"Simplification" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and they accordingly define a negative proposition to be one in which the predicate is a negative name. The point, though not of much practical moment, deserves notice as an example (not unfrequent in logic) where by means of an apparent simplification, but which is merely verbal, matters are made more complex than before. The notion of these writers was, that they could get rid of the distinction between affirming and denying, by treating every ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... a word, conceived of stage personages on the basis of a ruling trait or passion (a notable simplification of actual life be it observed in passing); and, placing these typified traits in juxtaposition in their conflict and contrast, struck the spark of comedy. Downright, as his name indicates, is "a plain squire"; Bobadill's humour is that of the braggart who is incidentally, ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... simplification, it would have been possible to indulge the chimera of the beau ideal of civilization. In this state of things there would have been some chance of establishing in every country a unity of codes, of principles, ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... remaining divination, silently achieved, was quick and happy: she should acquit herself by asking her father for the sum required and by just passing it on to Mr. Flack. The grandeur of his enterprise and the force of his reasoning appeared to overshadow her as they stood there. This was a delightful simplification and it didn't for the moment strike her as positively unnatural that her companion should have a delicacy about appealing to Mr. Dosson directly for financial aid, though indeed she would have been capable of thinking that odd ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... another stretching machine which had been turned out in considerable numbers by Mr. Archibald Edmeston, engineer, of Salford, who makes a specialty of calico printers' and finishers' machinery. The improvements consist mainly of a simplification of the working parts and thoroughly substantial construction of the machine. The principle adopted is a well-known one. The selvages of the cloth, or more strictly the two edges of the cloth, of a width of about two inches, are caused to pass ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... which was keenly intolerant of any laxity or slovenliness of mind or character." He had, "as he deserved, the reputation of being the best nisi prius lawyer in the state."(4) After watching the gifted but ill-prepared young attorney during several years, observing the power he had of simplification and convincingness in statement, taking the measure of his scrupulous honesty—these were ever Lincoln's strong cards as a lawyer—Logan made him the surprising offer of a junior partnership, which was instantly accepted. That was when his inner horizon was brightening, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... meeting present needs than in revising past performances. The subject of the reduction of observations, then, as we have already explained,[150] in a state of deplorable confusion, attracted his most earnest attention, and he was close on the track of Bessel when made acquainted with the method of simplification devised at Koenigsberg. Anticipated as an inventor, he could still be of eminent use as a promoter of these valuable improvements; and, carrying them out on a large scale in the star-catalogue of ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... called Early English. Even before the coming of the Normans, the inflexions of our language had— as we have seen— begun to drop off, and it was slowly on the way to becoming an analytic language. The same changes— the same simplification of grammar, has taken place in nearly every Low German language. But the coming of the Normans hastened these changes, for it made the inflexional endings of words of much less practical importance to the English themselves. —Great changes took place ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... of simplification, however, which should be closely observed; and that is to accomplish the object of any governmental function in the most direct and economical manner. There is great room for improvement in this respect. Nature, in the midst of all her growing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... important agricultural, mining, energy, tourism, and manufacturing sectors. Detailed governmental control of economic affairs has gradually lessened over the past decade, including increasing privatization of trade and commerce, simplification of the tax structure, and a cautious approach to debt. Real growth has averaged 4.2% in 1991-95, and inflation has been moderate. Growth in tourism and IMF support have been key elements in this solid record. Drought, especially in the south, held back GDP growth in ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... perquisitions in Bleeding Heart Yard that same forenoon. Little peculiarities were easily to be detected by experienced eyes in Mr Doyce's way of managing his affairs, but they almost always involved some ingenious simplification of a difficulty, and some plain road to the desired end. That his papers were in arrear, and that he stood in need of assistance to develop the capacity of his business, was clear enough; but all the results ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... fund for redemption have to be found by taxation, and so the borrowing process merely postpones taxation from the war period to the peace period. During the war period taxation can be raised comparatively easily owing to the patriotic stimulus and the simplification of the industrial problem which is provided by the Government's insatiable demand for commodities. When the days of peace return, however, there will be very grave disturbance and dislocation in industry, and it will ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... will depend upon what, I won't say the object, but the impression, may have been. The talents engaged in this school lie, not unjustly, as it seems to me under the suspicion of seeking the solution of their problem exclusively in simplification. If a painter works for other eyes as well as his own he courts a certain danger in this direction—that of being arrested by the cry of the spectator: "Ah! but excuse me; I myself take more impressions than that" We feel a synthesis not to be an injustice only when it is rich. ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... of all, "his duty is to ascertain the course civilization has actually followed.... To strive for the ideals of another branch of knowledge may be positively pernicious, for it can easily lead to that factitious simplification which ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... principle of the rocket has been known for an age, it is only comparatively recently that it has been applied to the propulsion of cars. An invention, too, always presents itself to an inventor at first in the most complicated form, and frequently many years are passed in attempts at simplification. What a wide interval is there between the steam locomotive with all its complex mechanism, and the magnificently simple rocket car! A century of ceaseless invention is comprehended between the two! Before the simplicity ...
— The Dominion in 1983 • Ralph Centennius
... hand-to-mouth, and took long views. 'I ought, no doubt,' he said afterwards, 'to have pointed out explicitly that a great disturbance and increase of our expenditure would baffle my reckonings.' Meanwhile, the fabric was planned on strong foundations and admirable lines. The simplification of the tariff of duties of customs, begun by Peel eleven years before, was carried forward almost to completion. Nearly one hundred and forty duties were extinguished, and nearly one hundred and fifty were lowered. The tea duty was to be reduced in stages extending over three years from ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... and imperfect remarks I conclude that the extremely complex and regular construction of many barbarous languages, is no proof that they owe their origin to a special act of creation. (72. See some good remarks on the simplification of languages, by Sir J. Lubbock, 'Origin of Civilisation,' 1870, p. 278.) Nor, as we have seen, does the faculty of articulate speech in itself offer any insuperable objection to the belief that man has been developed from some ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... important agricultural, mining, energy, tourism, and manufacturing sectors. Governmental control of economic affairs while still heavy has gradually lessened over the past decade with increasing privatization, simplification of the tax structure, and a prudent approach to debt. Real growth averaged 5.5% in the past four years, and inflation is slowing. Growth in tourism and increased trade have been key elements in this steady growth. Tunisia's association agreement ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... is not always, or even generally, the same thing as degeneration. Simplification of parts is one of the most usual means of advance for the organism as a whole. A large proportion of the higher plants are microphyllous in comparison with the highly megaphyllous fern-like forms from which they appear to have ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... formidable task, and one in which we might very easily fail should we once permit ourselves to become discouraged. Indeed, the getting out of the keel was in itself a work of such difficulty that Chips more than once threw down his tools and pronounced the task impossible, demanding the revision and simplification ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... Ignorance of evil is not virtue but imbecility: admiring it is like giving a prize for honesty to a man who has not stolen your watch because he did not know you had one. Virtue chooses good from evil; and without knowledge there can be no choice. And even this is a dangerous simplification of what actually occurs. We are not choosing: we are growing. Were you to cut all of what you call the evil out of a child, it would drop dead. If you try to stretch it to full human stature when it is ten years old, you will simply pull it into two pieces and be ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... not fail in their duty in attempting to march with the magistrates in the restriction and simplification of dress. They preached often against "intolerable pride in clothes and hair." Even when the Pilgrims were in Holland the preachers had been deeply disturbed over the dress of their minister's wife, Madam Johnson, who wore "lawn coives" and busks, and ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... obstinate opponents of what they call "Palliatives"—of any instalment system of reform. They wait until they can make the whole journey in one stride, and would, in the meanwhile, have no one set forth upon the way. In America the Marxist fatalism has found a sort of supreme simplification in the gospel of Mr. H. G. Wilshire. The Trusts, one learns, are to consolidate all the industry in the country, own all the property. Then when they own everything, the Nation will take them over. ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... English language, in all points of importance, is a simplification of the grammar of the Anglo-Saxon. In considering the sources of the English vocabulary, we find that from the Anglo-Saxon are derived first, almost all those words which import relations; secondly, not only all the adjectives, but all the other words, nouns, and verbs which grammarians ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... these reforms also operate to simplify stage settings and hence to make a little more possible the quick transitions and the play of viewpoint which I regard as one of the glories of the Elizabethan drama. This simplification, however, is very far from a return to the absolute simplicity of the Elizabethan setting. Moreover, it is doubtful whether the temper of the modern audience is favorable to a great change in this direction. We live in an age ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... not so much a magnification of the object as a simplification of it. Confusing details are stripped away. Contradictory facts are eliminated, until heart answers to heart across the ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... examination of conscience. And historically Richelieu's policies had had quite something to say in the creation of Prussia; the conscript armies of the French Revolution had first made Europe into an armed camp. It was an undue simplification to insist exclusively on The ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... decks, sheers free from hills, hollows, and excrescences, and complete, unbroken batteries of thirty-two or forty-two pounders. Thus has been realized an important desideratum—the greatest possible power to do execution coupled with the greatest simplification of the means. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 20, No. 562, Saturday, August 18, 1832. • Various
... become generally adopted. He was the original founder of industrial schools for poor children, where they not only received a good education, but learned some useful trade, by which they might earn an honest living when they grew up to manhood. He advocated the revision and simplification of the whole code of laws—an idea afterwards carried out by the First Napoleon. He wrote against duelling, against luxury, against gambling, against monasticism, quoting the remark of Segrais, that "the mania for a monastic ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... other hand, Shakespeare's alteration of Plutarchian material is along the lines of (1) idealization, as in the characters of Brutus and Cassius; (2) amplification, as in the use Antony makes of Caesar's rent and bloody mantle; and (3) simplification and compression of the action for dramatic effect, as in making Caesar's triumph take place at the time of "the feast of Lupercal," in the treatment of the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius, which in Plutarch ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... and ask you, Gentlemen, to bear in mind, that the philosophy of an imperial intellect, for such I am considering a University to be, is based, not so much on simplification as on discrimination. Its true representative defines, rather than analyzes. He aims at no complete catalogue, or interpretation of the subjects of knowledge, but a following out, as far as man can, what in its fulness ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... concrete fact should not bear our weight. To have the alternative forced upon us of admitting either finite things each cut off from all relation with its environment, or else of accepting the integral absolute with no environment and all relations packed within itself, would be too delicious a simplification. But the purely verbal character of the operation is undisguised. Because the names of finite things and their relations are disjoined, it doesn't follow that the realities named need a deus ex machina from ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... sooner has the intellect progressed beyond the moment of perception and of its immediate reproduction in memory, than the generic image makes its appearance, i.e. a state intermediate between the particular and the general, participating in the nature of the one and of the other—a confused simplification." ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... his father, Mr. Walter possessed an excellent discrimination of character, and selected the best men to aid him in his important undertaking. Numerous difficulties had, of course, to be surmounted. Plans were varied from time to time; new methods were tried, altered, and improved, simplification being aimed at throughout. Six long years passed in this pursuit of the possible. At length the clear light dawned. In 1868 Mr. Walter ventured to order the construction of three machines on the pattern of the first ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... think I see," writes Bergson, "I listen and I think I hear, I examine myself and I think I am reading the very depths of my heart.... (But) my senses and my consciousness ... give me no more than a practical simplification of reality ... in short, we do not see the actual things themselves; in most cases we confine ourselves to reading the labels affixed to them." Who has not known this in thinking of politics? We talk of poverty and forget poor people; we make ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... proceeded to see if by making the planet librate, or the plane of its orbit tilt up and down, anything could be done. He was rewarded by finding that at any rate the plane of the orbit did not tilt up and down: it was fixed, and this was a simplification on Copernicus's theory. It is not an absolute fixture, but the changes are very ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... and blues endowing its characters with glowing fervour, while Krishna and the cowgirls, with their sharp robust forms and great intent eyes, display a brusque vitality and an eager rapturous vigour. A certain simplification of structure—each picture possessing one or more rectangular compartments—enhances this effect while the addition of swirling trees studded with flowers imbues each wild encounter with a surging vegetative rhythm. Krishna is no longer the tepid well-groomed youth of Mughal tradition, but a ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... process, especially upon the field of battle, when operations have to be conducted under extreme difficulties and at high pressure, were speedily recognised. While other nations concentrated their energies upon the simplification of hydrogen-manufacturing apparatus for use upon the battle-field, Great Britain abandoned all such processes in toto. Our military organisation preferred to carry out the production of the necessary gas at a convenient manufacturing centre and to transport it, stored in steel ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... palms (series Calycinae) where the perianth loses its petaloid character and thence to the Aroids, screw-pines and others where it is more or less aborted (series Nudiflorae). Series 6, Apocarpeae, is characterized by 5 carpels, and in the last series Glumaceae, great simplification in the flower is associated with ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... the time having the feeling that perhaps through his lack of experience his identification was not aright, he usually preferred to remain in ignorance. It is in the belief that all Nature Lovers, afield for entertainment or instruction, will be thankful for a simplification of any method now existing for becoming acquainted with moths, that this book is ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... are in love with repose, here is your occasion: change with me. I am too blind to read, hence no reading; I am too weak to walk, hence no walking; I am not allowed to speak, hence no talking; but the great simplification has yet to be named; for, if this goes on, I shall soon have nothing to eat - and hence, O Hallelujah! hence no eating. The offer is a fair one: I have not sold myself to the devil, for I could never find ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is only when we have seen it for the hundredth time that we see it for the first time. The more consistently things are contemplated, the more they tend to unify themselves and therefore to simplify themselves. The simplification of anything is always sensational. Thus monotheism is the most sensational of things: it is as if we gazed long at a design full of disconnected objects, and, suddenly, with a stunning thrill, they came together into a ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... no less than ninety-five ranks of Mixture, including two stops of twenty-one and twenty ranks, respectively. Toward the close of the Eighteenth Century, the Abt Voegler (1749-1814) came forward with his 'Simplification System,' one feature of which consisted in the abolition of excessive Mixture work. The worthy Abbe, who was a capable theorist and a gifted player, and possessed of an eccentric and, therefore, attractive personality, secured many followers, who preached a crusade ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... another? What is the true cause of this hubbub of inconsequent words and contradictory actions? Nothing less remote than the true cause will serve, nothing else is firmly rooted in reality. Is that man expressing what he feels or is he paying out what he thinks he is expected to feel? Have I pushed simplification as far as it will go? Are there no trappings, no overtones, nothing but what is essential to express my vision of reality? And, above all, is my vision absolutely sharp and sure? These were the questions Ibsen had to answer. When he succeeded he was a great artist, ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... of the mystical sense begins in self-simplification. The feeling, willing, seeing self is to move from the various and the analytic to the simple and the synthetic: a sentence which may cause hard breathing and mopping of the brows on the part of the practical ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... advent of the Local Government Act and the extension of the franchise, the labourer was now able to insist on a speeding-up of building operations. But the Labourers' Act needed many amendments, a simplification and cheapening of procedure, an extension of taxing powers, an enlargement of the allotment up to an acre and, where the existing abode of the labourers was insanitary, an undeniable claim to a new home. Moderate and just and necessary to the national welfare as ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... illustration". On the contrary, it is an exception that I probably was very injudicious to call any attention to; and the trouble with you scholars, I find all the way thru, is that you permit those little exceptions to influence you too much. If a good simplification is ever effected, it will be by cutting Gordian knots, and you all of you seem absolutely incapable of anything of the kind. I don't expect anyhow to make much out of a man who will spell "peepl" "peopl". Imagine all this said with a grin, not ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... his early circumstances, combined to develop this pattern democrat. He had the virtues of his class, and the conditions for their activity. That common sense, which no sooner respects any end, than it finds the means to effect it; the delight in the use of means; in the choice, simplification, and combining of means; the directness and thoroughness of his work; the prudence with which all was seen, and the energy with which all was done, make him the natural organ and head of what I may almost call, from its ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... nature, which is another name for an omniscient God, is ever ready to do her utmost for us" he is speaking with a wise and direct helpfulness, though here as generally New Thought errs on the side of too great a simplification. There is a way out of every trouble but it is not always simple, it is often laborious and challenging. We have accomplished marvels in the matter of tropical sanitation but the way out has been anything but simple. It has involved experimentations which cost ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... in that connection. Its proper meaning as a purely prudential formalism is best exhibited in the Greek Cynics. These philosophers were moved to mortify the flesh, and to deny their social interests, by extreme caution. They discovered that the safest method of adjustment was simplification. If one permits one's self no desires, one need not suffer {93} from their conflict, nor need one treat with the desires of others. Now this would be a very perfect solution of the problem of adjustment, ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... diverse physical conditions, may have led to a similar result. With some groups the tendency seems to have been almost continuously to greater and greater specialisation, while with others a tendency to simplification and degradation has resulted in such plants as the ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... not reformed, I say? 'Twould be well if our legislators, instead of their puerile and frothy declamations against revolutionary principles and the ambition of Napoleon, would occupy themselves seriously with this subject. But then the lawyers would all oppose the simplification of our Code. They find by experience that a complicated one, obstructed by customs, statutes and acts of Parliament, difficult to be correctly interpreted, and frequently at variance with each other, is a much more profitable thing, a much wider and more lucrative field for ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... vigor and effectiveness of law enforcement we must critically consider the entire Federal machinery of justice, the redistribution of its functions, the simplification of its procedure, the provision of additional special tribunals, the better selection of juries, and the more effective organization of our agencies of investigation and prosecution that justice may be sure and that it may be swift. While the authority of the Federal ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... you: "Well, who does not know that? That was known and said long ago." It really seems to him that this has been said long ago and in just this way. Only those to whom moral truths are dear and important know how important and precious they are, and with what prolonged labor the elucidation, the simplification, of moral truths, their transit from the state of a misty, indefinitely recognized supposition, and desire, from indistinct, incoherent expressions, to a firm and definite expression, unavoidably demanding corresponding concessions, ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... those ingenuous men whose lot would have been insignificant in any period of security, but who have been caught up to an immortal role in history by the sudden simplification of human affairs through some tragical crisis, to the measure of their simplicity. Such a man was Abraham Lincoln, and such was Garibaldi. And Leblanc, with his transparent childish innocence, his entire self-forgetfulness, ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... coffins had been borne from the place, it was forgotten outside that another still remained. What might have been some busy-body's business, became no one's, and the horrible tragedy tended towards the simplification, of ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... this, then let this simplification serve for Vienna. I can only send you the score and parts of the "Prometheus" choruses towards the middle of November, as Klitzsch (in Zwickau) has arranged a performance of this work on the 12th to the 14th November, and I have already placed the parts at his disposal. If this delay does not hinder ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... things when H. A. Lorentz entered upon the scene. He brought theory into harmony with experience by means of a wonderful simplification of theoretical principles. He achieved this, the most important advance in the theory of electricity since Maxwell, by taking from ether its mechanical, and from matter its electromagnetic qualities. As in empty space, so too in the interior of material bodies, the ether, ...
— Sidelights on Relativity • Albert Einstein
... which the curve is generated) to the equation of the tangent giving its instantaneous direction. Such a science would be a mechanics of transformation, of which our mechanics of translation would become a particular case, a simplification, a projection on the plane of pure quantity. And just as an infinity of functions have the same differential, these functions differing from each other by a constant, so perhaps the integration of the physico-chemical ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... when he prefers death to renouncing the object of his desire, this can seldom retain the same value and energy when transferred to everyday life: that is why art is the business of the man who is recreating himself. The strife it reveals to us is a simplification of life's struggle; its problems are abbreviations of the infinitely complicated phenomena of man's actions and volitions. But from this very fact—that it is the reflection, so to speak, of a simpler world, a more rapid ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... existing around him; and so, instead of progressing, he turned back and sought peace of mind and a firm doctrine in the distant past of primitive Christianity. Sincere as he undoubtedly is in his propaganda of self-simplification and self-perfection—one might almost call it "self-annihilation"—his new attitude has wrought great and most regrettable havoc with his later literary work, with ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... they expressed themselves. His mind moved outwards from this centre, and hence the fact that he dealt principally with government and education, the two great agencies which, in an old civilisation with a thousand roots and feelers, surround external life and internal character with complexity. Simplification of religion by clearing away the overgrowth of errors, simplification of social relations by equality, of literature and art by constant return to nature, of manners by industrious homeliness and thrift,—this ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... of More. Hales based his loyalty to the Church of England on the fact that it was the largest and the most tolerant Church in Christendom. Chillingworth pointed out how many obstacles to comprehension were removed by such a simplification of belief as flowed from a rational theology, and asked, like More, for "such an ordering of the public service of God as that all who believe the Scripture and live according to it might without scruple or hypocrisy or protestation in any part join ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... a little ashamed of having to admit to herself that Mr. Mudge's removal to a higher sphere—to a more commanding position, that is, though to a much lower neighbourhood—would have been described still better as a luxury than as the mere simplification, the corrected awkwardness, that she contented herself with calling it. He had at any rate ceased to be all day long in her eyes, and this left something a little fresh for them to rest on of a Sunday. During the three months ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... problem could be done once for all, and he worked the results out simply under an organised kinetic government. But what seems to be merely an addition to the difficulty may in the end turn out to be a simplification, just as the introduction of a fresh term to an intricate irreducible mathematical expression will at times bring it ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... mind and will of the creature becoming wholly God's, and God filling them. How can we say, then, that it is poverty to be filled with God! Rather is it rightly expressed as being a heart fixed in singleness upon God, through drastic simplification of interests: the which is no poverty, but the wealth of ...
— The Golden Fountain - or, The Soul's Love for God. Being some Thoughts and - Confessions of One of His Lovers • Lilian Staveley
... so-called direct-current receiver has brought about a great simplification in the common-battery telephone circuits of several of the manufacturing companies. By this use the transmitter and the receiver are placed in series across the line, this path being normally opened by the hook-switch contacts. The polarized bell and condenser are placed ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... largely held that accordingly as China is opened up by railways, by steam navigation on the inland waters, and by simplification of inland duties, foreigners will reap such advantages as may again enable them to quickly amass fortunes. Let there be no delusion ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... as it questions the quality of the home product. Any careful reader of the various "Hints to Housewives" which have appeared, will note that the "simplifying of meals" recommended would require nearly double the time to prepare. The simplification takes into consideration only the question of food substitutions, price and waste. Mother is supposed to be wholly or largely unemployed and longing for unpaid toil. Should any housewife conscientiously follow the ...
— Mobilizing Woman-Power • Harriot Stanton Blatch
... this day more deeply influential and significant than are the vastest modern capitals. This very wealth of historical interests and resources, the corresponding multiplicity of specialisms, more than ever proves the need of some means by which to group and classify them. Some panoramic simplification of our ideas of history comparable to that of our geography, and if possible congruent with this, is plainly what we want. Again the answer comes through geography, though no longer in mere map or relief, but now in vertical section—in the order of strata ascending from past to present, ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... a summary of the Homeric poem, because he wished to show how simple its construction really was, apart from the episodes. It is impossible, by any process of reduction and simplification, to get rid of the duality in Beowulf. It has many episodes, quite consistent with a general unity of action, but there is something more than episodes, there is a sequel. It is as if to the Odyssey there had been added some later books telling in full of the old age of Odysseus, far from the ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... employments, mostly manual and fatiguing. This would give them the kind of activity that they would like—such as their class enjoys in other countries where my system is in full flower, and where it is deemed so sacred that any proposal for its abolition or simplification by trusts is regarded with horror, especially by ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... said to myself, "this appears to be a very elegant sort of sketch-club, with evening dress and all the society appurtenances. What did Yakoff Petrovitch mean by telling me that a plain street gown was the proper thing to wear? This enforced 'simplification' is rather trying to the feminine nerves; but I will not beat ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... 13) used so much during the middle 1800's was a remarkable simplification of carriage design. It was also essential for guns like the Parrott rifles, since the thick reinforce on the breech of an otherwise slender barrel would not fit the older twin-trail carriage. The single, solid ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... in them with their own explanations, and their repudiation of the teaching of the Church was a matter of gradual accomplishment. It is true that in places they strove to set up their own organisation. But the tendency of the Waldenses was much rather towards a simplification of the existing organisation. The power of binding and loosing was entirely rejected: an apostolic life and not ordination was the entrance to the priesthood. In fact, a layman was qualified to perform all the priestly functions, ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... element should have disappeared for a considerable time from the church music is not at all remarkable, for in the first steps toward regulating the liturgy simplification was a prime requisite. Thus in the centuries before Gregory the plain chant gained complete ascendancy in the church and under him it acquired a systematization which had in it the elements ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... of Hook's Farm is, as I have explained, a simplification of the game, set out entirely to illustrate the method of playing; there is scarcely a battle that will not prove more elaborate (and eventful) than this little encounter. If a number of players and a sufficiently large room can be got, there is no reason why armies of many hundreds ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... he had turned from them with a high, altruistic aim. The practical expression of his life was that it was enough to provide well for his family; to have cultivated tastes, and to gratify them to the extent of his means; to be rather distinguished, even in the simplification of his desires. He believed, and his wife believed, that if the time ever came when he really wished to make a sacrifice to the fulfilment of the aspirations so long postponed, she would be ready to join with heart ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... to consider the product lest features of trade-schools be introduced, has made most of our manual-training high schools ghastly, hollow, artificial institutions. Instead of making in the lower grades certain toys which are masterpieces of mechanical simplification, as tops and kites, and introducing such processes as glass-making and photography, and in higher grades making simple scientific apparatus more generic than machines, to open the great principles of the material universe, all ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... writer brings his own gift, and if others satisfy our craving for destruction and beauty, and yet others our longing for simplification and rational form, the suggestions he brings of mystery and passion, of secret despairs and occult ecstasies, of strange renunciations and stranger triumphs, are such as must quicken our sense of the whole weird game. Looking back over these astonishing books, it is curious to note the impression ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... equally recognized, and were employed jointly, in connection with his favorite doctrine of Unisubstancisme. They constituted the opposite poles of his theory, but were both essential to its completeness. But most of his followers, influenced by an excessive desire for simplification, have attempted to blend the two into one; and have either merged the spiritual in the corporeal, or virtually annihilated the material by resolving it into the mental. Hence two distinct, and even opposite forms of Pantheism,—the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... to carry us in the direction of the systematization and simplification of the embarrassing wealth of objects which are actually the goal of human desires and volitions. Man may desire a boundless variety of objects. His motives in desiring them may, ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... where pleasure, business, and science are daily forging new ties of common interests between the nations, those engaged in such pursuits have clearly much to gain from the simplification of their pursuits by a common language. But let us look ahead a little further still. It may well be that the outstanding feature of the twentieth century in history will be the coming into line of the peoples ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... English, nor Austrian, nor anti-French—they were Belgian." In the way of administration and judicial organization, they learnt their lesson, but it was a distasteful lesson. They were too wise to disregard the benefit which they might derive from the simplification of procedure brought about by the reforms, and they remembered them at the right time, but they remained stubbornly hostile to a foreign domination which could not be supported by any dynastic loyalism, and most of them greeted with enthusiasm ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... views expressed as to the reasons for this immorality and the suggested remedies. After considering the evidence, after reading much literature on the subject, and weighing up all the suggested factors, the view of the Committee is that the matter is not capable of simplification by regarding any, or even all, the causes suggested and discussed below as being the main cause. In seeking to remedy the evil it must steadily be borne in mind that we have not only to deal with the immediately apparent causes. Letters to the press, letters to this ...
— Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents - The Mazengarb Report (1954) • Oswald Chettle Mazengarb et al.
... its lively interest, the variety of its gifts to civilisation; its weakness is self-evident, and was what made the unity of Greece impossible. [253] It is this centrifugal tendency which Plato is desirous to cure, by maintaining, over against it, the Dorian influence of a severe simplification everywhere, in society, in culture, in the very physical nature of man. An enemy everywhere to variegation, to what is cunning or "myriad-minded," he sets himself, in mythology, in music, in poetry, in every kind of art, to enforce the ideal of a sort of Parmenidean ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... Europe, or the chaos in which watchful waiting left Mexico. His is a mind that delights in formulae. He has one for Europe. He has one for Mexico. It is an analytical, not a synthetical mind, a lawyer's mind, not a creator's, like Wilson's, with, perhaps it may turn out, a fatal habit of over-simplification. Life is not a simple thing ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... be a re-ordering and simplification and correction of emphasis. It is possible, now that historical science is unravelling the Bible and Church history, and extricating from their many levels and complexities what is simple and specific in the glorious truths of God and of man in Christ. Some exaggerations must be sloughed ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... into the consciousness of humanity, not only negatively by the demonstration of the impossibility of continuing in the pagan life, but also through its simplification, its increased clearness and freedom from the superstitions intermingled with it, and its diffusion through all ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... the copula is affirmative, are formally, themselves affirmative, although their force is chiefly negative; for, as the last example shows, the difference between an infinite and a negative proposition may depend upon a hyphen. It has been proposed, indeed, with a view to superficial simplification, to turn all Negatives into Infinites, and thus render all propositions Affirmative in Quality. But although every proposition both affirms and denies something according to the aspect in which you regard it (as Snow is white denies that it is any other colour, and Snow is not blue affirms ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... time, the closing days of February, the Judiciary Committee was fairly swamped with important measures. The Railroad Regulation bills, the Initiative Amendment, the measures providing for the simplification of methods of criminal procedure and other bills of scarcely less importance were pending before that committee. Prompt action on the Local Option bill was out of the question. And, although a majority of the committee ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... reasonings may, when complex, be carried on more suecessfully by the employment of signs; because in these cases the signs themselves accurately represent the abstractness of the relations. Such sciences deal only with relations, and not with objects; hence greater simplification ensures greater accuracy. But no sooner do we quit this sphere of abstractions to enter that of concrete things, than the use of symbols becomes a source of weakness. Vigorous and effective minds habitually deal with concrete images. This is notably the case with poets and great ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... pages are ... a simplification of the story of (p. 147) the Jews as related by Josephus.... Josephus wrote his histories for the Romans, and we need not therefore wonder ... at his modifying and toning down the historical statements ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... The instinct of simplification is an intelligent and sound one. Its satisfaction is a necessary preliminary to efficient action of any kind, and indeed the basis of all fruitful philosophy. But in criticism this instinct can only be satisfied intelligently ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... Simplification is the prophetic watchword in state government today. For cities, the City Manager and the Commission have offered salvation. A few officers only are elected and these are held strictly responsible, sometimes under the constant threat of the recall, for the entire administration. ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... in my possession. In the first five chapters there are numerous emendations, very few of which, however, affect the meaning to any appreciable extent, being mainly concerned with the excision of redundancies and the simplification of style. I imagine that by the time he had reached the end of the fifth chapter Butler realised that the corrections he had made were not of sufficient importance to warrant a new edition, and determined to let the book stand as it was. I believe, therefore, that I am carrying out his ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... true that these editors print everything they possibly can in large capital letters. But they do this, not because it is startling, but because it is soothing. To people wholly weary or partly drunk in a dimly lighted train, it is a simplification and a comfort to have things presented in this vast and obvious manner. The editors use this gigantic alphabet in dealing with their readers, for exactly the same reason that parents and governesses use a similar ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... astronomy and determined to reform it. His maternal uncle, the Bishop of Ermland, having provided him with a lay canonry in the Cathedral of Frauenburg, he had leisure to devote himself to Science. Reviewing the suggestions of the ancient Greeks, he was struck by the simplification that would be introduced by reviving the idea that the annual motion should be attributed to the earth itself instead of having a separate annual epicycle for each planet and for the sun. Of the seventy odd circles ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... rhythmic sense enabled Moussorgsky to express bizarre motions and unusual situations that are at first blush extramusical. Many of his "reforms" are not reforms at all, rather the outcome of his passion for simplification. The framework of his opera—Boris Godounow—is rather commonplace, a plethora of choral numbers the most marked feature. In the original draught there was an absence of the feminine element, but after much pressure the composer was ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... simplification of its forms, and reduction of its expenses," (This, no doubt, has ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... set to work completely to reorganize the church. The anxiety for simplification and complete uniformity shows itself in the reckless way that it dealt with this most venerable institution of France, the customs of which were hallowed not only by age, but by religious veneration. The one hundred and thirty-four ancient bishoprics, some of which dated back ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... from that made by his contemporaries) is a subject far too big for a parenthesis. But he, too, is at bottom a classic artist. The modern problem—it has not yet been sufficiently solved for us to speak of a modern method—arises from a sense that the classical method produces over-simplification. It does not permit of a sufficient sense of multiplicity. One can think of a dozen semi-treatments of the problem from Balzac to Dostoevsky, but they were all on the old lines. They might be called Shakespearean modifications of the ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... William Deering, one of McCormick's chief competitors, invented binders which used twine. By 1880 the self-binding harvester was complete. No distinctive improvement has been made since, except to add strength and simplification. The machine now needed the services of only two men, one to drive and the other to shock the bundles, and could reap twenty acres or more a day, tie the grain into bundles of uniform size, and dump them in piles of five ...
— The Age of Invention - A Chronicle of Mechanical Conquest, Book, 37 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Holland Thompson
... a system which claims to be a special dispensation for this age and to supersede more arduous methods which are politely set aside as practicable only for the hero-saints of happier times. Tantrism, like salvation by faith, is a simplification of religion but on mechanical rather than emotional lines, though its deficiency in emotion often finds ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... shadows to me. I can't be bound by the pious fancies of men who knew no science, and very little about evidence of any kind. What I want is just a simple and beautiful principle of living, such as I feel thrills through the words of Christ. The Prodigal Son—that's almost enough for me! It is simplification that I want, and independence. Of course I see that if that isn't what a man wants, if he requires that something or someone should be infallible, then he does require a good deal of argument and information and history. But though I don't object ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of wedge-writing is a direct derivative of the Babylonian, introduced in the times of the Achaemenians, and it is nothing but a simplification in form and principle of the more cumbersome and complicated Babylonian. Instead of a combination of as many as ten and fifteen wedges to make one sign, we have in the Persian never more than five, and frequently only three; and instead of writing words ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... interfered with the control and discipline of the industrial army, which, of course, required to be central and uniform. Even if the state governments had not become inconvenient for other reasons, they were rendered superfluous by the prodigious simplification in the task of government since your day. Almost the sole function of the administration now is that of directing the industries of the country. Most of the purposes for which governments formerly existed ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... technique of the short story he is fairly comparable with Poe, though less original, for it was Poe who formulated, when Bret Harte was a child of six, the well-known theory of the unity of effect of the brief tale. This unity Harte secured through a simplification, often an insulation, of his theme, the omission of quarreling details, an atmosphere none the less novel for its occasional theatricality, and characters cunningly modulated to the one note they were intended to strike. "Tennessee's Partner," "The Outcast of Poker ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... an organism transforms, under appropriate conditions, into a typical individual, the process includes degenerative aa well as regenerative phases. There is always some simplification of the structures present, whose character and amount is determined by the degree of specialization which has been attained. The smaller the piece, within certain limits, and the younger physiologically, the more nearly does ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... why these thoroughly acclimated French words should not be made to wear our English livery; and to this question Dr. Bradley supplied an answer when he declared that 'culture is one of the influences which retard the process of simplification'. A man of culture is likely to be familiar with one or more foreign languages; and perhaps he may be a little vain of his intimacy with them. He prefers to give the proper French pronunciation to the words which he recognizes as French; and moreover as the ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 5 - The Englishing of French Words; The Dialectal Words in Blunden's Poems • Society for Pure English
... had improved remarkably, but this was a highly technical discussion. It was two days before Soames had the information he needed firmly in his mind. He made a working drawing of what had to be built. He realized that the drawing itself was a simplification of a much more sophisticated original device. It was adapted to be made out of locally available materials. It was what Fran had made and ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... of men and horses, as I tried to decide how to apportion both time and means to each individual branch of their education, and to see how far the traditions of the past could be harmonized with the requirements of the future, or where and how they need further development and simplification, I found myself compelled at every turn to go back and seek my ideal standard in the demands which War itself must make ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... across to Notre Dame; the impulse to let things be, to give them time to justify themselves or at least to pass. He was aware of having no errand in such a place but the desire not to be, for the hour, in certain other places; a sense of safety, of simplification, which each time he yielded to it he amused himself by thinking of as a private concession to cowardice. The great church had no altar for his worship, no direct voice for his soul; but it was none the less soothing even to sanctity; for he could feel while ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... philosophers, which it reconstructs from its central point, and to prepare him for the study (which, of course, even the best exposition cannot replace) of the works of the thinkers themselves. Its excessive simplification of problems is not of great moment in the first introduction to a system [English translation of vol. iii. book 2 (1st ed.), A Commentary on Kant's Critick of the Pure Reason, by J.P. Mahaffy, London, 1866; vol. i. part 1 and part 2, book 1, Descartes and his School, by J, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... RECORDS AND PROGRAMMES ON THE WORK.—The most noteworthy result of the closer relations between records and programmes which appear during the evolution of Scientific Management is the fact that they cause constant simplification. The more carefully records are standardized, the simpler becomes the drafting of the programme. As more and more records become standard, the drafting of programmes becomes constantly an easier ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... a simplification of the collection of the King's duty on tobacco, the cost of that collection can be reduced even to five per cent., or a million and a half, instead of twenty-five millions; the price to the consumer will be reduced from three to ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... the flat-bed to the web or rotary presses there came further development in typesetting-machines—the linotype, the monotype, and others. With paper and presses brought to such simplification, newspapers have sprouted in every town, almost every village, and the total number of American periodicals is counted by tens of thousands. There are magazines that have a circulation of more than a million copies weekly. The leading daily newspapers in New York ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... brave men that lived before Shakespeare and before Balzac. And as the root of the whole matter, let him bear in mind that his novel is not a transcript of life, to be judged by its exactitude; but a simplification of some side or point of life, to stand or fall by its significant simplicity. For although, in great men, working upon great motives, what we observe and admire is often their complexity, yet underneath appearances the truth remains unchanged: that simplification ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson |
