immediately undressed and put to bed, with hot bricks and blankets at the extremities, and the galvanic battery is judiciously administered by placing both feet in contact with a copper plate constituting the negative electrode, while the operator grasps the positive in one hand, and having wetted the fingers of the other, follows the spine downward, exerting gentle pressure with them as he goes. "Judiciously," I say, because there is a vast deal of injudicious ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... in time, that I could not do so, and I persuaded Miss Trevannion that I was right in acting to my promise. One question that came forward was, whether we should make known our engagement to her father at once, and this was decided in the negative. Much as he liked me, he was not yet prepared to receive me so suddenly as a son-in-law, and Amy was of opinion that the communication had better be postponed. To this, of course, I gave a willing assent. I was satisfied with the knowledge of her affection, which I felt would never ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... required a man who could be depended on ('Hear!' from the Spruggins side, answered by ironical cheers from the Bung party). Such a man he now proposed ('No,' 'Yes'). He would not allude to individuals (the ex-churchwarden continued, in the celebrated negative style adopted by great speakers). He would not advert to a gentleman who had once held a high rank in the service of his majesty; he would not say, that that gentleman was no gentleman; he would not assert, that that man was no man; he would not say, that ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... use of a double negative is frequent in Chaucer; as in the "Miller's Tale": "That of no wife toke he non offering For curtesie, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... was not so terrible to the enemy as it is!' and the (possible) inference from it that he must have made his name terrible in some way, we have no evidence that he was ever in the field before the battle of Shrewsbury. Indeed, the absence of evidence on this matter goes strongly to prove the negative. Falstaff boasts of his valour, his alacrity, and other qualities which were not apparent to the casual observer, but he never boasts of his services in battle. If there had been anything of the kind to which he could refer with complacency, there is no moral ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... Marise, with the intonation that made the affirmation almost a negative. "Yes, of course. But there too . . . music means so much to me, so very much. It makes me sick to see it pawed over as it is among people who make their livings out of it; used as it so often is as a background for the personal vanity or greed of the performer. Take an ordinary ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... entirely knows his brother. And as for the Lord of heaven and earth, how small a whisper do we hear of Him! Some minds are constitutionally ill-adapted for fellowship with Him because they lack what Keats calls "negative capability"—"that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. Coleridge, for instance, would let go a fine isolated verisimilitude, caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... the spring of 1856, although purely negative, nevertheless have an interest of their own, because they prove the inaccuracy of certain suppositions to which the undeniable parasitism of the Sitares naturally inclines us. I will therefore relate them in a few words. At the end of April, the young larvae, ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... new ideas from Western Asia as were the roads through the Turkestan basin into Western China. Tsou Yen's basic ideas had their root in earlier Chinese speculations: the doctrine that all that exists is to be explained by the positive, creative, or the negative, passive action (Yang and Yin) of the five elements, wood, fire, earth, metal, and water (Wu hsing). But Tsou Yen also considered the form of the world, and was the first to put forward the theory that the world consists not of a single continent with China in the middle ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... weren't a very good boy last night!" she said. Their hands were locked; but she had shaken a negative when he would have kissed her. Bottomley was everywhere ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... ideas—she thought of them in the light of his striking energy; they were an idle exercise of a force intrinsically fine, and she wanted to protest, to let him know how truly it was a sad misuse of his free bold spirit to count on her. She was not to be counted on; she was a vague soft negative being who had never decided anything and never would, who had not even the merit of knowing how to flirt and who only asked to be let alone. She made him stop at last, telling him, while she leaned against the parapet, that he walked ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... returned on board in the afternoon, fully expecting to hear of Smallbones being very ill. He was surprised that the man in the boat did not tell him, and he asked them carelessly if there was anything new on board, but received a reply in the negative. When he came on board, followed by Snarleyyow, the eyes of the crew were directed towards the dog, to see how he looked; but he appeared just as lively and as cross-grained as ever, and they all shook ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... general committee, consisting of eight or ten, chosen by the students from their own number. They met about once a week to transact such business as appointing officers, making and repealing regulations, and inquiring into the state of the Lyceum. The instructors had a negative upon all their proceedings, but no direct and positive power. They could pardon, but they could assign no punishments, nor ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... not produce publick money; it would be without any effect, that the uses for which that grant is made should be enumerated, and the misapplication of it openly proved; a distinction, or at least a negative, would be always at hand, and obstinacy and interest would turn ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... extracted from this street youth, who would, Neale was sure, know of anything odd happening around this section of Milton, were negative. ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... in all; the doctor, namely, and Mrs Stanhope, two daughters, and one son. The doctor, perhaps, was the least singular and most estimable of them all, and yet such good qualities as he possessed were all negative. He was a good looking rather plethoric gentleman of about sixty years of age. His hair was snow white, very plentiful, and somewhat like wool of the finest description. His whiskers were large and very white, and gave to his face the appearance of a benevolent sleepy ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... to the normal and average man. The apparent exceptions seem to prove the rule, for it will generally be found that the women who are, not immodest (for immodesty is more closely related to modesty than mere negative absence of the sense of modesty), but without that fear which implies the presence of a complex emotional feminine organization to defend, only make a strong sexual appeal to men who are themselves lacking in the complementary masculine qualities. As a psychical secondary sexual character ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... it have arisen from a failure to understand his idea of what is real and what is unreal, what worth longing and striving for and what not. From this misconception have come all the unfounded charges that Buddhism is an "atheistical," that is to say, a grossly materialistic, a nihilistic, a negative, a vice-breeding religion. Buddhism denies the existence of a personal God—true: therefore—well, therefore, and notwithstanding all this, its teaching is neither what may be called properly atheistical, nihilistic, negative, nor provocative of vice. I will try to make ...
— The Life of Buddha and Its Lessons • H.S. Olcott
... strong conviction of a 'call' as many men of his day in the High Church or Evangelical parties; but he was, at the time, strongly drawn by the example and teaching of Stanley and Maurice, and he soon showed that it was not merely for negative reasons or from half-hearted zeal that he had made the choice. When urged by Stanley to seek a curacy in West London, he deliberately chose the East End of the town because the need there was greater and the training in self-sacrifice was sterner; and there is no doubt that ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... in Lieutenant Holmes, "if the datto takes your negative course for a confession of weakness, and attempts to ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... number of books on the table an octavo volume, entitled "Illustrations of the Moral Government of God, by E. Smith, M.D., London," he showed it to Kennedy, and asked him whether he knew of it. On Kennedy replying in the negative, Byron said that the author of the book proved that hell was not a ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... inspires love, but cannot return it; he feels, he admires, but he shrinks from any step demanding resolution or self-devotion. Hence, instead of conferring happiness, he makes victims,—victims not of an active, but of a merely passive and negative egotism. A conjunction of circumstances brings him to a sudden and vivid realization of his condition and its results. Instead of escaping by suicide, as might be expected,—and as would probably have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... host was really insane. All the same, I had a curious unwillingness with regard to signing the certificate. Bagwell eagerly asked me if I did not intend to sign. To his astonishment, I replied in the negative. I said that the case was a very peculiar one, and that it would be necessary for me to pay a second visit to the patient before I could take this extreme step. He was, I could see, intensely annoyed, but I ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... if there was any news from Paris, and receiving an answer in the negative, we drove off. Up hills, over lawns and flower- beds, zigzagging through vineyards and gardens, never by any chance keeping to the proper road, we made the ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... in this country, or that the Kaiser in Germany believed that the United States was a mere jelly-fish nation which would tolerate any enormity he might concoct. This was the actual comfort President Wilson's message gave Germany. The negative result was felt among the Allied nations which, struggling against the German Monster like Laocoon in the coils of the Python, took Mr. Wilson's praise of Germany's imaginary love of justice and humanity as a death-warrant for themselves. They could not believe ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... this man, who was accused of being the perpetrator of a crime of violence. He was flaxen-haired and handsome, in a washed-out negative fashion, with frightened blue eyes, and a clean-shaven face, with a weak, sensitive mouth. His age may have been about twenty-seven, his dress and bearing that of a gentleman. From the pocket of his light summer overcoat ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of Providence, a principle of true Religion should in any considerable degree gain ground, there is no estimating the effects on public morals, and the consequent influence on our political welfare. These effects are not merely negative: though it would be much, merely to check the farther progress of a gangrene, which is eating out the very vital principles of our social and political existence. The general standard of morality formerly described, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... had been settling on a final negative. She had a little feeling about Delia Whitney; she could not quite approve of grown girls running about so much with boys. And she thought if she was going to set up for a genius, she ought to be delicate ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... laboriously gathered from the tears of tortured experience, had become an obsession. She was silent, brooding over it; but she herself was there, larger, less puzzling and negative than hitherto,—an awakening force. The man lost his anchor of convention and traditional reasoning. He felt with her an excitement, a thirst for this evanescent treasure ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... occurring in some localities, and of which I shall speak hereafter, spring from another class of motives. This kind of loyalty, however, which is produced by the irresistible pressure of force, and consists merely in the non-commission of acts of rebellion, is of a negative character, and might, as such, hardly be considered ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... should, I think, be left until we have some demonstrable evidence to show.... Mr. Myers proposes himself for April 14-21.... I should suggest the keeping of a diary, in which every one willing to do so should make entries, negative or affirmative." ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... for a moment help you to behave as if something that dragged in its wake a bit less of a lumbering train would, on the whole, have been better for you? The consequences of being plain were only negative—you failed of this and that; but the consequences of being as they were, what were these but endless? though indeed, as far as failing went, your beauty too could let you in for enough of it. Who, at all events, would ever for a moment credit you, in the luxuriance of that beauty, with ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... have to consider to-night is this: Is the eye, as an organ of vision, commensurate with the whole range of solar radiation—is it capable of receiving visual impressions from all the rays emitted by the sun? The answer is negative. If we allowed ourselves to accept for a moment that notion of gradual growth, amelioration, and ascension, implied by the term evolution, we might fairly conclude that there are stores of visual impressions awaiting man, far greater than ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... was married. She was a well-meaning girl, though her piety, as with most people, was of the negative order; and her antipathy to things evil much stronger than her sympathy with things good. For a much longer time than I had expected she kept him straight—perhaps, a little too straight. But at last there came the ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... is the Inflection on the negative statements in the first three stanzas? On the entreaty in the ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... braced down by the external oblique aponeurosis, will thereby be also obscured in some degree. But, in most instances, the bubonocele distends the inguinal canal somewhat; and the impulse which on coughing is felt at a place above the femoral arch, will serve to indicate, by negative evidence, that it is ...
— Surgical Anatomy • Joseph Maclise
... instantly reply. For one dreadful moment she thought that he was going to answer in the negative. And then very deliberately ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... her mind as to the line of duty the best way she might; and however the difficulty and even the impossibility of doing without anybody stared her in the face, it was constantly met by the greater impossibility of taking what she could not pay for. Dolly made up her mind on the negative view of the case; what she could being not clear, only what she could not. She would dismiss her remaining servant, and do the cooking herself. It would be only for two. And perhaps, she thought, this step would go further to bring her father ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... cookery against hard lying (I don't mean in the Munchausen line) the consequent appetite becomes a mild source of gratification. Also, I have not met with more than two people who knew me, and that in my present state is a negative ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... beautiful Victorian poem. Yet if we go to the learned authorities the ghost becomes more ghostlike, the phantom becomes more dim; it is mainly destructive criticism that we meet with, and assertions that are largely negative. In spite of this, there must be something tangible behind so persistent a rumour as this tradition of Arthur. Wherever the Brythonic tribes extended, there we find traces of him. The Gaels know nothing of him. Finn, Oisin, Cuthullin, Cormac—such as these ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... intuition. There is doubtless something to be said for this statement of the distinction, but it is objectionable because it is generally interpreted to mean—quite unnecessarily—that a woman's mind is inferior to a man's—a distinction about as foolish as it would be to say the negative electricity is inferior to positive, or cold to heat. The types are in most ways supplementary, and a combination of the two has always been a potent intellectual force—one of the strongest arguments for marriage as an institution. When we try to do the work of the world with either ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... without danger of reprobation; that Gomarus himself had declared that Arminius had not erred in any fundamental article of Christian doctrine; that the contested articles were of a very abstruse nature; that the affirmative or negative of the doctrines expressed in them, had not been determined; and that toleration would restore tranquillity and union, and favour the assembling of a numerous and respectable synod, which might labour with success in ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... all, according to this experiment,—said the Master.—Good as far as it goes. One more negative result. Do you know what would have happened if that liquid had been clouded, and we had found life in the sealed flask? Sir, if that liquid had held life in it the Vatican would have trembled to ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. |
