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Multifarious   Listen
adjective
Multifarious  adj.  
1.
Having multiplicity; having great diversity or variety; of various kinds; diversified; made up of many differing parts; manifold. "There is a multifarious artifice in the structure of the meanest animal."
2.
(Bot.) Having parts, as leaves, arranged in many vertical rows.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Multifarious" Quotes from Famous Books



... example: "The Knight's Tale, whether we consider Chaucer's original poem, or the spirited and animated version of Dryden, is one of the best pieces of composition in our language";[103] "Of all Chaucer's multifarious powers, none is more wonderful than the humour with which he touched upon natural frailty, and the truth with which he describes the inward feelings of the human heart."[104] Yet he once called Troilus and ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... of a New England climate, Miss Dix, for some years, spent her winters, now in Philadelphia, now in Alexandria, Va., keeping herself busy with reading "of a very multifarious kind,—poetry, science, biography, and travels,—besides eking out the scanty means she had laid by from her teaching by writing stories and compiling floral albums and books of devotion." In 1827, she published a volume of "Ten Short Stories for Children" which ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach

... the other hand, the man whose mind is irradiated with the light of substantial science has views, and feelings, and exquisite enjoyments to which the former is an entire stranger. In consequence of the numerous and multifarious ideas he has acquired, he is introduced, as it were, into a new world, where he is entertained with scenes, objects, and movements, of which the mind enveloped in ignorance can form no conception. He can trace back the stream of time to its commencement, ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... one could afford to be upset. It was chiefly spent in welcoming arrivals or in rushing about: on the part of Lance and Gerald in freshly rehearsing each performer, in superintending their stage arrangements, reviewing the dresses, and preparing for one grand final rehearsal; and in the multifarious occupations and anxieties, and above all in the music, Gerald did really forget, or only now and then recollect, that a nightmare was hanging on him, and that his little Mona need not shrink from him in maidenly shyness, but that he might well ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... is considered that Grant's own staff, although presided over by a very able man from civil life, and containing a number of zealous and experienced officers from both the regular army and the volunteers, was not organized for the arrangement of the multifarious details and combinations of the marches and battles of a great campaign, and indeed under Grant's special instructions made no efforts to arrange them, it will be apparent that properly co-ordinated movements could not be counted upon. ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson

... an hour or two each day with her trusty land steward, or bailli, Master Cote, in attending to the multifarious business of her Seigniory. The feudal law of New France imposed great duties and much labor upon the lords of the manor, by giving them an interest in every man's estate, and making them participators in every transfer of land throughout ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... moment, was enclosed in his own broad and voluminous palm. He grasped it firmly, and, in one of those profound abstractions into which he was apt to fall when under the sway of a strong impression, pressed it with increasing cordiality, while he endeavored to find fitting answers to Arnfinn's multifarious questions. ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... adds, 'that this should modify our judgment in considering perplexing discrepancies and minor objections. There are spots in the sun; there are bogs on the earth; and why should the perplexities in a book, which is a multifarious collection of poetico-theological and historical tracts, written in various ages, and subject, in their history, to many human vicissitudes, bewilder and appal us? The candid inquirer will be satisfied if, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... securing thereby the survival of the fittest. Mr S. Dedalus' (Div. Scep.) remark (or should it be called an interruption?) that an omnivorous being which can masticate, deglute, digest and apparently pass through the ordinary channel with pluterperfect imperturbability such multifarious aliments as cancrenous females emaciated by parturition, corpulent professional gentlemen, not to speak of jaundiced politicians and chlorotic nuns, might possibly find gastric relief in an innocent collation ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... not only a pleasure-yacht, but was useful as a despatch-boat to bring the necessary stores for the house from Oban, and served also for fishing in summer and for wild-fowl shooting in winter. She was a trim yacht, notwithstanding her multifarious employments. Ben Snatchblock, who acted as master, with a stout lad as his crew, was justly proud of her. He boasted that nothing under canvas could beat her, either on a wind or going free, and that in heavy weather she was ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston

... his multifarious Academy of Armory, has an alphabet of terms and dishes [122]; but though I have pressed him into the service, he has not contributed much as to the more ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge

... of circulation amongst persons of inquiry and intelligence. By such introductions scholars help themselves as well as us, for there is no inquirer throughout the kingdom who is not occasionally able to throw light upon some of the multifarious objects which are ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various

... the sphere give us the fundamental elements, or primal types from which are derived the multifarious, ever varying, and complex forms, the products of the forces and conditions of nature, or the necessitous inventiveness of art, just as we may take the square and the circle to be the parents of ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane

... Revolution of 1848, the blood spilt at the barricades in the streets of Vienna and Berlin, did not end this; but it roused the better spirits amongst the opposition to deeper perception of the aspiration of all Germany. Which of the multifarious kingdoms and duchies could form the centre of a new union, federal or imperial? Austria, with her long line of Hapsburg monarchs, her tyranny, her obscurantism, her tenacious hold upon the past, had been ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... the days drew on, less and less intimacy. They were together at meal times, together o' nights when the hour had come for whisky-toddy; but it might have been noticed (had there been any one to pay heed) that they were rarely so much together by day. Archie had Hermiston to attend to, multifarious activities in the hills, in which he did not require, and had even refused, Frank's escort. He would be off sometimes in the morning and leave only a note on the breakfast table to announce the fact; and sometimes, with no notice at all, he would not return for dinner ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... He ends his chapter on book-collecting with a reference to an eastern tale, comparing himself to the mountain of loadstone that attracted the ships of knowledge by a secret force, while the books in their cargoes, like the iron bars in the story, were streaming towards the magnetic cliff 'in a multifarious flight.' ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... slightest idea that they would be read, except by those to whom they were addressed; but they have immortalized their gifted author, and have been pronounced worthy to occupy an eminent place among the classics of French literature. The matter which these celebrated letters contain is multifarious; they are sketches of Madame de Sevigne's friends, Madame de Lafayette, Madame Scarron, and all the principal personages of that brilliant court, from which, however, she was excluded, in consequence of ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta

... to a spherical form, and by the centrifugal force of the earth's rotation, is become oblate. The purpose of this fluid body is essential in the constitution of the world; for, besides affording the means of life and motion to a multifarious race of animals, it is the source of growth and circulation to the organized bodies of this earth, in being the receptacle of the rivers, and the fountain ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 1 (of 4) • James Hutton

... discharged functions which would elsewhere belong to an administrative hierarchy, Gneist observes that the power of the justices of the peace represents the centre of gravity of the whole administrative system.[12] Their duties had become so multifarious and perplexed that Burn could only arrange them under alphabetical heads. Gneist works out a systematic account, filling many pages of elaborate detail, and showing how large a part they played in the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen

... one hears less of the engraver and more of the artist. The establishment of the "Penny Magazine" in 1832, and the multifarious publications of Charles Knight, gave an extraordinary impetus to wood-engraving. Ten years later came "Punch," and the "Illustrated London News," which further increased its popularity. Artists of eminence began to draw ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang

... last, nor the benefit conferred yesterday be prejudicial to that of to-day. Wherefore, as we were continually resorted to by all the aforesaid persons, as to a sort of adamant attractive of books, the desired accession of the vessels of science, and a multifarious flight of the best volumes were made to us. And this is what we undertook to relate at large in ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... write to you himself. He is, as you say, an "excellent youth," although it is very generous in me to say so, for I do believe that you came to see me since he has been. Dear Mr. Bennoch, with all his multifarious business, has been again and again. God bless him! ...To return to Mr Bennett. He has been engaged in a grand battle with the trustees of an old charity school, principally the vicar. His two brothers helped in the fight. They won a notable victory. They were quite ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... something serious. Ralph came out of my father's private study, very pale and very silent; ordered his luggage to be packed directly; and the next morning departed, with his French valet, and his multifarious French goods and chattels, ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... gods or as mediators between god and man, but simply as administrative officials appointed for the performance of the acts of state-worship, just as the magistrates were for its civil and military government. In origin they were chosen to assist the king in the multifarious duties of the state-cult—the flamines were to act as special priests of particular deities, the most prominent among them being the three great priests of Iuppiter (flamen Dialis), Mars, and Quirinus; the pontifices were sometimes delegates of the king on special ...
— The Religion of Ancient Rome • Cyril Bailey

... Brampton, for instance, and those natural objects which he studied somewhat in the temper of a curiosity-hunter or antiquary. In one of the old churchyards of Norwich he makes the first discovery of adipocere, of which grim substance "a portion still remains with him." For his multifarious experiments he must have had his laboratory. The old window-stanchions had become magnetic, proving, as he thinks, that iron "acquires verticity" from long lying in one position. Once we find him ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater

... arches, its columns, its cornice of popes' heads, its great wheel windows, its manifold ornament, all combining in one vast effect, though many men have labored individually, and through a long course of time, to produce this multifarious ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the direction and discipline of their masters and the schools, he had won a brilliant reputation, and readers and scholars everywhere were gazing on his work with ever-increasing wonder and delight at his fine fancy and multifarious gifts. He has raised illustrative art to a dignity and importance before unknown, and has developed capacities for the pencil before unsuspected. He has laid all subjects tribute to his genius, explored and embellished fields hitherto lying waste, and opened new and ...
— The Dore Gallery of Bible Illustrations, Complete • Anonymous

... acquaintanceship could possibly be imagined, but privation, like politics, makes strange bedfellows, and, from tolerance and amusement, Pete, as the other called him, found himself yielding, without stint, to the fantastic spell of Jim Coast's multifarious attractions. He seemed to have no doubts as to the possibility of making a living in America and referred darkly to possible "coups" that would net a fortune. He was an agreeable villain, not above mischief to gain his ends, and Peter, who cherished an ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs

... encouraged; but it is really annoying that one cannot let his esthetic soul - that is constantly yearning for the sublime and beautiful - rest in gladsome reflection on some beautiful object without at the same time being reminded of " corns," and " biliousness," and all the multifarious evils that ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... the most violent political factions, where a burning climate kindles the blood with the wildest passions—Italy, among all the European countries, remained the freest from this change. But to a romantic people, whom a warm and lovely sky, a luxurious, ever young and ever smiling nature, and the multifarious witcheries of art, rendered keenly susceptible of sensuous enjoyment, that form of religion must naturally have been better adapted, which by its splendid pomp captivates the senses, by its mysterious enigmas opens an unbounded range ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... which he had reserved in a corner of the dining-room. The friendship between the entirely self-made politician and Norgate, who was the nephew of a duke, and whose aristocratic connections were multifarious and far-reaching, was in its way a genuine one. There were times when Hebblethwaite had made use of his younger friend to further his own undoubted social ambitions. On the other hand, since he had become a power in politics, he had always been ready to return ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... there is scarcely a hamlet which has not its own newspaper. It may readily be imagined that neither discipline nor unity of design can be communicated to so multifarious a host, and each one is constantly led to fight under his own standard. All the political journals of the United States are indeed arrayed on the side of the administration or against it; but they attack and defend it in a thousand different ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... praise or reward. While the rule towards the close is made universal, in the beginning the demand is particular and specific—to bear meekly and forgive generously the injuries which neighbours may inflict in the multifarious intercourse of life. Besides the point which constitutes the main scope of the discourse, several matters of the very highest importance are incidentally involved, and must be noticed, each in ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... the controlling force holding this strange empire together. What is the electro-magnetism governing its furthest atom as though it were at your elbow? What is the magic sceptre that compels this diversity of peoples to act as one man? What is the master passion uniting these multifarious pulsations ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... as the best evidence of one common origin. Disagreement in a similar case, accompanied with a great variety of terms of considerable dissonance, will be equally conclusive as to the object being indigenous or of a multifarious origin. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... at the heavy gold chain round the Prioress's neck, the multifarious rings on her fingers, and the costly jewels in her girdle, and rather doubted her testimony as to the utter absence of vanity in a veiled nun; but she contented herself with saying, "I trow, holy mother, that ye carry with you ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt

... unfathomable mystery as to its real amount. Even at this present moment, it cannot be said to be determined; for that amount varies with every successive minister who ventures to approach the question. Multifarious have been the attempts to arrive at a clear liquidation—that is, classification and ascertainment of claims; but hitherto with no better success than to find the sum swelling under the labour, notwithstanding national ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... had occasion to notice the multifarious means employed by Bonaparte to arrive at the possession of supreme power, and to prepare men's minds for so great change. Those who have observed his life must have so remarked how entirely he was convinced of the truth that public opinion ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... in their multifarious detail, the special thoughts and fancies respecting a future life prevalent in different nations and times, it may be well to take a sort of bird's eye view of those general theories of the destination of the soul under which all the individual varieties of opinion may be ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... into old forms without a dislocation in practice. He was the pragmatist, the Greek the idealist. This instinct of adaptation and sequence made the Roman the pioneer in law as the Greek was the pioneer in science. It rendered possible the holding together in one political system of the multifarious territories and peoples from the Tigris to the Solway Firth for long enough to enable the greater part of that area to be permanently civilized on Roman lines. But, like the artist's sketch of his picture, ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... multifarious duties which Bathsheba had voluntarily imposed upon herself by dispensing with the services of a bailiff, was the particular one of looking round the homestead before going to bed, to see that all was right and safe for the night. Gabriel ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy

... multifarious articles, so essentially necessary for furnishing colonists with the means of subsistence, were, it should seem, of no value in the estimation of the ferocious Morgan because he could not carry them away; although, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... discern coming scenes and persons; and communed with spiritualists and mediums. The fruit of these mystic studies is seen in "Zanoni" and "A strange Story," romances which were a labour of love to the author, and into which he threw all the power he possessed,—power re-enforced by multifarious reading and an instinctive appreciation of Oriental thought. These weird stories, in which the author has formulated his theory of magic, are of a wholly different type from his previous fictions, and, in place of the heroes and villains of every day life, ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... for the casual sojourner to grasp the significance of the multifarious historical and literary events which have transpired here as for a few pages to outline them. Wherever one stands in Boston suggests the church of San Clemente in Rome, where, you remember, there are three churches built one upon the other. However, those who would take the lovely ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery

... gives the passer-by a prodigious idea of the efficiency of the new broom. The country was alive, too, to the necessity of coast and frontier defences, and there was much building of forts during the seven years of Mr. Calhoun's tenure of place. Respecting the manner in which he discharged the multifarious and unusual duties of his office, we have never heard anything but commendation. He was prompt, punctual, diligent, courteous, and firm. The rules which he drew up for the regulation of the War Department remained in force, little changed, until the magnitude of the late contest abolished or suspended ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... arranging and classifying them, searching catalogues, selecting new books, correspondence, directing assistants, keeping library records, adjusting accounts, etc., in the midst of which he is constantly at the call of the public for books and information. What time has he, wearied by the day's multifarious and exacting labors, for any thorough study of books? So, when anyone begins an inquiry with, "You know everything; can you tell me,"—I say: "Stop a moment; omniscience is not a human quality; I really know very few things, and am not quite sure of some of them." There are many men, and ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... I want to see A jumbled-up variety, Variety in all things,— A miscellaneous, hodge-pod print, Composed (I only give the hint) Of multifarious small things. ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... Friedrich, eminently practising this style, has a most complex multifarious Briarean wrestle with big Daun and his Lacy-Loudon Satellites; who have a troublesome time, running hither, thither, under danger of slaps, and finding nowhere an available mistake made. The scene is that intricate Hill-Country between Schweidnitz and Glatz (kind of GLACIS from Schweidnitz to ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... one summary of doctrines regularly digested, in which, a man could not mistake his way. It is a most venerable, but most multifarious, collection of the records of the divine economy: a collection of an infinite variety,—of cosmogony, theology, history, prophecy, psalmody, morality, apologue, allegory, legislation, ethics, carried through different books, by different ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... things, have raised him to distinction. He died at forty-seven, too early to accomplish any work of solid utility, but not too early to spread his reputation through Europe, for an extraordinary proficiency in the languages of India. Later scholars speak lightly of this multifarious knowledge, and nothing can be more probable, than that attainment of many languages, with any approach to their fluent use, is beyond the power of man. But his diligence was exemplary, his memory retentive, and his understanding ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... Whilst these multifarious and painful meditations were agitating his perturbed mind, Dr. Cavendish found repose on a couch; and Pembroke Somerset, resolving once more to try the influence of entreaty on the hitherto generous spirit of his father, with mingled hope and despondence commenced ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... yet highly federalized also in a common bond of American taste and ideals which the war made stronger—it is this fact that makes it possible to record, as American writers are already recording, the multifarious, confused development of racial instincts working into a national consciousness. Localization is our difficulty; it is also the only means by which literature can keep touch with life in so huge a congeries as America. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... a large one, saloon shape, with a table standing centrally, around which were benches and chairs. A cloth was spread upon it, with a multifarious and somewhat heterogeneous array of ware—bottles and glasses being conspicuous; for it was after eleven o'clock, and the meal almuerzo, as much dinner as breakfast. The viands were being put upon it; three or four Indian youths, not in convent dress, passing them through a hatch that communicated ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... multifarious occupations. He is surgeon, dentist and masseur, besides being an adept with comb and razor. He is—like his brother of the West—an incessant talker, and knows all the scandal of the town. While at work he has a bowl of clean water by ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... multifarious new birth of the novel at the beginning of the nineteenth century, this development also received, in the most curiously diverse ways, reinforcement and extension. The Terror novel itself had earlier given a hand, for ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... protective devices of the suit were functioning at full efficiency. Then all three went out to the flitter. A tiny speedster, really; a torpedo bearing the stubby wings and the ludicrous tail-surfaces, the multifarious driving-, braking-, side-, top-, and under-jets so characteristic of the tricky, cranky, but ultra-maneuverable breed. But this one had something that the ordinary speedster or flitter did not carry; spaced around the needle beak there yawned ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith

... busy with her own multifarious occupations that she had not time to see very much of her great-niece. She made every arrangement for her comfort, however, and caused the piano to be moved into the dining-room for the convenience of her practicing. She had always had a tender spot for ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil

... men, because it consists of numerous scraps, instead of a single mass. He was partially acquainted with most of the manual arts that gave bread to others; but not one of them, nor all of them, would give bread to him. By some fatality, the only two of his multifarious accomplishments in which his excellence was generally conceded were both calculated to keep him poor rather than to make him rich. He was a musician and a poet. There are yet remaining in that portion of the country many ballads and songs,—set to their own peculiar tunes,—the ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... for the courtesy of your letter of 9th April. I was surprised to receive it, as I did not suppose that your multifarious duties would permit you to notice my rather feeble protest. I was somewhat amused that you should think my irritation so extreme as to call for an effort to console me. I am sure I appreciate your attempt to do so. But really, I was not so hard hit as you thought, because I do ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... Alcides' arm, "There dy'd. With ease were conquer'd all but one; "Strange was of Periclymenos the death; "Whom Neptune, founder of our line, had given, "What form he will'd to take; that form thrown off. "His own again resume. When vainly chang'd "To multifarious shapes; he to the bird "Most dear to heaven's high sovereign, whose curv'd claws "The thunders bear, himself transform'd; the strength "That bird possesses, using, with bow'd wings, "His crooked beak and talons ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid

... or small, resembles such a complex molecule, in which the atoms are represented by men, possessed of all those multifarious attractions and repulsions which are manifested in their desires and volitions, the unlimited power of satisfying which, we call freedom. The social molecule exists in virtue of the renunciation of more or less of this freedom by every individual. It is decomposed, when the attraction ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... possibly meet the multifarious demands upon his time is in itself a miracle. He is the head of the great church; he is the head of the university; he is the head of the hospitals; he is the head of everything with which he is associated! And he is not only nominally, but ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell

... the public that "The —— typewriter is founded on an idea." When I saw this phrase I secured it for my collection, for I felt that, without jest, it contained the kernel of a true philosophy of Nature. The forms, the phainomena, of Nature are innumerable, multifarious, interwoven, and infinitely perplexing, and you may spend a happy life in unravelling their relations and devising their evolutions; but until you have looked through them and seen the ideas that are behind them you are a mere ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... thoroughfare of ambassadors, English noblemen, American millionnaires, artists, tradesmen, washerwomen, and people of every degree,—all of whom find such gilded and marble-panelled saloons as their pomp and luxury demand, or such homely garrets as their necessity can pay for, within this one multifarious abode. Only, in not a single nook of the palace (built for splendor, and the accommodation of a vast retinue, but with no vision of a happy fireside or any mode of domestic enjoyment) does the humblest or the haughtiest ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... be expected that this treatise shall contain rules for the guidance of staff officers in all the details of their multifarious duties; for, in the first place, every different nation has staff officers with different names and rounds of duties,—so that I should be obliged to write new rules for each army; in the second place, these details are fully entered into ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... shop, like other village shops, multifarious as a bazaar—a repository for bread, shoes, tea, cheese, tape, ribbons, and bacon; for everything, in short, except the one particular thing which you happen to want at the moment, and will be sure ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various

... Government Schools from which native children are excluded. In addition to these native duties and taxes, it is also part of "the black man's burden" to pay all duties levied from the favoured race. With the increasing difficulty of finding openings to earn the money for paying these multifarious taxes, the dumb pack-ox, being inarticulate in the Councils of State, has no means of making known to its "keeper" that the burden is straining its back to ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... defend it from degradation; to divest it of the evils to body, mind and estate which ignorance and greed have imposed; to rescue the toiler from the grasp of the selfish—is a work worthy of the noblest and best of our race. In all the multifarious branches of trade capital has its combinations; and, whether intended or not, it crushes the manly hopes of labor and tramples poor humanity in the dust. We mean no conflict with legitimate enterprise, no antagonism ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth

... told of him. In all else, he appears as a man ardent, passionate, practical, designed for affairs and prospering in them far beyond the average. He founded a solid business in lamps and oils, and was the sole proprietor of a concern called the Greenside Company's Works—'a multifarious concern it was,' writes my cousin, Professor Swan, 'of tinsmiths, coppersmiths, brass-founders, blacksmiths, and japanners.' He was also, it seems, a shipowner and underwriter. He built himself 'a land'—Nos. 1 and 2 Baxter's Place, then no ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the details of their profession with the admiring train-boy and drumming up trade in a coquettish pantomime. The junction town was in fiesta, and the second-class car of the evening train to Celaya was literally stacked high with peons and their multifarious bundles, and from it issued a stench like unto that of a congress of polecats. I rode seated on a brake, showers of cinders and the cold night air swirling about me, until the festive natives thinned down enough to give me admittance. By that time we were drawing into Celaya, ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck

... reached by travelers at the first view of Rome. The dome of the state house was especially imposing, and surpassed in grandeur the appearance of the great house. The great world was opening upon me very rapidly, and I was eagerly acquainting myself with its multifarious lessons. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... mechanical power is ennobled, and raised much above its natural rank. And it appears to me that with propriety it acquires this character, as an instance of that superiority with which mind predominates over matter, by contracting into one whole what nature has made multifarious.' ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... of the L. C.'s multifarious activities are the field telephones, whose lines of black-and-white poles run out across the landscape in every direction. And it is no haphazard and hastily improvised system either, but as good in every respect as you will find in American cities. It has ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell

... live upon the carcass of the people, or of the people who permit the sharks to so live. There is nothing more absolutely certain than that the people—who submit to be robbed through the intricate and multifarious processes devised by the cupidity of individuals and of governments—when aroused to a full sense of the wrongs inflicted upon them, will strike down their oppressors in a rage of ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... that forlorn masterpiece, I cannot help a tendency to despair; for I know, by multifarious experience of men, that the curt lines hint at profundities so vast as to baffle the best powers of comprehension. As I think of the hundreds of men who are minor copies of Burns, I have a passionate wish to call on the Power that sways us all and pray ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... his Works, whatever might be their reception upon the stage, made but little impression upon the ruling Intellects of the time, may be inferred from the fact that Lord Bacon, in his multifarious writings, nowhere either quotes or alludes to him.[5] His dramatic excellence enabled him to resume possession of the stage after the Restoration; but Dryden tells us that in his time two of the plays of ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... polypes. And these will all remain associated together, like a kind of co-operative store, which is a thing I believe you understand very well here,—each mouth will help to feed the body and each part of the body help to support the multifarious mouths. I think that is as good an example of a zoological co-operative store as you can well have. Such are these wonderful creatures. But they are capable not only of multiplying in this way, but in other ways, by having a more ordinary and regular kind of offspring. Little eggs ...
— Coral and Coral Reefs • Thomas H. Huxley

... bush. This march was conducted in strict silence, no voice being raised, and indeed not a breath more than was required for climbing expended. Men and officers, all were bent on the one great feat of mounting and gaining the summit. The march continued over loose stones, and boulders and obstacles multifarious—sometimes round wrong tracks, owing to mistakes of the guide, and sometimes over grass and glassy slopes, where a man could make progress merely by means of hands and knees. Thus the force stealthily ascended, creeping up in ones and twos, the General and staff leading the way ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke

... There is every reason to expect that one or more of these various methods of utilizing valuable products which are at present lost will be carried to perfection, and will tend to cheapen the cost at which iron can be produced, and still further to increase its consumption for all the multifarious purposes to which it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various

... boarding-house life, and of habits as different as possible from the quiet routine of home. The girl who is ten hours on the strain of continued, unintermitted toil feels no inclination, when evening comes, to sit down and darn her stockings, or make over her dresses, or study any of those multifarious economies which turn a wardrobe to the best account. Her nervous system is flagging; she craves company and excitement; and her dull, narrow room is deserted for some place of amusement or gay street promenade. And who can blame ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... upon his time, and that he has to deal with officials who are generally his equals in ability, and always his superiors in special knowledge; when we realise how impossible it is that a tithe of the multifarious business of a great department should come before him, and that the business which does come before him comes with the recommendations for action of men who know ten times more about it than he does, ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various

... or cold in the particles of all bodies, which is perceptible by sensation, and is measurable by their expansion or contraction. It is the key to the theory of the winds, of rain, of aerial and oceanic currents, of vegetation and climate with all their multifarious and important differences. While the inclined position of the earth on its axis and its movement in its elliptical orbit influence the general amount of heat, it is rather to the consequences of these in detail that we are called when we speak of temperature. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various

... and multifarious plans occupying his head, the Lord Keeper availed himself of my Lord Bittlebrains's repeated invitation to his residence, and thus came within a very few miles of Wolf's Crag. Here he found the lord of the mansion absent, but was ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... always preoccupied with his last literary project, and yet finding time for innumerable intrigues; for carrying out schemes of vengeance for wounded vanity, and for introducing himself into every quarrel that was going on around him. In all his multifarious schemes and occupations he found it convenient to cover himself by elaborate mystifications, and was as anxious (it would seem) to deceive posterity as to impose upon contemporaries; and hence it is as difficult clearly to disentangle the twisted threads of his complex history ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen

... not slow to denounce them as having been won over by the blandishments of the colonial officials to betray the mission with which they were entrusted. His passion for justice, associated as it was with unrealisable ideals, refused to take account of the multifarious difficulties in the way of the reforms on which his heart was set, and he despised the obstacles to their consummation, through which he would have crashed, regardless of the consequences. Despite the sincerity of these one-sided ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... honorary duties. In Scotland the sheriff, or sheriff-depute as he is called, is the chief judge of the county, and has under him one or more sheriffs-substitute, upon whom devolves the larger portion of the important and multifarious duties of his office. In America the sheriff is the chief administrative officer of the county, but exercises no ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... house for her brother, who would not know how to dispense with her multifarious services in weeding his beds, gathering his fruit for market, and tying up his flowers. But as some of his friends are equally sensible of her good qualities, he has made up his mind that, sooner or later, he will have ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar

... line here still bore witness to the terrible bombardment which had frustrated the efforts of the 56th Division on July 1st, for long sections of trench then levelled and rendered impassable had not since been opened out. Every man not on duty was employed with one or other of the multifarious details for the expected attack, while on the morning of the 13th heavy shells were poured upon us, amongst them being many 11-inch. About this time Major Aldworth left the Battalion, to which he afterwards ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell

... with a rainbow splendor of foliage, unsurpassed by the brightest groupings of the tropical flora. It must be admitted, however, that both the northern and the southern declivities of the Alps exhibit a nearer approximation to this rich and multifarious coloring of autumnal vegetation than most American travellers in Europe are willing to allow; and, besides, the small deciduous shrubs, which often carpet the forest glades of these mountains, are dyed with a ruddy ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... Indo-Aryan origin would resolve themselves. A new type would emerge,—the American. These theories were also in their consequences far-reaching. Practically, 1853 antedates all our present industrial organizations so loudly in evidence,—the multifarious trades-unions which now divide the population of the United States into what are known as the "masses" and the "classes." As recently as a century ago, it used to be said of the French army under the Empire, that every soldier carried the baton of the Field-Marshal in his ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams

... distress much larger remissions of rent than would be possible for a poorer man, superintends personally the many interests on his property, knows accurately the balance of receipts and expenditure, takes a great interest in sanitation, in new improvements and experiments in agriculture, in all the multifarious matters that affect the prosperity of his numerous tenantry. He subscribes liberally to great national undertakings, as he considers it one of the duties of his position, but his heart is not in such things, and the well-being of his ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... interruptions of continual questions and answers, and in the broad glare of a hot sun, can command and abstract their attention so far as to calculate yards, ells, and nails, to cast up long sums in addition right to a farthing, and to make out multifarious bills with quick and unerring precision. In almost all the dining houses at Vienna, as a late traveller[27] informs us "a bill of fare containing a vast collection of dishes is written out, and the prices are affixed to ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... sport, they will be too apt to make sport of both; while the habit of intellectual dissipation, thus engendered, cannot fail, in course of time, to produce a thoroughly emasculating effect both upon their mind and character. "Multifarious reading," said Robertson of Brighton, "weakens the mind like smoking, and is an excuse for its lying dormant. It is the idlest of all idlenesses, and leaves more of ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... bestowed on his conception of political society more of the features of reality. We see no room for the free play of divergent forces, the active rivalry of hostile interests, the regulated conflict of multifarious personal aims, which can never be extinguished, except in moments of driving crisis, by the most sincere attachment to the common causes of the land. Thus the modern question which is of such vital interest for all the foremost human societies, of the union of collective energy with the encouragement ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... readiness. Each man's tally or number of sheep shorn has been entered daily to his credit. His private and personal investments at the store have been as duly debited. The shearers, as a corporation, have been charged with the multifarious items of their rather copious mess-bill. This sum total is divided by the number of the shearers, the extract being the amount for which each man is liable. This sum varies in its weekly proportion at different sheds. With an extravagant cook, or cooks, the weekly ...
— Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales • Rolf Boldrewood

... the more difficult part of the question before us, but facts they are; and if we find so much difficulty in calculating the extent to which the mere memory may be cultivated, are we, in these days of multifarious reading, and of countless distracting affairs, fair judges of the perfection to which the invention and the memory combined may attain in a simpler age, and among a more single minded people?—Quarterly Review, l. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... eyes, and although it was near the middle of the day, with the multifarious noises of the camp about him, he fell into the deep and beautiful sleep of the tired youth who has ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler

... and framed photographs, hermetically sealed save when the voice of gentility bids its furtive door be opened. The American "parlor" resembles the "parlour" of the eighteenth century as little as the "parlour" of the Victorian age. It is busy, public, and multifarious. It means so many things that at last it carries no other meaning than that of a false elegance. It is in a dentist's parlor that the American's teeth are gilded; he is shaved in a tonsorial parlor; he travels in a parlor-car; and Miss Maudie's parlor proves how far an ancient and respected word ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... studies, it is related that he translated "Tully on Old Age," and that, besides his books of poetry and criticisms, he read "Temple's Essays" and "Locke on Human Understanding." His reading, though his favourite authors are not known, appears to have been sufficiently extensive and multifarious, for his early pieces show with sufficient evidence his knowledge of books. He that is pleased with himself easily imagines that he shall please others. Sir William Trumbull, who had been Ambassador at Constantinople, and Secretary ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson

... be very daring or foolish to write at all nowadays. And so many and such various masters of the craft, of such multifarious genius, what remains to be done that has not been done, or what to say that has not been said? Which of us all can boast of having written a page, a phrase, which is not to be found—or something very like it—in some other book? When we read, we who are so soaked ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... needlework; and its beautiful mysteries were amongst the earliest developments of female taste and ingenuity. As civilization increased, new wants called forth new exertions; the loom poured forth its multifarious materials, and the needle, with its accompanying implements, gave form and utility to the fabrics submitted to its operations. No one can look upon THE NEEDLE, without emotion; it is a constant companion throughout the pilgrimage of life. We find it the first instrument of use ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous

... than in Europe and even the Veda, though it is the eternal word, is admitted to exist in several recensions. Hinduism is possible as a creed only to those who select. In its literal sense it means simply all the beliefs and rites recognized in India, too multifarious and inconsistent for the most hospitable and addled brain to hold. But the Hindus, who are as loth to abolish queer beliefs and practices as they are to take animal life, are also the most determined seekers after a satisfying form of religion. Brahmanic ritual and Buddhist monasticism demand the ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... has fallen into this state, in which by predicating it of any object we assert literally nothing about the object, it has become unfit for the purposes either of thought or of the communication of thought; and can only be made serviceable by stripping it of some part of its multifarious denotation, and confining it to objects possessed of some attributes in common, which it may be made to connote. Such are the inconveniences of a language which "is not made, but grows." Like the governments which are in a similar ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... structure of ideal associations into which only the less extravagant newly framed notions have any chance of fitting. The primitive man, or the modern savage who is to some extent his counterpart, must reason without the aid of these multifarious checks. That immense mass of associations which answer to what are called physical laws, and which in the mind of the civilized modern have become almost organic, have not been formed in the mind of the ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... deceased. Thus Beda begs of the monks of Lindisfarne that, at his death, they will offer prayers and Masses for him as one of their own body; thus Alcuin calls upon his former scholars at York to remember him in their prayers when it shall please God to withdraw him from this world; and thus in the multifarious correspondence of St. Boniface, the apostle of Germany, and of Lullus, his successor in the See of Mentz, both of them Anglo-Saxons, with their countrymen, prelates, abbots, thanes, and princes, we meet with letters the only ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier



Words linked to "Multifarious" :   many-sided, varied, multifariousness, miscellaneous



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