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adjective
Gradual  adj.  Proceeding by steps or degrees; advancing, step by step, as in ascent or descent or from one state to another; regularly progressive; slow; as, a gradual increase of knowledge; a gradual decline. "Creatures animate with gradual life Of growth, sense, reason, all summed up in man."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gradual" Quotes from Famous Books



... millennium or nothing. He will tolerate no indirect approach. He will give no credit for partial approximations. He insists on holding every one strictly to his first fault. There shall be no wriggling out of a false position, no gradual change in function, no adaptations of old ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers

... and given place to a ravine; you are surrounded by hills of the height of a many-storied house; all are covered with bushes; sometimes the ascent is steep, sometimes gradual. The first ravine leads into a second, wilder and narrower, thence into a succession of nine or ten. Cold and dampness cling to you when you walk through them; you climb one of the hills and find yourself surrounded by a network of forking ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various

... been, I suppose, a gradual growth, subject to the law of evolution; as nearly everything, with the possible exception of theology, has been ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various

... Everybody was derisively grateful to the association for taking all the worthless pilots out of the way and leaving the whole field to the excellent and the deserving; and everybody was not only jocularly grateful for that, but for a result which naturally followed, namely, the gradual advance of wages as the busy season approached. Wages had gone up from the low figure of one hundred dollars a month to one hundred and twenty-five, and in some cases to one hundred and fifty; and it was great fun to enlarge upon the fact that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Again his thick fingers sought for a grip, found places, worked down through the soft dirt and the pulpy bark to solid wood, and then he began to lift. It was a gradual process. His knees gave, sagging under the strain from the arms. Then the back began to grow rigid, and the legs in turn grew stiff, as every muscle fell into play. The shoulders pushed forward and down. ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand

... existence. Believe that character or manhood, without which nothing great is possible, is the content of your endowment put out to full advantage through grace and will. Believe that every man, worthy to be called a man, has in him the promise of the gradual supremacy of character over the accidents and happenings of circumstances. Be, then, your own luck. Link your life in Christ to God, and stand up to ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd

... slip over any gen'ral propositions on me, either. I'm right there with the Missouri stuff. He has to go clear back to first principles every time he makes a statement, and work up to it gradual. Course, I was keepin' him jollied along too, and while it must have been sort of hopeless at the start, inoculatin' a cauliflower like mine with higher chemistry, I fin'lly showed one or two gleams that encouraged ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... be no doubt that the military tenure—the most prominent feature of historical feudalism—was itself introduced by the same gradual process which we have assumed in the case of the feudal usages in general. We have no light on the point from any original grant made by the Conqueror to a lay follower, but judging by the grants made to the churches we cannot suppose it probable ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various

... rank of master and commander. In what capacity he sailed with Captain Cook in this last expedition, need not be added. The consumption, of which Captain Clerke died, had evidently commenced before he left England, and he lingered under it during the whole voyage. Though his very gradual decay had long made him a melancholy object to his friends, nevertheless, they derived some consolation from the equanimity with which he bore his disorder, from the constant flow of good spirits ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... on the surface of an egg yolk, and watches it divide and multiply until it becomes a great mass of cells, which group off or differentiate, and rearrange and alter their shapes. It observes how little organs unfold themselves, or evolve out of these little cell groups—how gradual, but how unvarying the change; how one group becomes a bone, another a brain, another a muscle, to constitute in three short weeks the body of a matured chick. Those little tendons like silken threads, that run down those slender ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple

... effect of his often splendid eloquence. The direct opposite of this style is seen in the Australian novel. The author never openly preaches. His best effects are obtained by quiet satire conveyed in the gradual limning of his characters, and by occasional incidents of which each is allowed to give its own lesson to the reader. The facts have all the advantage of a studiously ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... not destroyed by inundations and covered by diluvial deposits. The mounds are composed of gravelly cement and fine debris of house walls, and the rooms left are completely filled with this material. It is easy to imagine how the mounds were formed by the gradual demolition of the ceilings, plastering, and roofs, forming a heap which to-day appears as shapely as if it had been made by man ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... law seems to have escaped him, probably because the Athenian law-courts were popular assemblies; and, except in a mythical form, he can hardly be said to have had before his eyes the ideal of a judge. In reading the Laws of Plato, or any other ancient writing about Laws, we should consider how gradual the process is by which not only a legal system, but the administration of a court ...
— Laws • Plato

... is initially experimental and always remains experimental at bottom, yet experiment fortifies certain tendencies and cancels others, so that a gradual sediment of habit and wisdom is formed in the stream of time. Action then ceases to be merely tentative and spontaneous, and becomes art. Foresight begins to accompany practice and, as we say, to guide it. Purpose thus supervenes on useful impulse, and conscious expression on self-sustaining ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... The rich family travelin' with children and servants and unlimited baggage; the party of school girls with the slim talkative teacher in spectacles, tellin' 'em all the pints of interest, and stuffin' 'em with knowledge gradual but constant; the stiddy goin' business men and the fashionable ones; the married flirt and the newly married bride and husband, sheepish lookin' but happy; old wimmen and young ones; young men and old ones; the sick passenger confined to his bed, but devourin' more ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... Egyptians revered and preserved, and which, at a reasonable computation, must have lived not less than three or four thousand years before the time at which they were thus brought to light. Cuvier endeavoured to test the hypothesis that animals have undergone gradual and progressive modifications of structure, by comparing the skeletons and such other parts of the mummies as were in a fitting state of preservation, with the corresponding parts of the representatives of the same species now ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley

... this question she paused, as before a great portal that was shut. She went back. She thought again of this beautiful crescendo, of this gradual approach to the God from whom she had been if not entirely separated at any rate set a little apart. Could it have been only in order that her catastrophe might be the more complete, her ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... if extraordinary considering the degree of spirituality she reached, was nevertheless gradual and regular. With her wonderful power of analysis, she has given us not only a clear insight into her interior progress, but also a sketch of the development of her understanding of supernatural things. "It is now (i.e., about the end of 1563) some five or six years, ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... this does not, by any means, settle the issue. The question naturally arises whether one of those divisions, on its first appearance, was of the lowest organization of its class and reached the highest by a gradual development through successive geological periods. The geological testimony is this: First, there were no animals having any structural resemblance to the fishes prior to their creation, and when they appear they are already in possession of the highest organization ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume I, No. 7, July, 1880 • Various

... the ruffian you pretend to think him"—(here he spoke very slowly, as if he intended that every word which escaped him should be registered in my memory, while at the same time the expression of his countenance underwent a gradual but horrible change, and the eyes which he fixed upon me became so darkly vivid, that I almost lost sight of everything else)—"if he were what you have described him, do you think, child, he would have found no shorter ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... black-looking, dust-covered, white-handled weapon; and pushing aside his long robe with an air of the utmost importance, he draws forth the blade, which proves to be a black Khorassan, entirely destitute of ornament: he rings it, it returns a silver sound; he points out the beautiful watering, the gradual deepening of the colour from the edge to the back, and finishes by swearing to you, whilst he looks towards the Armenians and Jew brokers gathered around for their attesting nods, that it is the most exquisite ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... dried roots of a plant Rubia tinctorum, cultivated in France, Holland and other parts of Europe, as well as in India. Madder is one of the best and fastest dyes. It is used also in combination with other dyes to produce compound colours. The gradual raising of the temperature of the dye bath is essential in order to develop the full colouring power of madder; long boiling should be avoided, as it dulls the colour. If the water is deficient in lime, brighter shades are got by adding ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet

... after the burning of his native town to the ashes of his ruined home to begin life over again. A partial indemnity from the Government enabled him to resume business on a modest scale, which, by thrift and industry, grew and increased with the gradual growth of the town. Ensign Roberts was among the slain at the taking of the Fort, and Mr. Lawson's property was destroyed by the conflagration that followed. The old man, broken by his losses and by exposure, gradually sunk, ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow

... admitted into any degree of mental intercourse with a being of these qualities could not but have a most beneficial influence on my development; though the effect was only gradual, and several years elapsed before her mental progress and mine went forward in the complete companionship they at last attained. The benefit I received was far greater than any which I could hope to give; though to her, who had at ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... say. She only remembered her own last words, the warmth, the shadow, the droning of the bees, and the gradual losing consciousness, and then she was wide awake again,—awakened by a strange, wild cry, which, thrilling and echoing through the room, made her start up with a beating heart and look towards ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... Ptolemies, partly to the formation of new literary circles in Rhodes, Syria and elsewhere, whose supporters, though retaining the Alexandrian peculiarities, could scarcely be included in the Alexandrian school. The loss of active life, consequent on this gradual dissolution, was much increased when Alexandria fell under Roman sway. Then the influence of the school was extended over the whole known world, but men of letters began to concentrate at Rome rather than at Alexandria. In that city, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... having thus accomplished its object, the gradual withdrawal of the British troops in accordance with the proclamation would seem to have been a natural sequence. In the weak, distracted state of the country, and in the assumed necessity of not losing our influence in those distant regions, the Government of India, however, ...
— Indian Frontier Policy • General Sir John Ayde

... you men," said Grace, "is, that you want your wives to see with your eyes, all in a minute, what has got to come with years and intimacy, and the gradual growing closer and closer together. The husband and wife, of themselves, drop many friendships and associations that at first were mutually distasteful, simply because their tastes have grown ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... potential dispute with Ukraine over former southern Bessarabian areas; northern Bukovina ceded to Ukraine upon Moldova's incorporation into USSR; internal with ethnic Russians in the Trans-Dnestr and Gagauz Muslims in the South Climate: mild winters, warm summers Terrain: rolling steppe, gradual slope south to Black Sea Natural resources: lignite, phosphorites, gypsum Land use: NA% arable land; NA% permanent crops; NA% meadows and pastures; NA% forest and woodland; NA% other; ...
— The 1992 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... clear-cut from the gradual incline, that peculiar eminence; yet as the Master and Owd Bob debouched on to the Brae it was already invisible in the ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... 1852 has risen nineteen feet, submerging whole farms along its border and threatening the level desert west of it. It has been a gradual but permanent rise, and comes from the additional moisture falling during the year—rain and snow. Professor Agassiz, in 1867, after a visit to Colorado, predicted that this increase of moisture would come by the disturbance of the electric currents, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... old Count's visit,' your father went on, 'I noticed a gradual change in Irene. She grew thin and pale and nervous, disliking more and more, every day, to go out, and becoming suddenly averse to all our previous pursuits and pleasures. We mixed amongst a Bohemian set in Paris, and we had ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... commencement, and had afterward been rendered illustrious by great achievements. His empire in France was virtually overthrown; the vast expenditure which had had such a fruitless result was sorely burdening his subjects, and awakening increasing discontent; and he himself, through the gradual decay of his mental faculties, had become a mere tool in the hands of Anne Travers, and of ministers whose only aim was their own aggrandizement. In 1367 the "Good Parliament" virtually seized the helm of the state from the hands ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various

... a grayish scum appears on the surface just before the boiling point is reached. This scum is caused by the gradual extraction of a part of the soluble albumin that is present in the hollow fibers of the muscle tissue. After its extraction, it is coagulated by the heat in the water. As it coagulates and rises, it carries with it to the top particles of dirt and other foreign material present in the water or ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences

... restrictions of the law and by the growth of Puritan sentiment in the clergy as a whole. A far wider change had been brought about in the expulsion of Royalist clergy from their benefices during the Civil War; but the change had been gradual, and had been at least ostensibly wrought for the most part on political or moral rather than on religious grounds. The parsons expelled were expelled as "malignants," or as unfitted for their office by idleness ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green

... that my recovery has been a gradual process, you are wrong. You will think me more than ever deranged; but I assure you that it has been brought about, not by long strivings, but suddenly—without preparation of mine—and by the immediate hand ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... went over to him when I could, to see him, and give him 'masculine news,' as he called it; reports of the progress of the line, which, I am glad to say, I was able to carry on in his absence, in the slow gradual way which suited the company best, while trade was in a languid state, and money dear in the market. Of course, with this occupation for my scanty leisure, I did not often go over to Hope Farm. Whenever I did go, I met with a thorough welcome; and many inquiries were made ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... heavier of Farragut's ships could not act outside of its limits. The Confederate ironclad Tennessee, on the contrary, drawing but fourteen feet, had a more extensive field of operations open to her, and, from the gradual diminution of the soundings, was able to take her position at a distance where the most formidable of her opponents could neither follow her nor penetrate her ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... their guard. To prevent just this, the gazelles usually keep well out on the open plains and avoid rocks or abrupt hills which would furnish cover for a wolf. Of course, they often go into the rolling ground, but it is usually where the slopes are gradual and where they have sufficient space ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews

... Speller, too. It began with simple words in common use, like a-b ab, and e-b eb, and i-b, ib, proceeding by gradual, if not by easy stages to honorificatudinibility and disproportionableness, with a department at the back devoted to twisters like phthisic, and mullein-stalk, and diphtheria, and gneiss. We used to have a fine old sport on Friday afternoons, called "choose-up-and-spell-down." I don't know ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood

... history and drew up laws, was likewise the Anglo-Saxon. Despite all their reverence for the threshold of the Apostles they admitted foreign priests no longer than was indispensable for the foundation of the new church: in the gradual progress of the conversion they were no longer needed, we soon find Anglo-Saxon names everywhere in the church: the archbishops and leading bishops are as closely related to the royal families, as the heathen high priests ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... proposed some new jaunt, an excursion to see some view, to visit all the ruined chateaux or abbeys in the neighborhood. And, with surprising delicacy, M. de Talbrun refrained from inviting too many of his country neighbors, who might perhaps have scared Jacqueline and arrested her gradual return to gayety. They might also have interrupted his tete-a-tete with his wife's guest, for they had many such conversations. Giselle was absorbed in the duty of teaching her son his a, b, c. Besides, being very timid, she had never ridden on horseback, and, naturally, riding was delightful ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... reference to the highest end of all our perfecting—the glory and praise of God; the former referring rather to the transcendent majesty of God in itself, and the latter to the exaltation of it by men. The highest glory of God comes from the gradual increase in redeemed men's likeness to Him. They are 'the secretaries of His praise,' and some portion of that great honour and responsibility lies on each of us. If all Christian men were what they all might be and should be, swift and sure in their condemnation of evil and loyal ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... mention that the schooner sailed with forty tons, and that we had only one man employed to dig the mine. The spot where these coals are found is clear of trees or bush for the space of many acres, which are covered with a short tender grass very proper for grazing sheep, the ground rising with a gradual ascent intersected with valleys on which wood grows in plenty, sheltered from the winds, forming the most delightful prospect. This place might serve as a station for the woodcutters and colliers.* (* The point of land where the colliers were put to work was named Collier's ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee

... of their mutual interests, Clayton had strangely forgotten to even mention the name of Miss Alice Worthington, for he was still keenly aware of the gradual fading away of the ties of friendly family intimacy which had once bound him ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage

... on gradual for a year or more, sir. Creeping paralysis is what the doctors call it. He's no use left in his legs, and very little in his arms or hands; but his brain seems as active as ever. He took a turn for the worse last week, and the end, they think, may come ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford

... a few miles to the foothills, a gradual rise of the valley floor, a gradual shallowing and narrowing of the stream, a gradual drawing in of the spokelike ridges until the valley at last became a ravine. The morning air was clear and still, the scent of flowers and ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton

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

... It was a slow process. I found the best plan was not to mind being shy, to accept it as part of my temperament, and with others laugh at it. The coldness of an indifferent world is of service in hardening a too sensitive skin. The gradual rubbings of existence were rounding off my many corners. I became possible to my fellow creatures, and they to me. I began to take ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... Dundee a resolution was passed to tender you an invitation to deliver the annual address at our next fair. We know it is a departure from established usage, but your experience as one of a brave band of radical reformers will have taught you that only by gradual steps and continued efforts can the prejudices of custom be overcome and the rights of humanity maintained. Woman's rights are coming to be respected more and more every year, and we hope you will aid us in demonstrating that a woman can deliver ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... conditions of cultivation are such as to point to constantly increasing production at a diminished cost per quarter for some time to come, inasmuch as the introduction of improved machinery will more than compensate for the gradual application of manure to the soil. There are, however, many obstacles to progress. For political reasons the Government discourages immigration from other countries, and therefore the untilled lands will have to be idle until there is a sufficiently large population to cultivate them. The Roumanian ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... not as yet divined! Here I am fain these flowers to inter; but humankind will laugh me as a fool. Who knows, who will, in years to come, commit me to my grave! Mark, and you'll find the close of spring, and the gradual decay of flowers, Resemble faithfully the time of death of maidens ripe in years! In a twinkle, spring time draws to a close, and maidens wax in age. Flowers fade and maidens die; and of either nought any more ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... the great financial crisis of 1857. That panic sent a wave westward,—a wave that overflowed all the wild lands of the wilderness, and, in most cases, to the advantage of both wave and wilderness. Of course there was a gradual settling up or settling down from that period. Many people who didn't exactly come to stay got stuck fast, or found it difficult to leave; and now they are glad of it. Denver was ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... highest point of interest. A new science, inexhaustible as life itself, is here presented us, standing upon the sound and solid foundation of a well established inorganic chemistry. Thus the progress of science is, like the development of nature's works, gradual and expansive. After the buds and branches spring forth the leaves and blossoms, after the blossoms ...
— Familiar Letters of Chemistry • Justus Liebig

... pustular, closely grouped or bunched, appear, developing slowly, usually to the size of peas; are red, pale red, or whitish, often enveloping small tufts of hair, and attended with more or less hair loss. Its course is gradual and persistent. It is an exceedingly rare condition, the exact nature ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon

... were beginning to foresee a gradual change in ecclesiastical government in the land, though it might not be just yet. Even the most zealous of the church party, when they were shrewd and far-sighted men, and not immediately concerned with the present struggle, saw signs of an inevitable increase in light and individual ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green

... after the adventure with the whale when, as the ship was going along at a good rate, that there seemed to be a gradual slacking ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood

... about The Man who was Thursday is not its incomprehensibility, but its author's gradual decline of interest in the book as it lengthened out. It begins excellently. There is real humour and a good deal of it in the earlier stages of Syme. And there are passages like this one on the "lawless ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... lack of progress in Jamaica since the abolition of slavery by the gradual process inaugurated in 1833 and its final extermination in 1838, nothing will better serve the purpose than the review of the system of apprenticeship established as a substitute for that institution. According to the portraiture given by Sturge and Harvey in their ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... country (including new loans, current interest, and repayments) must thus eventually be settled in money. This cannot fail to affect the general level of prices in both countries, tho this is brought about often only in indirect and gradual ways. The flow of money out of a country causes the loan market of a country to tighten (interest and discount rates to rise) in proportion as the reserves of the banks are reduced. Then "general prices" begin to fall.[10] When prices fall, ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter

... though he was no nurse, he could do much to set his mother and Ellen free to attend to their patients. And Paul's illness, though so much less dangerous, frightened and subdued Harold much more than the quiet gradual pining away of Alfred, to which he was used. The severe pain, the raging fever, and the ramblings in talk, were much more fearful things to witness than the low cough, the wearing sore, and the helpless ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... made with the shirt-collar, which he folded down to its proper size; but the delicate part of the performance was still to come. Brummell "standing before the glass, with his chin raised towards the ceiling, now, by the gentle and gradual declension of his lower jaw, creased the cravat to reasonable dimensions; the form of each succeeding crease being perfected with the shirt which he had just discarded." We were not aware of the nicety ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... more gradual and less precipitous descent, he fixes his eye on some distant point in the earth beneath him, and thither bends his course. He is still almost meteoric in his speed and boldness. You see his path down the heavens, straight as a line; ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... is remarkably well built. It winds up the mountain by a gradual and even ascent of nine miles, the grade nowhere exceeding ten per cent. There are two camps near the summit, open all the year. You may return the same day or stay for the ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn

... Dim, gradual thinning of the shapeless gloom Shudders to drizzling daybreak that reveals Disconsolate men who stamp their sodden boots And turn dulled, sunken faces to the sky Haggard and hopeless. They, who have beaten down The stale despair ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon

... were laid out during the summer, Spangenberg assisting with the survey. By the close of the year twenty-six acres had been cleared,—on the uplands this meant the felling of trees, and gradual removal of stumps as time permitted, but on the rice lands it meant far more. The great reeds, ten to twelve feet high, grew so thick that a man could scarcely set foot between them, and in cutting them down it was necessary to go ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries

... metaphysical province—passed through seven editions in the comparatively brief space of fourteen years. The Lectures of Dr. Brown passed through exactly seven editions in twelve years, and this at a time when, according to Jeffrey, that science of mind of which they treated was in a state of gradual decay. The critic was, however, in the right. The genius of Brown had imparted to his brilliant posthumous work an interest which could scarce be regarded as attaching to the subject of it; and in a few years after—from about ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... and therefore the tendencies which normally might be expected to pass and give place to others remain and those others never appear. That inborn tendencies do wax, reach a maximum, and wane is probably true, but the onset is much more gradual and the waning much less frequent than has been taken for granted. Our ignorance concerning all these matters outweighs our knowledge; only careful experimentation which allows for all the other factors involved can give a ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... contest with State University four more games with minor colleges had been played and won by Wayne. Hour by hour the coach had drilled the players; day by day the grilling practice told in quickening grasp of team-play, in gradual correction of erratic fielding and wild throwing. Every game a few more students attended, reluctantly, in ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey

... almost succeeded in looking untroubled; the breaking up of the ice in his handsome countenance was an operation that was necessarily gradual. But Newman's mildly-syllabled argumentation seemed to press, and press, and presently he averted his eyes. He ...
— The American • Henry James

... year, Batoche joined the army of the Chevalier de Levis, and was present at the great victory of Ste. Foye. But the successful retreat of the British army, under Murray, behind the walls of Quebec; the inability of Levis to press the siege of the city; the gradual disbanding of the French forces throughout the Province, and the final surrender of Vaudreuil, at Montreal, whereby the whole French possessions in America, were ceded to Britain—one of the most momentous events of modern times in ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance

... to livestock farming. "Selling everything off the farm" is a practice associated in the public mind with soil poverty. It is a rule with few exceptions that the absence of livestock on the farm is an index of gradual reduction in the productive power of the land. Generally speaking, the farmers who feed the most of their crops on the farm are maintaining fertility, and those who do not feed their crops on the farm have been making drafts ...
— Crops and Methods for Soil Improvement • Alva Agee

... others. It enlarges hands long before they are used, and thickens soles long before the time for walking on them. At the same time, as if by an oversight, it so delays its transmission of the habit of walking on these thickened soles, that the gradual and tedious acquisition of the non-transmitted habit costs the infant much time and trouble and often some pain and danger. Yet where aided by natural selection, as with chickens and foals, it transmits the habit in wonderful perfection ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball

... splendor of success, under Saxe VERSUS Cumberland and Company. They did also some successful work in Italy;—and left Friedrich to bear the brunt in Germany; too glad if he or another were there to take Germany off their hand! Friedrich's feelings on his arriving at this consummation, and during his gradual advance towards it, which was pretty steady all along from those first 'drenched-hen (POULES MOUILLEES)' procedures, were amply known to Excellency Valori, and may be conceived by readers,"—who are slightly interested in the dates of them at farthest. And now for the Belleisle Accident, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... my life was severed from me, and I was left alone. This has made a vast difference in my lot. Her character, if that fair face promised right, would have been soft, graceful and lively: it would have tempered mine to a gentler and more gradual course. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... trees which supplied us last Autumn for tarts and desserts during six weeks, besides the numbers the young men eat.' This was at Niagara. The records of the agricultural exhibitions indicate that there was a gradual extension of fruit-growing. Importations of new varieties were made, Rochester, in New York State, apparently being the chief place from which nursery stock was obtained. Here and there through the province gentlemen having some leisure and the skill to experiment ...
— History of Farming in Ontario • C. C. James

... height, pitch; reach, amplitude, range, scope, caliber; gradation, shade; tenor, compass; sphere, station, rank, standing; rate, way, sort. point, mark, stage &c. (term) 71; intensity, strength &c. (greatness) 31. Adj. comparative; gradual, shading off; within the bounds &c. (limit) 233. Adv. by degrees, gradually, inasmuch, pro tanto[It]; however, howsoever; step by step, bit by bit, little by little, inch by inch, drop by drop; a little at a time, by inches, by slow degrees, by degrees, by little and little; in some degree, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... became so celebrated, and gave to it the popular comic style for which it is famous at the present day, was also a poet of extreme originality. Gottsched appeared as the hero of Gallomania, which was at that time threatened with gradual extinction by the Spanish and Hamburg romance and by Viennese wit. Assisted by Neuber, the actress, he extirpated all that was not strictly French, solemnly burned Harlequin in effigy at Leipzig, A.D. 1737, and laid down a law for German poetry, which prescribed ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... wealth to the United States; and although it is not of such a nature as to extricate them from their present distresses, or for some time to come, to yield any regular supplies for the public expenses, yet must it hereafter be able, under proper management, both to effect a gradual discharge of the domestic debt, and to furnish, for a certain period, liberal tributes to the federal treasury. A very large proportion of this fund has been already surrendered by individual States; and it may with reason be expected that the remaining States will not persist in ...
— The Federalist Papers

... light, as well as by improved policing; (2) the great system of factory legislation for regulating the conditions of work, and to some extent restraining the work of women and of children; (3) the introduction of national systems of education, and the gradual extension of the idea of education to cover far more than mere instruction; and (4), most fundamental of all and last to appear, the effort to guard the child before the school age, even at birth, even before birth, by bestowing due care on the ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... Nor heaven, nor earth, nor air, nor ocean lived, Nor aught of prospect mortal sight surveyed; But one vast chaos, boisterous and confused. Yet order hence began; congenial parts Parts joined congenial; and the rising world Gradual evolved: its mighty members each From each divided, and matured complete From seeds appropriate; whose wild discortderst, Reared by their strange diversities of form, With ruthless war so broke their proper paths, Their motions, intervals, conjunctions, weights, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... the gradual subjection of the seaman to the needs of the nation, defensive or the contrary, we are confronted by an event as remarkable in its nature as it is epoch-making in its consequences. Magna Charta was sealed on the 13th of June 1215, and within a year of that date, on, namely, ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... a gradual bringing back to their normal condition of those facilities which have been dwarfed, or warped, or abnormally developed through sin and selfishness. Sometimes these moral twists and quirks in our ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon

... suppose; but His plan is to let the grain grow and ripen gradually. And it is His plan, according to Scripture, to let the spiritual grain grow up and the spiritual harvest ripen gradually. And it is better it should be so. Gradual growth in knowledge and goodness is most conducive, I believe, to the happiness of man. I would not make a child into a man all at once if I could. I would let him have the pleasure and the privilege of passing, in the ordinary way, through all the intermediate stages. Nor would I ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... ancient History give the date 476 as the year in which Rome fell, because in that year the last emperor was driven off his throne. But Rome, which was not built in a day, took a long time falling. The process was so slow and so gradual that most Romans did not realise how their old world was coming to an end. They complained about the unrest of the times—they grumbled about the high prices of food and about the low wages of the workmen—they cursed the profiteers who had a monopoly of ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... to the love of money was expelling one devil by another, and to restrain the necessitous by fear of fine would be extremely cruel and unequal. These and other considerations are very properly urged, and the same feeling is manifested in the laws by the gradual abolition of nearly all pecuniary mulcts. The practice, it ought to be added, was by no means peculiar to Yale College, but was transferred, even in a milder form, from the colleges of ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... of his residence at Cambridge, a gradual but very perceptible improvement in the cheerfulness of his spirits gladdened his family and his friends; intervals there doubtless were, when the continual seriousness of his habits of thought, or the ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... of La-Haut, which is quite literally an account of an Alpine village, and of its gradual vulgarisation by an enterprising man of business. Of the ordinary novel-interests there is little more than the introduction at the beginning of a gentleman who has triangled as usual, till, the husband has, in his, the lover's, presence, most inconsiderately shot ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... interests and convenience, a species of general regard had ultimately grown up in reference to Hester Prynne. It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. In this matter of Hester Prynne there was ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... right in this hotel—a mighty good place to be. Things of all kinds have been floating about in the air for months; the precipitation is beginning now. The psychological moment has arrived—you have brought it with you, Mrs. Barslow. The moon-flower of Lattimore's 'gradual, healthy growth' is going to ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... the imposition of new obligations, or a new prohibition, not to be found, as I think, either in the Constitution or any act of Congress. I have said nothing on the expediency of abolition, immediate or gradual, or the reasons which ought to weigh with Congress should that question be proposed. I can, however, well conceive what would, as I think, be a natural and fair mode of reasoning ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... unexpected and superior foresight in his wife, although he was, like all husbands, a little startled by it. He tried to dismiss it from his mind. But looking down from the hillside upon his little venture, where gradual increase and prosperity had not been beyond his faculties to control and understand, he found himself haunted by the more ambitious projects of his helpmate. From his own knowledge of men, he doubted if Don ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte

... to confess to mistakes, and with frank and proper exultation pointed out the gradual improvement and the triumphant result. Plenty of good stories and much hearty laughter came in among the more tragic episodes. We saw John Fiske take it all in, swaying in his chair ponderously back and forth, but the War ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer

... did a great work, not lightly to be disparaged. The results of their labours were not of a kind to be very perceptible on the surface, and are therefore particularly liable to be under-estimated. There was neither show nor excitement in the gradual process by which Christianity regained throughout the country the confidence which for a time had been most evidently shaken. Proofs and evidences had been often dinned into careless ears without much visible ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... was not easy, with the face of his beloved wife fresh before him, to compose his mind to what it must bear. His hold on life was strong, and it was very, very hard, to loosen; by gradual efforts and degrees unclosed a little here, it clenched the tighter there; and when he brought his strength to bear on that hand and it yielded, this was closed again. There was a hurry, too, in all his thoughts, a turbulent and heated working of ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... new way I had discovered, through the prettiest undulating meadow, half-field, half-orchard, where trees loaded with ripening cider apples and green crabs made a variety among the natural foresters. Under one of these, as we climbed the slope—for field, beech-wood, and common formed a gradual ascent—we saw a ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... ready to sail," said Cleggett, standing by the new wheel with a swelling heart, and sweeping the vessel from bowsprit to rudder with a gradual glance. ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis

... that he had proceeded down more than half the side of the mountain. It ended precipitously in a dark and narrow ravine, formed on the other side by an opposite mountain, the lofty steep of which was crested by a city gently rising on a gradual slope. ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... barons,—the total eradication of the Jacobite party, which, averse to intermingle with the English, or adopt their customs, long continued to pride themselves upon maintaining ancient Scottish manners and customs,—commenced this innovation. The gradual influx of wealth, and extension of commerce, have since united to render the present people of Scotland a class of beings as different from their grandfathers as the existing English are from those of Queen Elizabeth's time, The political and economical effects of these changes have been ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... but in the race. We cannot doubt that the ancestors of these wingless insects possessed wings, which in the course of time have been lost by the whole species or by the members of the female sex. It is generally assumed that this loss has been gradual, and so in many cases it probably may have been. But there are species of insects in which some generations are winged and others wingless; a winged mother gives birth to wingless offspring, and a wingless parent ...
— The Life-Story of Insects • Geo. H. Carpenter

... and the husband followed his fondly-loved companion, dying (so Ella asserted sobbingly) of no disease in particular, but of a gradual wasting away, the result, as she believed, of a slowly breaking heart. She thus found herself left alone and almost friendless in a strange land, and, after taking counsel with such friends as her father had made, she had, with their ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood

... Land itself, showed in time Norman states, Norman laws, Norman civilisation, and all alike felt the impulse of Norman energy and inspiration. England lay ready to hand for Norman invasion—the hope of peaceable succession to the saintly Edward the Confessor had to be abandoned by William; the gradual permeation of sluggish England with Norman earls, churchmen, courtiers, had been comprehended and checked by Earl Godwin and his sons (themselves of Danish race); but there still remained the way of open war and an appeal to religious ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt

... we shall quote in evidence of our thesis will be few in number. Here, if anywhere in the course of this discussion, the author is conscious that he is treading on the perilous ground of conjecture, and that what seems to him a clear, if delicate and gradual, transition in the intellectual movement of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, may not be equally plain to others. The gradual awakening of the soul of a people is a phenomenon which may produce a different impression on each spectator. Time will ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... of towns and villages in Canada are never selected at random. In England, a concurrence of circumstances has generally led to the gradual formation of hamlets, villages, and towns. In many instances, towns have grown up in barbarous ages around a place of refuge during war; around a fortalice or castle, and more frequently around the ford over a river, where the ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... our instance, passed a law providing for the gradual emancipation of slaves in the West India colonies. This law, so far as this department is aware, remains unexecuted, and it is feared that the recently-issued regulations, professedly for its execution, are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... a number of years, but after a time it is desirable to renew them. This is done by cutting out the arm and starting a new one from a cane that has been previously grown for such purposes. It is preferable to renew systematically only one or, at most, two arms on a vine each year. This gradual renewal does not disturb the vigor of the vine, but keeps it productive, healthy, and strong. The pruning can be quickly and easily done if systematically practiced from the ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick

... interest that was almost awe; for the very thought of love thrilled him with a sense of new and strange life,—unknown, unguessed of, as heaven itself, but as certain, and hardly less beautiful. So he watched the gradual progress of these two, who were passing through that which was so untrodden a mystery to him. If he ever thought about their love in a more definite way, it was—oh, the Visionary!—to congratulate himself ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various

... of Discipline had sanctioned and recommended to meet weekly for the study and interpretation of the Scriptures.[275] The introduction of what are called, but erroneously, lay elders[276] to the place they have so long worthily filled in the presbyteries was a still more gradual process. The presbytery of St Andrews, even down to the close of the sixteenth century, appears to have contained no elders save the doctors, under which name were comprehended the masters of the university, both professors of divinity and professors of philosophy, and even the doctor or master ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... them. De Leyre informed me in his letters that heinous things were attributed to me. Diderot more mysteriously told me the same thing, and when I came to an explanation with both, the whole was reduced to the heads of accusation of which I have already spoken. I perceived a gradual increase of coolness in the letters from Madam d'Houdetot. This I could not attribute to Saint Lambert; he continued to write to me with the same friendship, and came to see me after his return. It was ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... most successful. Rev. Joseph A. Villelli, who was ordained June 23, 1910, has managed these with tact and ability "and the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved." A separate Sunday school is maintained, but with the idea of gradual amalgamation, a process that is also proving its wisdom along other lines ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer

... scholars of many lands have made us acquainted with Babylonian and Assyrian temples and palaces, and with many a great royal inscription. Great libraries, made of brick tablets, have been discovered buried under the ruins of the cities, and the gradual decipherment and arrangement of this old literature is proceeding as fast as able and devoted workers can overtake it. Those who know the subject best declare that no complete history of Babylonian religion can yet be written. The texts now in our possession ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... to V are arranged chronologically, so as to show the gradual growth of the German influence. Translations and poems are therefore reprinted under the date of their first appearance; later publications of them in the magazines are here recorded simply by title, with a note giving the earliest date. The texts are reprinted exactly as they appeared in ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis

... induce humility, and humility is the beginning of knowledge. After a period of pure imitation you will begin, at first almost imperceptibly, to diverge into a direction of your own. Then proceed warily, making the curve very gradual. ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett

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

... farther down the sides of the mountain than in summer, we were equipped, under the direction of our guide, with coarse woollen stockings to be drawn over the pantaloons, thick-soled shoes, and woollen caps. Mounting our mules, we left Catania in the morning. The road was good and of gradual ascent until we reached Nicolosi, about fourteen miles up the mountain. We saw little that was particularly interesting on our route except that the hamlets through which we passed bore fearful evidences ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... it was gradual, penetrating, effective, sincere. Those who wish to gratify curiosity concerning the death-bed of one who had so notoriously sinned, will read Burnet's account of Rochester's illness and death with deep interest; and nothing is so interesting ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... winding along, with fair stretches of scenery on either hand, between fields fragrant of Autumn, overhead the broad soft purple sky. First East Dean was passed, a few rustic houses nestling, as the name implies, in its gentle hollow. After that, another gradual ascent, and presently the carriage paused at a point of the road immediately above the village to which they ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... guide, in the most important requirement of Science, it is unnecessary to enter into an exposition of minor defects, not the least of which is the slowness with which conclusions must necessarily be arrived at, when they are reached only by the gradual accumulation of Facts and the derivation of a Law from these. A Method or a Process which lacks that which is the very essence of Science—the power of making known, of introducing certainty into investigation, may be an important factor in the true Scientific Method, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... smile. Victoria adored him openly, and Krak did not understand why he was not odious. Thus he conquered the Court, and I was the first of his slaves. It would be tedious to anybody except myself to trace the gradual progress of our four years' intimacy and friendship, of my four years' training and enlightenment. Shall I summarize it and say that Owen taught me that there were folks outside palaces, and that the greatness of a station, ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... downwards, keeping about a quarter of a mile to the west of it, till, south of the old church itself, the road at last crosses the wide and gravelly bed, in which a fillet of clear water is running. Then we ascend a gradual slope of sandy and micaceous soil, thinly covered by tufts of grama; a wide, circular depression strikes our eye; beyond it flat mounds of scarcely 0.50 m.—20 in.—elevation are covered extensively with scattered and broken stones. Further on distinct ...
— Historical Introduction to Studies Among the Sedentary Indians of New Mexico; Report on the Ruins of the Pueblo of Pecos • Adolphus Bandelier

... had come prepared to carry out the resolution she had formed and "break" to Isaura "the truth," that which the girl now demanded. But then she had meant to break the truth in her own gentle, gradual way. Thus suddenly called upon, her courage failed her. She burst into tears. Isaura gazed at ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the Danube wound toward the horizon like a band of gold and fire, and the vine-dressers on all the hills throughout the country were glad and gay. I was sitting with the Porter on the bench before my cottage, enjoying the mild air and the gradual fading to twilight of the brilliant day. Suddenly the horns of the returning hunting-party sounded on the air; the notes were tossed from hill to hill by the echoes. My soul delighted in it all, and I sprang up and exclaimed, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... fortnight the patient began slowly to mend. His emaciation was extreme, and his recovery very gradual. After a few weeks he was able to travel. He was then on a route where wagons passed over a rough road, teaming the articles needed in a new country. Crockett hired a wagoner to give him a seat in his wagon and to convey ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott

... gradual one, down into a beautiful valley. For a mile or two the road was perfectly straight and the rider, shading his eyes, glanced along it. In the distance a moving object attracted his attention, and as he gazed at it, long and strainingly, ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... live and die as ignorant as bricks and stones. The methods used in the asylums are rational. The teacher exactly measures the child's capacity, to begin with; and from thence onwards the tasks imposed are nicely gauged to the gradual development of that capacity, the tasks keep pace with the steps of the child's progress, they don't jump miles and leagues ahead of it by irrational caprice and land in vacancy—according to the average public-school plan. In the public school, apparently, they teach the child to spell cat, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Personally I have only been along the first stage to Niu Wang, 5,000 feet; and although aneroids proved that the highest point on the road was about 6,600, I can easily imagine a person not provided with such instruments stating that the descent was fairly gradual. From Niu Wang there must be a steady drop to the Salween, probably along the side of the stream which ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... cathedral in all France, with regard to its bijou setting, certainly no other so accessible to the English tourist, has more dainty charm than this not very grand, but graceful, church at St. Lo. Its towers, though not uniform as to size, are of apparently the same gradual proportions, and, if not the most impressive, are at least the most beautiful in Normandy. They rise high above the wooded crest which encircles their base in true picture-book fashion. The attraction of the river, ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun

... of boats varies much on different rivers. On this one there are two sizes. Ours was a small one, flat-bottomed, 25 feet long by 2.5 broad, drawing 6 inches, very low in the water, and with sides slightly curved inwards. The prow forms a gradual long curve from the body of the ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird

... period of time, I had observed that there was a gradual mixing in of the country gentry among the town's folks. This was partly to be ascribed to a necessity rising out of the French Revolution, whereby men of substance thought it an expedient policy to relax in their ancient maxims of family pride and consequence; ...
— The Provost • John Galt

... in the meantime, been stopped, and the force-pump put slowly in motion, so that the submersion of the hull might be sufficiently gradual to escape notice. ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... got to do better if we want to win any matches," declared Gif. "Now then, go at it as if you meant it and see that you mind the rules." And after that the playing showed gradual improvement. ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield

... he realized what it would mean to him if she could not forgive what he had done. He had imagined it once before—the slow withdrawal of her eyes, the gradual tightening of the lips, the little instinctive movement away ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole

... the final failure of the Reformation was the tardiness with which it came to France. It did not begin to make its really popular appeal until some years after 1536, when Calvin's writings attained a gradual publicity. This was twenty years later than the Reformation came forcibly home to the Germans, and in those twenty years it had made its greatest conquests north of the Rhine. Of causes as well as of men it is true that there is a tide in their affairs which, taken at the flood, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... difficult to answer, and we must not in any haste rush into mistakes. We found that the mother-age was a transitional stage in the history of the evolution of society, and we have indicated the stages of its gradual decline. It is thus proved to have been a less stable social system than the patriarchate which again succeeded it, or it would not have perished in the struggle with it. Must we conclude from this that the one form of the family is higher than the other—that the superior advantage rests with the ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley

... love—there had she gone through love's short and exhausting process of lone emotion;—the doubt, the hope, the ecstasy; the reverse, the terror; the inanimate despondency, the agonised despair! And there now, sadly and patiently, she awaited the gradual march of inevitable decay. And books and pictures, and musical instruments, and marble busts, half shadowed by classic draperies—and all the delicate elegancies of womanly refinement—still invested the chamber with a grace as cheerful as ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... periods of incubation, which differ with the individual, and with the particular cause and degree of excitement, yet evidently go through a strictly self-limited series of evolutions, at the end of which, their result—an act of violence, a paroxysm of tears, a gradual subsidence into repose, or whatever it may be—declares itself, like the last stage of an attack of fever and ague. No one can observe children without noticing that there is a personal equation, to use the astronomer's language, in their tempers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... since fertility is the chief factor in fixing the type, in the absence of selection and repression, the race appears doomed to remain at the dead level of mediocrity. The tremendous significance of this fact is that the welfare of the race—the gradual substitution of a superior for the present mediocre type—rests absolutely upon the willingness and ability of the superior class to do their full share in propagating ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... the softening effects of advancing age have struck me very much in what I have heard or seen here and elsewhere. I just now spoke of the sweetening process that authors undergo. Do you know that in the gradual passage from maturity to helplessness the harshest characters sometimes have a period in which they are gentle and placid as young children? I have heard it said, but I cannot be sponsor for its truth, that the famous chieftain, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... will save us from such extreme manifestations of democratic tyranny as those to which allusion has been made above. The special danger in England would appear rather to arise from the probability of gradual dry rot, due to prolonged offence against the infallible and relentless laws of economic science. Both British employers of labour and British workmen are insular in their habits of thought, and insular ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... an inexplicable instinct; which is supposed to preclude any further investigation: but as animals seem to have undergone great changes, as well as the inanimate parts of the earth, and are probably still in a state of gradual improvement; it is not unreasonable to conclude, that some of these actions both of large animals and of insects, may have been acquired in a state preceding their present one; and have been derived from the ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin

... was sweeping down upon him. Would there be enough of it to overflow the crest line of his own "fill" or not? If it could stand the first on-thrust there was one chance in a hundred of its safety, provided the wing-walls and the foundations of the culvert held up its arch, thus affording gradual relief until the flood ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... have begun to love your daughter from the first hour in which I saw her; but I think the growth of the interest was so gradual that I was not conscious of it until ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth

... France. Cadorna issued a statement to the Italian people in which he warned them that the preliminary successes which, he said, had made good the strategical defects of their frontier, would be followed by a long stage of gradual approaches against ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various

... called, on the one hand, all birds and insects, on the other hand, all liquids, quack. Finally, it called all coins also quack, after having seen an eagle on a French sou. Thus the child came, by gradual generalization, to the point of designating a fly, wine, and a piece of money by the same onomatopoetic word, although only the first perception contained the characteristic that gave ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer

... prospect is before you! the commencement of the civilization of Africa, the extension of our knowledge of all the kingdoms of nature, the production of great material benefits to the Old World, the gradual healing of that foul and fetid ulcer, the slave-trade, the one grand disgrace and weakness of Christendom, and that has defiled the hands of all those who have had any dealings with it; and last, but not least—nay, the greatest of all, and the true ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... cannot go wrong in accepting the statement of Darwin, who observes that "we must admit that man has inhabited South America for an immensely long period, inasmuch as any change in climate, effected by the elevation of the land must have been extremely gradual." ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings

... Egypt give him Cranaus, a native, for his successor. The darkness of fable closes over the interval between the reign of Cranaus and the time of Theseus: if tradition be any guide whatsoever, the history of that period was the history of the human race—it was the gradual passage of men from a barbarous state to the dawn of civilization—and the national mythi only gather in wild and beautiful fictions round every landmark in their slow and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... declared one day, when the work was just about to be delivered, that the picture no longer pleased him,—since, while it had turned out quite well in its details, it was not well composed as a whole, because it had been produced in this gradual manner; and he had committed a blunder at the outset, in not at least devising a general plan for light and shade, as well as for color, according to which the single flowers might have been arranged. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... sort of love, that. Yet that is precisely how we men and women do love; taking only what gives us pleasure, repaying the rest with anger. There would have arisen the unkind words that can never be recalled; the ugly silences; the gradual withdrawing from one another. ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome

... receive warnings of this kind either believe in them or do not believe in them. If they believe in them, it is quite natural that they should not think first of all of the scientific interest of their trouble, or of putting down in writing and thus authenticating its premonitory symptoms and gradual evolution. If they do not believe in them, it is no less natural that they should not proceed to speak or take notice of inanities of which they do not recognize the value until after they have lost the ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck

... English Chaplain in Holland. Joost Van Vondel (1587-1679), born at Cologne of Anabaptist parents, became a Roman Catholic in 1641. Most of his thirty-two tragedies are on classical or religious subjects, and in the latter may be traced his gradual change of faith. 'Gysbrecht van Amstel'(1637) is a play, the action of which takes place on Christmas Day in the thirteenth century. The scene is laid at Amsterdam, which is captured by a ruse like that of the Greeks at Troy. The play appealed strongly ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron

... attempted to describe in the first chapter the ancient peopling of America from north-eastern Asia, but it might be useful if I gave here some description of the Eskimo and Amerindian tribes of the Canadian Dominion at the time of its gradual discovery by Europeans, especially during the great explorations of the eighteenth ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... this case the peculiarity is due to the fact that the strong westerly setting winds which sweep over the country encounter no high mountains until they strike the Andean chain. They journey up a long and rather gradual slope, where the precipitation is gradually induced, the process being completed when they strike the mountain wall. Passing over its summit, they appear as dry winds on the ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler



Words linked to "Gradual" :   grade, gentle, stepwise, piecemeal, easy, Church of Rome, slow, bit-by-bit, Western Church, gradatory, antiphony, gradational, sudden, Roman Catholic Church, antiphon, gradualness, graduality, steep



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