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Intrinsic   Listen
adjective
Intrinsic  adj.  
1.
Inward; internal; hence, true; genuine; real; essential; inherent; not merely apparent or accidental; opposed to extrinsic; as, the intrinsic value of gold or silver; the intrinsic merit of an action; the intrinsic worth or goodness of a person. "He was better qualified than they to estimate justly the intrinsic value of Grecian philosophy and refinement."
2.
(Anat.) Included wholly within an organ or limb, as certain groups of muscles; opposed to extrinsic.
Intrinsic energy of a body (Physics), the work it can do in virtue of its actual condition, without any supply of energy from without.
Intrinsic equation of a curve (Geom.), the equation which expresses the relation which the length of a curve, measured from a given point of it, to a movable point, has to the angle which the tangent to the curve at the movable point makes with a fixed line.
Intrinsic value. See the Note under Value, n.
Synonyms: Inherent; innate; natural; real; genuine.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Intrinsic" Quotes from Famous Books



... with sound and legitimate logic) Lord Mollyborough, an absentee nobleman, and proprietor of the Tullystretchem estate. That the said Cornelius Dalton entered upon the farm of Cargah, with a handsome capital and abundant stock, as became a man bent on improving it, for both the intrinsic and external edification and comfort of himself and family. That the rent was originally very high; and, upon complaint of this, several well indited remonstrances, urged with most persuasive and enthusiastic eloquence, as the ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... great value. Eighty thousand louis d'or in ready money; a service of gold plate of twenty covers, which formerly belonged to the Kings of France; two small boxes full of diamonds and brilliants, the intrinsic worth of which was estimated at forty-eight millions of livres—and a great number of jewels; among others, the crown diamond, called here the Regents', and in your country the Pitt Diamond, fell, with other riches, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... The entrance has been tampered with and those outer walls built; and look at all that debris in the shaft. Yet, as you say, the obvious things of intrinsic value ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... a sacrifice is that of giving. The value of the gift is not, however, the intrinsic worth of the thing given, nor even the pleasure or advantage the recipient derives therefrom, but, singularly enough, the amount of pain the giver experiences in depriving himself of it! This is also often seen in ordinary transactions. A rich man who subscribes a hundred ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... man of liberal education and intrinsic worth; he had seen much of the world, and his mind had been enriched and ripened by varied and adventurous experience. Of an ancient English family in Yorkshire, he had entered the army at the age of twenty-one; ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... worth about $2.50. Of the value of the gold gulden of Luther's time various estimates are given. Schaff, Church History, 3 vi., p. 470, calls it a guilder and says it was equal to about $4.00 of the present day. Preserved Smith, Life of Luther, p. 367, fixes its intrinsic value at about fifty cents, but believes its purchasing power was almost twenty times as great. To us a gold piece worth fifty cents seems almost impossible; but the New English Dictionary quotes, under the year 1611: "Florin ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... into thin pieces, of extent sufficient to face the whole surface of the walls, and to adopt a method of construction irregular enough to admit the insertion of fragmentary sculptures; rather with a view of displaying their intrinsic beauty, than of setting them to any regular service in the ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... unto this day. It has, moreover, the special value of illustrating the reciprocal needs and offices of the army and the navy, than which no lesson is more valuable to a nation situated as ours is. Protected from any serious attempt at invasion by our isolated position, and by our vast intrinsic strength, we are nevertheless vulnerable in an extensive seaboard, greater, relatively to our population and wealth—great as they are—than that of any other state. Upon this, moreover, rests an immense coasting trade, the importance of which to our internal commercial system is now scarcely realized, ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... was draughty: the steps were narrow and uncomfortable; no older person would have remained in such a place. Moreover, these two young people were strangers to each other; neither had said anything in which the other had discovered the slightest intrinsic interest; there had not arisen between them the beginnings of congeniality, or even of friendliness—but stairways near ballrooms have more to answer for than have moonlit lakes and mountain sunsets. Some day the laws of glamour must be discovered, because they are so important that ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... a call those stones had for him! Did they mean anything to Hawksley aside from their intrinsic value? But for the nebulous idea, originally, that the emeralds were mixed up somewhere in this adventure, Cutty knew that he would have sent Hawksley to a hospital, left him to his fate, and never known who ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... April to October of any year, and Wall Street would be a howling wilderness. The Street makes it easier to exchange a dozen eggs for three spools of silk, or a pound of butter for a hat pin, but that's all; it never created half the intrinsic value of twelve eggs or sixteen ounces of butter. It's only the farmer who is a wealth producer, and it's high time that he should be recognized as such. He's the husbandman of all life; without him the world would be depopulated in three years. You don't half appreciate the ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter

... regard this fact with pride, rather than with envy. They accept the principle that some unusual advantage should attend exceptional and unremitting responsibility. Whatever path an American officer may walk, he enjoys prestige. Though little is known of his intrinsic merit, he will be given the respect of his fellow citizens, unless he ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense

... efforts were successful, and the incredulous Robert beheld his uncle invert his precious burden and send a clinking, intrinsic shower of coin to ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder

... small islands, or rather barren rocks. Not a tree grows on them—not a blade of grass. The feathered race for ages past, probably since the last flood rolled over the face of the globe, have made them their abode. Strange as it may seem, they are of more intrinsic value than the richest mines of Potosi; yet their produce is all on the surface, and to be obtained but with little labour. They are the three Chincha Islands, and their produce is guano. It is ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston

... spoke several times, and never once mentioned my name, it will be seen that whatever may have been his thoughts on the occasion, he had the delicacy and good taste to make no allusion whatever to the subject, which, but for its intrinsic importance, I should not so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 14, 1841 • Various

... of direct induction usually no better than empiricism. It is therefore, out of all proportion, more uncertain than in any other science, whether two inquirers equally competent and equally disinterested will take the same view of the evidence, or arrive at the same conclusion. When to this intrinsic difficulty is added the infinitely greater extent to which personal or class interests and predilections interfere with impartial judgment, the hope of such accordance of opinion among sociological inquirers as would obtain, in mere deference ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... long reside there. In the second year of her marriage with Kalitine, who had succeeded at the end of a few days in gaining her affections, Pokrovskoe was exchanged for another estate—one of much greater intrinsic value, but unattractive in appearance, and not provided with a mansion. At the same time Kalitine purchased a house in the town of O., and there he and his wife permanently established themselves. A large garden was attached to it, extending in one direction ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... right side, opposite thereto. Moreover, He made, besides this, the diaphragm and the viscera and set up the bones of the breast and latticed them with the ribs." Q "How many ventricles are there in a man's head?" "Three, which contain five faculties, styled the intrinsic senses, to wit, common sense, imagination, the thinking faculty, perception and memory." Q "Describe to me the configuration of the bones."—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... to be augmented by premature disclosures. Ultimately satisfied as to the origin of the fragments, he entreats the reader not, indeed, to surrender, but simply to suspend his judgment until he has carefully examined them, conceiving that, apart from all external proof, they rest upon an intrinsic evidence, the force of which it will be difficult to resist. Nay, he is even of opinion that an impartial student will find it easier to believe in their planetary origin than in their emanating from an ordinary human brain. ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)

... life. Latin and Greek and Hebrew had become the touchstone of education, primarily because they were the "holy" languages, and after Religion had long ceased to be the mainspring of education, their intrinsic merits fell into the background. Utility became a more pungent argument. Secondly, the Governors decided that the Endowment and Statutes, together with the particulars of the income of the School, should be laid before a competent Chancery Barrister who should suggest a system of education ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell

... was induced to publish the poem, but more, we understand, on the ground of radical sympathies in Mr. Fox and the author than on that of its intrinsic worth. ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... reckless extravagance, passed under the hammer, they had gone for a song. She made the same forecast regarding the contents of Tory Hill. Much money had been spent on them, but, with the exception perhaps of some of the old portraits, there was little of real intrinsic value. She made the reflection coldly, drearily, as bearing on things that had ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King

... these external probabilites and intrinsic evidences of falsehood, we add that, immediately on its publication, Lesley wrote an answer to it, denying its main statements as mere lies, and that his book was never replied to, we will not be in a hurry to adopt any statement ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... as I conceive, impossible to avoid it. There were intrinsic difficulties in the thing, an artificial embarrassment from the manner of proceeding on the part of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various

... was staying in the house of that lady of whom I have spoken before, [4] it was necessary for me to be very watchful over myself, and keep continually in mind the intrinsic vanity of all the things of this life, because of the great esteem I was held in, and of the praises bestowed on me. There was much there to which I might have become attached, if I had looked only to myself; but I looked to Him who sees things as they really are, not to let me go out of His hand. ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... But has this changed the disposition by which it has heretofore been fostered? Has it converted the South? Have they been brought to look upon it as an evil which should be given up on account of its own intrinsic wrong? We would that we could answer these questions in the affirmative. But there are acts too patent to be denied, which show that the virus of this great iniquity still rankles in the body politic; that the system of slavery ...
— The United States in the Light of Prophecy • Uriah Smith

... are republished in order to make the Edition a complete collection of Mrs. Ewing's works, rather than because of their intrinsic worth. The fact that she did not republish the papers during her life shows that she did not estimate them very highly herself; but as each one has a special interest connected with it, I feel I am not violating her wishes in bringing ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... Intrinsic advantages Hygienic advantages Acetylene and paraffin oil Blackened ceilings Cost of acetylene lighting Cost of acetylene and coal-gas Cost of acetylene and electric lighting Cost of acetylene and paraffin oil ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... hostility of his competitors. If a foreigner speaks English to us easily and quickly, we demand no more of him; we are satisfied, we are delighted, and any mistakes of grammar or pronunciation do but increase the charm, investing with more than its intrinsic quality any good thing said—making us marvel at it and exchange fatuous glances over it, as we do when a little child says something sensible. But heaven protect us from the foreigner who pauses, searches, ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... organization of banks and the issue of circulating bank notes upon securities that were capable of being fraudulently overvalued by misrepresentation, and, as a matter of course, advantage was taken of the laxity of the provisions of the law, and securities which had no intrinsic value in fact were made available as the foundation of bank issues, with the inevitable result ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... himself; "it's rich abundance compared with his former resources." Ralph was a clever man; but Ralph had never—to his own sense—been so clever as when he observed, in petto, that under the guise of caring only for intrinsic values Osmond lived exclusively for the world. Far from being its master as he pretended to be, he was its very humble servant, and the degree of its attention was his only measure of success. He lived with his eye on it from morning till night, and the world was so stupid it never suspected ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 2 (of 2) • Henry James

... be equipped with the minimum amount of liquid resources necessary to revive her hopes, to renew her economic organization, and to enable her great intrinsic wealth to function for the benefit of her workers. It is useless at the present time to elaborate such schemes in further detail. A great change is necessary in public opinion before the proposals of this chapter can enter the region of practical politics, and we must await the progress of events ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... Congress should appropriate to the purchase was forty thousand dollars; and considering how that assembly is constituted, how little most of its members know or care about pictures, or of their intrinsic value, and how utterly unimbued they are with any conception of the moral worth of art to a young nation, I conceive it very creditable to the body that the motion was negatived ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... tried his patience, for in him there was a strong leaning the other way. But, as I remarked and urged: Had he not already gained superior excellence in delivering, by way of speech or prose, what thoughts were in him, which is the grand and only intrinsic function of a writing man, call him by what title you will? Cultivate that superior excellence till it become a perfect and superlative one. Why sing your bits of thoughts, if you can contrive to speak them? By your thought, not by your mode ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... property; to shrink, from that engagement is a treason not to be forgiven. Let no man suppose that if, in this unexpected struggle, his majesty's arms should be compelled to yield to an overwhelming force, the province will be eventually abandoned; the endeared relations of its first settlers, the intrinsic value of its commerce, and the pretensions of its powerful rival to repossess the Canadas, are pledges that no peace will be established between the United States and Great Britain and Ireland, of which ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... General Lee, which produced much comment in Richmond, was done by a deaf-mute, Mr. Bruce. It was to have been bought by the State of Virginia; possibly from sympathy with the subject and the condition of the artist, rather than because of intrinsic merit ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... fancifully cognisant of "the music of the spheres"; better this with only a garret for your environment, than to be a wealthy Peter Bell in a palace, or a lord of many acres who sees nothing beyond its intrinsic value in a Turner, and finds Shelley poor stuff and Tennyson only a rhymster. It is the artistic temperament that lives up to the glories of Nature, and understands the parables; and you need not be a writing poet to have it. There is many a poet who never wrote a line, many ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... value on my work as soon as I had shewn you on what account he was worthy your attention. I also foresaw that you would not only admire and commend it, but would desire to have it. Though I know his intrinsic value, and that my continuing master of him would render my name immortal in the world; yet I am not so fond of fame but I can resign him, to gratify your majesty; however, in making this declaration, I have another to add, without which I cannot resolve to part with him, and perhaps ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... concise and lucid terms almost every ingredient used in paint and colour manufacture is described, together with the methods of testing their intrinsic and ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech

... said that the vases are Italian medicine jars—literally that. They were once used by the Italian chemists, for their drugs, and some are of astonishing workmanship and have great intrinsic value, as well as the added value of ...
— The Art of Interior Decoration • Grace Wood

... be more amusing if this etiquette were relaxed will, we suppose, be acknowledged. But would it be less dignified or less useful? What do we mean when we say that one past event is important and another insignificant? No past event has any intrinsic importance. The knowledge of it is valuable only as it leads us to form just calculations with respect to the future. A history which does not serve this purpose, though it may be filled with battles, treaties, and commotions, is as useless as the series of turnpike ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... effect upon them. So far, again, from regarding the abstract intellect as a vast Juggernaut machine which absorbs and crushes the individual thinker, it treats him individually as having his own constitution, raison d'etre, and intrinsic interest, and credits him with a power to make new truths and to enrich the resources of thought. Each thinker has before him an individual situation, a system of aims and values, a stock of knowledge and of means from which he ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray

... school. I have nothing to say against these motives so far as they go, but they are inadequate. The relation between the piece of work to be done and affection for a third person is external, not intrinsic. It is therefore liable to break down whenever the external conditions are changed. Moreover, this attachment to a particular person, while in a way social, may become so isolated and exclusive as to be selfish in quality. In any case, the child should gradually grow ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey

... to the pages of The Family Herald. In the superfine circles of the Sniffy, this fact is sufficient to condemn them unread. For of all fools the most incorrigible is surely the conventional critic who judges literary wares not by their intrinsic merit or demerit, but by the periodical in which they first saw the light. The same author may write in the same day two articles, putting his best work and thought into each, but if he sends one to The Saturday Review and the other to The Family Herald, those ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... testers of the high-post bedsteads and concealed the dark cavities beneath, and the coverlet besprinkled with bunches of impossible flowers done in home-concocted shades of color upon heavy snow-white linen, we fall far short of the intrinsic ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler

... tints of well-remembered childhood. In short, our health ideals should rise from the mere wish to keep out of a sick bed to an eagerness to become a well-spring of energy. Only then can we realize the intrinsic wholesomeness ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk

... oneself is wasted, and I think that people have a right to choose what they do enjoy. I am inclined to believe that we are here to live, and that work is only a part of our material limitations. A great deal of the usefulness of work is not its intrinsic value, but its value to ourselves. It isn't only what we perform that matters; it is the fact that work forces us into relations with other people, which I take to be the experience we all need. ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... Sandwich Islanders, the North American Indians, also have their legends of the origin and altered fortunes of the human race. The resemblances between many of these stories are better accounted for by the intrinsic similarities of the subject, of the mind, of nature, and of mental action, than by the supposition of derivation ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... during the last generation has invaded all the theatres in the world, the more so as I lay myself open to the suspicion of doing so in the self-conceited interest of a work which perhaps for different reasons, derivable from intrinsic faults, may be exposed to the displeasure of the public. However that may be, your care for my work is in the circumstances all the more gratifying and meritorious, and I offer you my most cordial thanks. The pleasure of a visit to you at Weimar I am compelled, for reasons ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)

... and bend them to a task. They are not, as we say, creatures of environment, but creators of it. Of other people's environment they become the most active part—the part which sets the fashion. What they initiate, others imitate. Theirs is a kind of intrinsic prestige. These are the natural leaders of men, whether it be as head of the gang or as ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... primarily as models for teaching the methods of exposition employed in the explanation of mechanisms, processes, and ideas, they are nevertheless sufficiently representative of certain tendencies in science to be of intrinsic value. Indeed, each ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent

... much, that is, beyond what I have to say of all the North. It is a large, well-built, half- finished city lying on a convenient waterway, and spreading itself out with promises of a wide and still wider prosperity. It has about it perhaps as little of intrinsic interest as any of those large Western towns which I visited. It is not so pleasant as Milwaukee, nor so picturesque as St. Paul, nor so grand as Chicago, nor so civilized as Cleveland, nor so busy as Buffalo. Indeed, Detroit is neither pleasant nor picturesque at ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... is the larynx. This consists of four cartilages, with their connecting ligaments,—the thyroid, the cricoid, and the two arytenoids, and of nine so-called intrinsic muscles,—two crico-thyroid, right and left, two thyro-arytenoid, two posterior crico-arytenoid, two lateral crico-arytenoid, and one arytenoideus. The inner edges of the thyro-arytenoid muscles form the vocal cords. The hyoid bone, serving as a medium of attachment for the tongue, may also ...
— The Psychology of Singing - A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern • David C. Taylor

... his father some three years ago, and when, after eight years, Molly had still remained an only child, and one of the wrong kind, of no intrinsic value to the family, Lady Mary decided that by-gones should be by-gones, and became formally reconciled to Charles, with whom she had already found it exceedingly inconvenient, and consequently ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley

... an American inventor named REMINGTON—who a year or two since addressed to the late Mr. Senator Lewis, of Alabama, a history of his adventures, which was published in the Merchant's Magazine—must be well-remembered, for its intrinsic interest, and on account of the denials and refutations of portions of it by certain persons in London to whom allusion was made in Mr. Remington's letter. The invention, the Remington Bridge, seems now to be exciting no little attention both in England and in this country. The principle which gives ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... attacks upon the attackers of fairy tales, by Miss Repplier: "That which is vital in literature or tradition, which has survived the obscurity and wreckage of the past, whether as legend, or ballad, or mere nursery rhyme, has survived in right of some intrinsic merit of its own, and will not be snuffed out of existence by any of our precautionary or hygienic measures. . . . Puss in Boots is one long record of triumphant effrontery and deception. An honest and self-respecting lad would have explained to the king that he was not ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... Old Man of Peru. Who never knew what he should do; So he tore off his hair, and behaved like a bear, That intrinsic ...
— Nonsense Books • Edward Lear

... destined, from the intrinsic interest of the subject, and the fullness of detail which is spread before the reader, to a very wide circulation. The idea of ascending Mount Ararat seems to have risen with the traveler to a passion; ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... especially one, for it is of gold; and my fear is lest the thief, ignorant of its historic worth, may, in order to cover up his crime, have it melted. I would willingly pay ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousand times its intrinsic value rather than have it destroyed. I shall tell him only what is necessary. So, please, let me answer any questions he may ask; unless, of course, I ask you or refer to either of you for the answer." We both nodded acquiescence. Then a thought struck ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... then, I'm off to get it first thing in the morning," said the little fellow gleefully. "I prize that stone far above its intrinsic value, for it was given to me by my beautiful Princess, you know, and I would not lose it for anything. But, I say! what's that curious-looking old lamp in your hand? ...
— The Mysterious Shin Shira • George Edward Farrow

... bought several hundred. It was an act dictated by sentiment rather than by a desire for enjoyment. The cigarettes of Simon Arzt of Port Said were excellent, the best he had ever smoked; but the significance they had acquired for him was not due to any intrinsic virtue of theirs. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... pictures in the term bric-a-brac. There ought to be pictures in every home for their intrinsic value. Fortunately they take up little room and are easily kept in order. Many of us do not agree about pictures. Most Americans who buy oil paintings advertise their want of cultivation in their choice, and even those who ...
— Girls and Women • Harriet E. Paine (AKA E. Chester}

... homicide, or adultery, are wrong because He has so decreed it, or whether He has so decreed it because they are wrong. If the former, then God is a capricious and unreasonable God, who decrees one law when He might equally well have decreed another, or, if the latter, He obeys an intrinsic nature and essence which exists in things themselves independently of Him—that is to say, independently of His sovereign will; and if this is the case, if He obeys the innate reason of things, this reason, if we could but know it, would suffice us without any further ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... which it had so far assumed, was rather an appeal to fanaticism than a plot which could have laid hold of the deeper mind of the country; but as an indication of the unrest which was stealing over the minds of men, it assumed an importance which it would not have received from its intrinsic character. ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude

... matter which way the breeze blew. But all his qualities, positive or negative, would have availed him nothing without that position which enabled him to take his ease in that inn, the world—which presented, to every detection of his want of intrinsic nobleness, the irreproachable respectability of a high name, a splendid mansion, and a rent-roll without a flaw. Vaudemont drew comparisons between Lilburne and Gawtrey, and he comprehended at last, why one was a low rascal and the other ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... believing that they value wealth only for the use they shall make of it; but it often happens, that during the course of their labours, they learn habitually to set a value upon the coin itself, and they grow avaricious of that which they are sensible has little intrinsic value. Young people who have accumulated a vast number of facts, and names, and dates, perhaps intended originally to make some good use of their treasure; but they frequently forget their laudable intentions, and conclude by ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... escape her awfulness in his dream-haunted nightmares of her, he nevertheless was aware of the cosmic verity of sex that animated her and that made her own life of less value than the happiness of her lover with whom she hoped to mate. Juliet or Balatta? Where was the intrinsic difference? The soft and tender product of ultra- civilization, or her bestial prototype of a hundred thousand years before her?—there ...
— The Red One • Jack London

... home? No, Gentlemen, you are natural judges of the difficulties which beset us, and they are doubtless greater than I can even fancy or forbode. Let me, for the sake of argument, admit all you say against our enterprise, and a great deal more. Your proof of its intrinsic impossibility shall be to me as cogent as my own of its theological advisableness. Why, then, should I be so rash and perverse as to involve myself in trouble not properly mine? Why go out of my own place? Why so headstrong and reckless ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... of homoeopathic magic, inanimate things, as well as plants and animals, may diffuse blessing or bane around them, according to their own intrinsic nature and the skill of the wizard to tap or dam, as the case may be, the stream of weal or woe. In Samaracand women give a baby sugar candy to suck and put glue in the palm of its hand, in order that, when the child grows up, his words may be sweet and precious things may stick to ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... creative interest of his own or of his employer but by whether in the last analysis, he conforms better than another man to the exigencies of profits. If profits and creative purpose happen to be one and the same thing, his place in an industrial establishment has some bearing on his intrinsic worth. Under such circumstances his interest in the creative purpose of the establishment would have a foundation, and he himself could value better than he otherwise would his own ...
— Creative Impulse in Industry - A Proposition for Educators • Helen Marot

... out of its debris, without any vestige either of reference or index; and I must look for these fragmentary sketches of heath and grass through chapter after chapter about the races of the Indian and religion of the Spaniard,—these also of great intrinsic value, but made useless to the general reader by interspersed experiment on the drifts of the wind and the depths of ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... house. The conclusion to which one is irresistibly impelled is that we have a kleptomaniac in our midst. It is a peculiarity of kleptomania, as you are no doubt aware, that the subject is unable to differentiate between the intrinsic values of objects. He will purloin an old coat as readily as a diamond ring, or a tobacco pipe costing but a few shillings with the same eagerness as a purse of gold. The fact that this manuscript of mine could be of no possible value to any outside ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... and to feel the fascination of some far and glittering peak. That is a call to perilous and painful effort. And yet again, high desire sometimes leaves life where it found it because the heart attaches an intrinsic value to vision. It is something to have seen the Alpine heights of possibility. Yes, it is something, but what is it? It is a golden hour to the man who sets out to the climb; it is an hour of shame and judgement, ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth

... of harmony with God, a condition of time as well as of eternity. What is really momentous and all-important with us is the present, by which the future is shaped and colored. A mere change of locality cannot alter the actual and intrinsic qualities of the soul. Guilt and remorse would make the golden streets of Paradise intolerable as the burning marl of the infernal abodes; while purity and innocence would ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... irrespectively of the composition of the mixture, the calculated illuminating power is in every case equal to or actually greater than that of pure ethylene until a certain degree of dilution is attained. This intrinsic luminosity of ethylene remains almost constant when the latter is diluted with carbonic oxide, until the ethylene forms only 40 per cent. of the mixture, after which it rapidly diminishes to zero when the ethylene forms only 20 per cent. of the mixture. When the ethylene is diluted with hydrogen, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 441, June 14, 1884. • Various

... George! you will find, that intrinsic qualities have no social value. What people require is ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... had been made. The "story," indeed, was brief, and of no intrinsic importance other than as a social note. But to Average Jones it began ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... attachments and animosities, which are felt by those who compose the assembly. The choice which may at any time happen to be made under such circumstances, will of course be the result either of a victory gained by one party over the other, or of a compromise between the parties. In either case, the intrinsic merit of the candidate will be too often out of sight. In the first, the qualifications best adapted to uniting the suffrages of the party, will be more considered than those which fit the person ...
— The Federalist Papers

... same curiosity about him as we have about Homer, Aeschylus, and Shakespeare, so that the merest trifles which throw any light on his personality assume an interest altogether out of proportion to their intrinsic importance. Our debt to Ellwood is, it must be admitted, much less than it might have been, if he had thought a little more of Milton and a little less of his somewhat stupid self and the sect to which he belonged. ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe

... to speak of the intrinsic quality of histories of this kind (which may possibly even be of use to someone for something) the histories of culture, to which all general histories tend more and more to approximate, are significant ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... Besides the great intrinsic merits of these paintings, the Brancacci chapel is especially interesting from the direct and unquestionable effect which it is known to have had upon younger painters. Here Raphael and Michel Angelo, in their youth, and Benvenuto ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... Monthly is one of the standard publications of its class. It is not surpassed by any of its elders in the matter of chaste typography and beauty of illustration, while its literary conception and display are of intrinsic worth.—Gazette ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various

... Sir William Robertson Nicoll seen fit to help him here. Sir William Robertson Nicoll deprecates any over-valuation of Mr. Clement Shorter's collection. "It is not claimed," he says, "for a moment that the intrinsic merits of the verses are of a special kind." And Mr. Clement Shorter is not much bolder in proffering his treasures. "No one can deny to them," he says, "a ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... a new angle, and revealed to me a cunning new detail; with the light just right, certain delicate shadings of the grass-blades and rush-stems wove themselves into a monogram—mine! You can see that that jewel was a work of art. And when you come to consider the intrinsic value of it, you must concede that it is not every literary club that could afford a badge like that. It was easily worth $75, in the opinion of Messrs. Marcus and Ward of New York. They said they could not duplicate it for that and make a profit. By this time the Club was well under way; and from ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... thirty-third part. And it is for this petty addition to the capital of the nation, this minimum of one dollar, added to one hundred and thirty-three and a third, or three fourths per cent., that we are to give up our gold and silver medium, its intrinsic solidity, its universal value, and its saving powers in time of war, and to substitute for it paper, with all its train of evils, moral, political, and physical, which I will ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... not change or fade, and possess a beautiful quality. Our craftsmen and manufacturers of face-brick, terra-cotta, and colored tile, after much costly experimentation, have succeeded in producing ceramics of a high order of excellence and intrinsic beauty; they can do practically anything demanded of them; but from that quarter where they should reap the greatest commercial advantage—the field of architecture—there is all too little demand. The architect who should lead, teach and dictate in this field, is often through ignorance ...
— Architecture and Democracy • Claude Fayette Bragdon

... to spend more than twenty francs on it. I want it for the intention, and for the remembrance of your penetration, and not for its intrinsic value.' ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... only dispense Such various pleasures to the sense: Here health itself does live, That salt of life, which does to all a relish give, Its standing pleasure, and intrinsic wealth, The body's virtue, and the soul's good fortune, health. The tree life, when it in Eden stood, Did its immortal head to heaven rear; It lasted a tall cedar till the flood; Now a small thorny shrub it does appear; Nor will it thrive too everywhere: It always here is freshest seen, ...
— Cowley's Essays • Abraham Cowley

... medals and crosses, however, appeared to have a greater interest and importance in the Maharajah's eyes than their intrinsic value could have commanded for them, and, during the marching past of "The Army," he kept continually poking his finger at them, and pointing them out to the courtiers who were gathered about his chair. The general, at the same time, was employed in explaining how many thousands the ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight

... is an American one. It is written in our own land and by one of our own beloved brethren, and is therefore entitled on the ground of country and patriotism, as well as of religion, to all that kindness and favor of reception, which may be justified by its intrinsic merits. The work is published in a highly creditable style by the house of Leavitt, Lord ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone

... basis for scholastic mysticism. On account of the connection between Dionysius and the later Greek philosophy and the mediaeval philosophy, Dionysius the Areopagite occupies a place in the histories of philosophy quite out of proportion to the intrinsic merit ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... Diemen's Land Warriors, or the Heroes of Cornwall" by "Pindar Juvenal", the first book of verse published in Tasmania. During the next ten years various poetical effusions were printed in the colonies, which are of bibliographical interest but of hardly any intrinsic value. Newspapers had been established at an early date, but until the end of this period they were little better than news-sheets or official gazettes, giving no opportunities for literature. The proportion of well-educated persons was small, the majority of the free settlers being ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens

... this, any thing like an original or national drama was impossible. Sir Philip saw the chaos about him; but he did not see, and none could foresee, the creation that was to issue from it. He would have spoken very differently, no doubt, had he lived to see the intrinsic relations of character and passion, the vital sequence of mental and moral development, set forth in such clearness and strength, the whole fabric resting on such solid grounds, of philosophy, and charged with such cunning efficacies of poetry, that breaches of local and chronological succession ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... willing to have an unfortunate author assailed and flayed for their entertainment; but they did not care to be deceived by laudatory criticisms that were inspired by the publisher's name instead of the intrinsic merits ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney

... pay respect to magistrates, and to all the nobility of the land, in their capacity of legislators, whom the chief magistrate has appointed; but they believe that the mere letters in a schedule of parchment can give no more intrinsic worth to a person, than they possess themselves, and they think with Juvenal, that "the only true nobility is virtue." Hence titles, in the glare of which some people lose the dignity of their vision, have no magical effect ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... t' stock a company's post!" he exclaimed. But its real intrinsic value was quite beyond ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace

... replied the young man; 'I have known and admired her long enough to appreciate her intrinsic worth. Her image is as dear to me as my ...
— Tales for Young and Old • Various

... Oliver Lodge makes a very striking estimate of the intrinsic energy of the aether. He says: "The total output of a million-kilowatt power station for thirty million years exists permanently, and at present inaccessibly in every cubic millimetre of space." Here again he is probably underestimating the ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater

... powerful advocates. His private happiness William deemed trivial compared to public opinion; and to be under obligations to a peer, his wife's relation, gave greater renown in his servile mind than all the advantages which might accrue from his own intrinsic independent worth. ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald

... difficulty," pursued the president. "People will not accept a new metal in place of gold unless they are convinced that it possesses equal intrinsic value. They must first become familiar with it, and it must be abundant enough and desirable enough to be used sparingly in the arts, just ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss

... their idol. With all her disadvantages in externals, I know she was really beloved. She was a truly good woman, the very soul of benevolence and kindness, and one almost overlooked her deficiencies in the knowledge of her intrinsic worth and her real goodness of heart. With a different husband, and under different circumstances, she might have appeared to greater advantage, but there could not be a more striking contrast than was manifest in this dignified, grand-looking man and this plain, common-looking little woman. And ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve

... mere sensation. It must be admitted, however, that utilitarian writers in general have placed the superiority of mental over bodily pleasures chiefly in the greater permanency, safety, uncostliness, &c., of the former—that is, in their circumstantial advantages rather than in their intrinsic nature. And on all these points utilitarians have fully proved their case; but they might have taken the other, and, as it may be called, higher ground, with entire consistency. It is quite compatible with the principle ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill

... a Handbook after all, a very useful thing, but still—the fact is that we live in an age of humbug, in which everything, to obtain note and reputation, must depend less upon its own intrinsic merit than on the name it bears. The present book is about one of the best books ever written upon Spain; but we are afraid that it will never be estimated at its proper value; for after all a Handbook is ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... of unreality which adheres to them. A feeling approaching to contempt has blended with the reverence attaching to their position, and has prevented them from carrying the weight in the councils of the nation which has been commanded by men of no greater intrinsic ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... manufacture has been much accelerated by the export-trade to the United States, where its superior cheapness and intrinsic excellence have induced a large consumption. Could we prevail on the French government to relax the prohibition which now bars its entrance into that country, a new and wide field would be opened for its extension, even at a pretty high duty; as the French manufacture, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various

... only by their standing army, not upon the larger basis of civic strength; and, even under this limitation, they were supposed to owe more to the circumstances of their position—their climate, their remoteness, and their inaccessibility except through arid and sultry deserts—than to intrinsic resources, such as could be permanently relied on in a serious trial of strength between the two powers. The kings of Parthia, therefore, were far enough from being regarded in the light of antagonist forces to the majesty of Rome. And, these withdrawn from the comparison, who else was ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... his scheme on account of its intrinsic benefits, but, likewise, for other reasons. His abode at Leipsig made that country appear to him like home. He was connected with this place by many social ties. While there he had not escaped the amorous contagion. But the lady, though her heart was ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... wedding present of Dagobert) she rubbed and polished as well as she was able, and laid by the side of her son's plate. They were the most precious of her possessions, not so much for what little intrinsic value might attach to them, as for the associations they recalled; and she had often shed bitter tears, when, under the pressure of illness or want of employment, she had been compelled to carry these sacred ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... seems to me well-nigh perfect, whether he has pen, pencil, or stump of charcoal in his hand. It is the great merit of his work, as it appears to me, that it depends for the achievement of its intention solely on its own intrinsic qualities. It has no tricks, no mannerisms, no "fakements" to distract the attention and conceal weaknesses. It is straightforward, direct in its appeal, ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson

... occasion for such an extraordinary repetition, as everybody from the first welcomed her into it with the cordial confidence she merited. I have spread out this proceeding to your view, not altogether from its intrinsic interest, but because, perhaps, it affords the key to interpret the course of this ill-starred man in his wrangles with his congregation, and his terrible prominency in the awful scenes of the witchcraft delusion. He seemed to have had a love of excitement ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... kinds of human interest stories. The common ground in them all is usually their lack of any intrinsic news value. Many a successful human interest story has been printed although it contained no one of the elements of news values that were outlined earlier in this book. In fact, one of the uses of the human interest story is to utilize newspaper by-products that have no news ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde

... because of the influence of reading habits, examine first the figure to the left, and because of the short time allowed for the inspection are unable to devote much time to the design at the right. We have placed the design of greater intrinsic difficulty at the left, with the result that the failures are almost equally divided ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman

... community and the individuals of which it is composed. Take the bull into your keeping; consecrate it; and offer up your prayers on behalf of Agrigentum and of Phalaris. Suffer us not to have come hither in vain: repulse not our master with scorn: nor deprive the God of an offering whose intrinsic beauty is only equalled by ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... well versed in all the topics of defamation, and have a style and genius levelled to the generality of readers; while those who would draw their pens on the side of their prince and country, are discouraged by this tax, which exceeds the intrinsic value both of the materials and the work; a thing, if I be not ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... exhibition of the Gospel in all its holy and triumphant efficacy; the bulwark it has proved to our Protestant faith; its peculiar seasonableness to meet all the fresh dangers from Popery in the present times; and its intrinsic value, as forming a sound standard of Reformation divinity, we find it an exercise of Christian charity to call the public attention to it. We might further adduce the imprimatur of our own Church, by her act of Convocation appending it to all the ecclesiastical establishments in ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone

... palatine himself had buckled on his grandson's heels on mounting his noble charger for his first field. There was a peculiar pang in parting with these—a sort of last relic of what he had been! But there was no alternative: all that had any intrinsic value must pass ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... her still. She believed in no fixed and certain dogma, but she had never broken the custom of saying her prayers; never even been able to rid herself of the belief that except upon the knees on the hard floor prayers were of little intrinsic value. That she had always been taught; and though the greater lessons—the untangling of the entangled Trinity, the mystery of the bread and wine—had lost their meaning in her mind, ever since her father's predicament, yet she still ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... one, for work and exercise. She also urged that as woman was no longer in her minority, no longer "man's pretty idol before whom he bowed in chivalric gallantry," or "his petted slave whom he coaxed and gulled with sugar-plum privileges, whilst robbing her of intrinsic rights," but was emerging into her majority and claiming her rights as a human being, and waking up to a higher destiny: as she was beginning to answer the call to a life of useful exertion and honorable independence, it was time that she dressed herself in accordance with the change. "I regard ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney

... Novels of Marion Harland are of surpassing excellence. By intrinsic power of character-drawing and descriptive facility, they hold the reader's attention with the most intense interest ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... was honest, earnest, sagacious, learned, and industrious. He probably sacrificed his life to his conjunction of literature and politics: and he stood high as a minister of state in addition to his character as a man of letters. The work above named is of great value, and will be read for its intrinsic merit, consulted for its crowd of valuable references, quoted for its aid to one side of many a discussion, and opposed for its force against the other. Its author was also a wit and a satirist. I know of three classical satires of our day which ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... been common to assert that a balloon poised in space is the most delicate balance conceivable. Its intrinsic weight must be exactly equal to the weight of the air it displaces, and since the density of the air decreases according to a fixed law, amounting, approximately, to a difference in barometric reading of 0.1 inch for every 90 feet, it follows, theoretically, ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon

... advanced career a more capable being was needed. No one of us was sufficient, he argued, to be granted a future existence all to himself. His idea was that two or three or four of us, according to our intrinsic value, would be combined to make a new and more important individuality, fitted for a higher existence. Man, he pointed out, was already a collection of the beasts. "You and I," he would say, tapping first my chest and then his own, "we have them all here—the ape, the tiger, the pig, ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome

... must be considered that as chemists we are bound to anticipate the realisation of value in the soluble by-products of the bisulphite processes. Outside the intrinsic interest attaching to the solution of this problem, it carries with it the promise of a further economy in the production ...
— Researches on Cellulose - 1895-1900 • C. F. Cross

... too, the power of accumulated capital has increased tenfold and a hundredfold by means of State help. So that, when we see syndicates of railway companies (a product of free agreement) succeeding in protecting their small companies against big ones, we are astonished at the intrinsic force of free agreement that can hold its own against all-powerful Capital ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... penetrating key affected by certain ladies of distinguished social pretensions. Whether this manner of speech implies a fine conviction of superiority on the part of the speaker, or a conviction that all her utterances are replete with intrinsic interest, it is difficult to determine. Certain it is that Lady Louisa practically addressed the table, the attendant men-servants, all creation in point of fact, as well as her two immediate neighbours. Like her father she was ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... in which it could be [108] achieved,—upon the terrible problem of sin and suffering in this world,—and I tried to say it. I so far succeeded with my audience in Boston, that, either from report of that, or from the intrinsic interest of the subject, I was invited to repeat the lectures in various parts of the country; and during the four or five years following I repeated them fifteen times,—in New Bedford, New York, Brooklyn, Washington, Baltimore, St. Louis, Louisville, ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey

... chopping-block, the tin pans sunning at the side door, a stray garment bleaching on the grass, a hoe, rake, shovel, or a bag of early potatoes, that tempted him most sorely; and these appealed to him not so much for their intrinsic value as because they were so excellently adapted to swapping. The swapping was really the enjoyable part of the procedure, the theft was only a sad but necessary preliminary; for if Abner himself had ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... thought of an alliance with Madeleine de Savenaye was not only engrossing from the sense of its own intrinsic advantages, but had become the actual foundation-stone of all his new schemes ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle

... and intrinsic end of the State, therefore, is to further the positive unfolding, the progressive development of human life. In other words, its function is to work out in actual achievement the true end of man; that ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... obligations, though he differed from them with respect to things indifferent, and opposed their morose contempt for custom, though he did not allow that the gratification of mere external wants, or that external good fortune, had any intrinsic value. He comprised everything which could make life happy in virtue alone (Cic. Acad. i. 10), and called it the only good which deserved to be striven after and praised for its own sake (Cic. de Fin. iii. 6, 8), and taught that the attainment of it must inevitably produce happiness. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero

... too—and yet without being able to supply chapter and verse for the felt, the huge difference. His Seigneurie was tall and straight, but so, thank goodness, was the author of "The Heart of Gold," who had no such vulgar "mug" either; and there was no intrinsic inferiority in being a bit inordinately, and so it might have seemed a bit strikingly, black-browed instead of being fair as the morning. Again while his new friend delivered himself our own tried ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James

... whenever their reasons are promulgated. Medical practitioners, who have devoted their lives to the consideration and treatment of insanity, are disposed to doubt concerning the existence of any intrinsic or positive unsoundness of mind, as contra-distinguished from idiotcy and lunacy. Those who have accumulated the largest sum of experience in disorders of the intellect, have viewed the various forms under which they are manifested, as equally ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam

... business were as great as is ever represented, the educational advantages of a Presidential canvass are an adequate set-off. The people have an opportunity to see and hear the men who are engaged in public affairs and questions are discussed upon their intrinsic merits. In the sixty years of my experience there has been a great advance in the quality of the speeches to which the people have listened. The speeches of 1840 would not be tolerated ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell

... patriotism have been at one time or other of their political career on both sides of each of the most warmly disputed questions forces upon us the inference that the errors, if errors there were, are attributable to the intrinsic difficulty in many instances of ascertaining the intentions of the framers of the Constitution rather than the influence of any sinister or unpatriotic motive. But the great danger to our institutions does not appear to me to be in a usurpation by the Government of power not granted by the people, ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson

... itself is of small intrinsic value; but as it is an old family relic I should like to recover it. Will you, therefore, please go to the jeweler's and get it and send it to me in a registered letter by mail? and I shall be very much indebted to you. And if you should happen to come ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... old Ravenshaw possessed some other gems of inferior lustre. His wife Maggie, a stout, well-favoured lady, with an insufficient intellect and unbounded good humour, was of considerable intrinsic value, but highly unpolished. His second daughter, Cora, was a thin slip of sixteen years, like her mother in some respects—pretty, attractive, and disposed to take life easily. His eldest son, Victor, a well-grown lad of fourteen, was a rough diamond, if a diamond ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne

... come to very different opinions. Which is right,—the world, which has the man's whole mature life on its side; or his early companion, who has nothing for it but some idle passages of his youth?" The world, doubtless, measures more accurately the intrinsic worth of the man's mature actions; but his essential characteristics, creditable or otherwise, are very likely to be better understood by his classmates. In this, then, we perceive one of the formative ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... compositions. In the fourth century certain collects were believed to come from apostolic times; indeed, the collects read in the Mass on Good Friday, for Gentiles, Jews, heretics, schismatics, catechumens and infidels bear intrinsic notes of their antiquity. Other liturgical collects show that they were composed in the days of persecution. Others show their ages by their accurate expression of Catholic doctrine against, and their supplications for, heretics, Manicheans, Sabbelians, Arians, Pelagians ...
— The Divine Office • Rev. E. J. Quigley

... at her house in Berkeley Square. He found her gracious, but ironical in attitude, very much on the defensive. She received him in the Empire drawing room—very stiff and stately in its appointments. It had the charm (and the intrinsic value) of a museum; it was as cosy as a room (under present arrangements) at Versailles. The great wood fire alone redeemed it from artistic bleakness. Tea was brought in by portentous, powdered footmen in scarlet and ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... artificially chosen—tended to drift to their natural situations. From time to time it is true that the balance continued to be disturbed by political considerations, but in the main the true order of progress was permitted to proceed unchecked. Thus the importance of Peru fell to its intrinsic and industrial level, and the States of the north, artificially buoyed up for generations as these had been by the Spaniards, now assumed a secondary place in the affairs ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... admiration; and I have heard the disuse of the large hoops worn by the ladies pathetically lamented. The quick, and to them inexplicable, revolutions of our fashions, are subject of much astonishment, and they naturally conclude that those modes can have but little intrinsic merit which we are so ready to change; or at least that our caprice renders us very incompetent to be the guides of their improvement. Indeed in matters of this kind it is not to be supposed that an imitation should take place, owing to ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... were suffocated with the supreme anguish of their utterance. As she heard it, the generosity, the faith, the inherent justice, and the intrinsic sweetness that were latent in her beneath the negligence and the chillness of external semblance rose at once to reject the baser, to accept the nobler, belief offered to her choice. She had lived much in the world, but it had not corroded her; she had acquired ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... it not strange," quoth the Corporal, soliloquizing,—"that this dirty little bit of paper—its intrinsic value not one cent, its representative value fifty dollars,—is it not strange, I say, that this flimsy trifle, that an instant's application to the sickly flame of a penny candle would destroy, can procure food for the starving, clothing for the naked, shelter ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson

... case of the retina, also, it is curious to note that on closing the eye the sensation is not one of absolute darkness, but there is a general feeble sensation of light, known as 'the intrinsic light of the retina.' The effect produced by external light is superposed on this intrinsic light, and certain curious results of this algebraical ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose

... Established a Fame among the Men of Sense, that I cou'd not suppose a very severe treatment from the Town, which has been very indulgent to the Performances of others; especially when, besides the Reputation of the Author, the Play itself had an Intrinsic Merit; for we find it full of Humour, Wit, and Variety; the Conversation Gay and Genteel, the Love Soft and Pathetic, the incidents Natural, and Easy, and the Conduct of the Plot very Justifiable. So that I may reasonably impute ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... into the still more general one with which Mr. Bradley and later writers of the monistic school have made us abundantly familiar—the question, namely, whether all the relations with other things, possible to a being, are pre-included in its intrinsic nature and enter into its essence, or whether, in respect to some of these relations, it can be without reference to them, and, if it ever does enter into them, do so adventitiously and as it were by an after-thought. This is the great question as to whether ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James

... infinite knowledge of technique required to understand the difficulties overcome by the giants of the Renaissance and to appreciate the intrinsic qualities of their creations, one asks one's self in wonder what our parents admired in those paintings, and what tempted them to bring home and adorn their houses with such dreadful copies of their favorites. For if they appreciated the originals they never would have bought the copies, ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... French assignats as early as February, 1791, it can confer no lasting benefits. For the moment, perhaps, business receives an impulse, all the more violent because every one endeavors to invest his doubtful paper in buildings, machines and goods, which, under all circumstances, retain some intrinsic value. Such a movement was witnessed in France in 1791, and from every quarter there came satisfactory reports of the ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White

... sense, the past, even the best of it, necessarily giving place, and dying out. For our existing world, the bases on which all the grand old poems were built have become vacuums—and even those of many comparatively modern ones are broken and half-gone. For us to-day, not their own intrinsic value, vast as that is, backs and maintains those poems—but a mountain-high growth of associations, the layers of successive ages. Everywhere—their own lands included—(is there not something terrible ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... talents as Puccini, Mascagni, and Leoncavallo were fostered. Puccini stopped with La Boheme, all the rest is repetition and not altogether admirable repetition. That he has been the hero of many phonographs has nothing to do with his intrinsic merits. Cleverness is his predominating vice, and a marked predilection for time-serving; that is, he, like the excellent musical journalist that he is, feels the public pulse, spreads his sails ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... The intrinsic movements of the esophagus are involuntary muscular contractions, as in deglutition and regurgitation; spasmodic, the latter usually having some pathologic cause; and tonic, as the normal hiatal closure, ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson

... the seductive influences of private friendship, to which I admit I am, perhaps, as susceptible as any of the gentlemen I see around me, the intrinsic merits of the measure itself are of such an extraordinary character as to commend it most strongly to the favorable consideration of every member of this House, myself not excepted, notwithstanding my constituents, in whose behalf alone I am acting here, would not be benefited ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... of these travels which has been handed down to us from various sources, and which their importance and intrinsic merit have induced us to record at some length. Of these adventurous travellers, some notices yet remain, which may be worthy of being preserved. Signior Maffio Polo, the uncle of Marco, became a magistrate of Venice, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr

... Wybalenna, are grotesque and humorous. No modern author will venture to look into the abyss of despatches, which develop its policy. To arrive at the truth would require an amount of labour, perhaps not beyond its intrinsic worth, but involving large discussions and questions not without peril. Mr. Backhouse, before leaving the colony, renewed his visit as the envoy of the government, to heal divisions which had broken out with virulence between ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... understand, Scars. No jewel can be of greater intrinsic value than the Treasure of the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... documentary publications of the different governments themselves which want to be verified by juxtaposition with the corresponding publications of the other side and to be scrutinised upon their intrinsic significance. Works of conscientious legists and historians that could serve as specimens are not missing. But they are occasioned by private enterprise and express opinions not always in the measured language that would alone fit the purpose here ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard



Words linked to "Intrinsic" :   intimate, extrinsic, intrinsic fraud, intrinsical, integral, unalienable, inalienable, anatomy, internal, general anatomy, essential, built-in, inbuilt, inherent, intrinsic factor



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