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Negative   Listen
adjective
Negative  adj.  
1.
Denying; implying, containing, or asserting denial, negation or refusal; returning the answer no to an inquiry or request; refusing assent; as, a negative answer; a negative opinion; opposed to affirmative. "If thou wilt confess, Or else be impudently negative." "Denying me any power of a negative voice." "Something between an affirmative bow and a negative shake."
2.
Not positive; without affirmative statement or demonstration; indirect; consisting in the absence of something; privative; as, a negative argument; negative evidence; a negative morality; negative criticism. "There in another way of denying Christ,... which is negative, when we do not acknowledge and confess him."
3.
(Logic) Asserting absence of connection between a subject and a predicate; as, a negative proposition.
4.
(Photog.) Of or pertaining to a picture upon glass or other material, in which the lights and shades of the original, and the relations of right and left, are reversed.
5.
(Chem.) Metalloidal; nonmetallic; contrasted with positive or basic; as, the nitro group is negative. Note: This word, derived from electro-negative, is now commonly used in a more general sense, when acidiferous is the intended signification.
Negative crystal.
(a)
A cavity in a mineral mass, having the form of a crystal.
(b)
A crystal which has the power of negative double refraction. See refraction.
negative electricity (Elec.), the kind of electricity which is developed upon resin or ebonite when rubbed, or which appears at that pole of a voltaic battery which is connected with the plate most attacked by the exciting liquid; formerly called resinous electricity. Opposed to positive electricity. Formerly, according to Franklin's theory of a single electric fluid, negative electricity was supposed to be electricity in a degree below saturation, or the natural amount for a given body. See Electricity.
Negative eyepiece. (Opt.) see under Eyepiece.
Negative quantity (Alg.), a quantity preceded by the negative sign, or which stands in the relation indicated by this sign to some other quantity. See Negative sign (below).
Negative rotation, right-handed rotation. See Right-handed, 3.
Negative sign, the sign -, or minus (opposed in signification to +, or plus), indicating that the quantity to which it is prefixed is to be subtracted from the preceding quantity, or is to be reckoned from zero or cipher in the opposite direction to that of quanties having the sign plus either expressed or understood; thus, in a - b, b is to be substracted from a, or regarded as opposite to it in value; and -10° on a thermometer means 10° below the zero of the scale.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Negative" Quotes from Famous Books



... manner at that point of the pyritous mass most subject to the current until a continuous film of some size appears. This being formed the pyrites and gold are to a certain extent polarised, the film or irregular but connected mass of gold forming the negative, and the pyrites the positive end of a voltaic pair; and so according as the polarisation is advanced to completion the further deposition of gold is changed in its manner from an indiscriminate to an orderly and selective deposition concentrated upon the negative ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson

... Further amended in several particulars, but unscathed in its essential parts, it passed the Senate, February 14, by a vote of 38 to 27, five Republican Senators and all the Democrats voting in the negative.[IB] ...
— Manual of Ship Subsidies • Edwin M. Bacon

... cooperation between embryologists of different persuasions. It is perhaps easy to underestimate the impact and general importance of Harvey's work in view of these qualifications, and so it should be remarked that both positive and negative features of De Generatione influenced ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer

... question decidedly, and in the negative; for four years later, circumstances brought me once more within the orbit of Mr Forbes' life. He was then living in the north of England, and he and his wife and I have discussed ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates

... that his Skin, reacting to the negative fields racing over the Skin and the hormone imbalance of his blood, writhed away ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer

... call it in modern phraseology—the social pulverisation, the lowering and narrowing of the individual's sphere of action and feeling to the pettiest details, depends upon processes underlying all political changes. It cannot, therefore, be cured by any nostrum of constitution-mongers, or by the negative remedy of removing old barriers. It requires to be met by profounder moral and religious teaching. Men must be taught what is the really valuable part of their natures, and what is the purest happiness to be extracted ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... several times, until the liquid flows off in one continuous and even sheet of liquid; and this also has a beneficial effect in washing off any little particles of collodion, dust, oxide, or any foreign matter which, if adherent, would form centres of chemical action, and cause spottiness in the negative. ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various

... carried their carbines instead of their guns. The girls fulfilled the duties of lookouts, going up every half-hour from daybreak to dusk; and the call of "Sister Anne, do you see horsemen?" was invariably answered in the negative. One day, however, Mr. Hardy had ridden over to Canterbury to arrange with his friends about hiring shearers from Rosario for the united flocks. The boys and Terence were in the fields plowing, at a distance of half a mile from the house, when they were ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty

... a Latin particle, and has the force of a negative or privative; as, disagree, not to agree, disarm, to deprive ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey

... natural questions, but unfortunately there is no difficulty in finding reasons for answering them in the negative. ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... country. The question was put, Should the Assembly give money for the King's use? and the vote was feebly affirmative. Should the sum be twenty thousand pounds? The vote was overwhelming in the negative. Fifteen thousand, ten thousand, and five thousand, were successively proposed, and the answer was always, No. The House would give nothing but five hundred pounds for a present to the Indians; after which they adjourned "to the sixth of the month called May."[168] At their next meeting they voted ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... said, all who knew her, would clear her of censoriousness: that it gave her some opinion, she must needs say, of the people, that he had continued there so long with me; that I had rather negative than positive reasons of dislike to them; and that so shrewd a man as she heard Captain Tomlinson was had not objected ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... fortune did seem to befriend Mrs. Beauchamp at last. It was just after they had knocked at the second closed door, and had received a very short negative to their inquiry, which the maidservant evidently considered to be an ill-timed joke, that a door on the opposite side of the road opened suddenly, and a great stream ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow

... a shake of the head which expressed a more decided negative than the most copious language could have conveyed. 'Missis Raddle said you warn't ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... caparisoned, and most splendidly dressed. On their entering the tent, the princesses, who were seated in a recess concealed from view by blinds of gold wire, gazed eagerly at them; and she who had lost her bird inquired of the other two if either of them was their husband. They replied in the negative, remarking that he was of personal beauty, and dignified appearance, far superior to these princes. The three sultans, also, questioned their daughters on the subject, and ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous

... duty toward an unseen maker—was but an old-wives'-fable; and that, as to the hereafter, a mere cessation of consciousness was the only reasonable expectation. The testimony of his senses, although negative, he accepted as stronger on that side than any amount of what could, he said, be but the purest assertion on the other. Why should he heed an old book? why one more than another? The world was around ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald

... deficit in check and lower export earnings - the latter a product of the global financial crisis. A severe drought exacerbated the recession in 1999, reducing crop yields and causing hydroelectric shortfalls and rationing, and Chile experienced negative economic growth for the first time in more than 15 years. Despite the effects of the recession, Chile maintained its reputation for strong financial institutions and sound policy that have given it the strongest sovereign bond rating in South America. By the end of 1999, exports and economic activity ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... be decided in the affirmative, it will never be decided in the negative. You know that that is the peculiarity of your heart, and all its suffering is due to it. But thank the Creator who has given you a lofty heart capable of such suffering; of thinking and seeking higher things, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... alone in his failure to detect evidence of winter injury as was subsequently proven by the negative replies to a general inquiry to growers in many sections sent out in May, together with numerous reports of severe injury received during June and early July. The fact is that winter injury was more or less general in the pecan orchards of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various

... the pipes?" old Donald whispered mysteriously; and, on receiving an answer in the negative, he looked reproachfully at the speaker. "She's waiting and retty," he would say; "and a good lilt on ta pipes would do her all ta ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn

... turned upon the fact of death, the world would appear to us like a huge charnel- house; but in the world of life the thought of death has, we find, the least possible hold upon our minds. Not because it is the least apparent, but because it is the negative aspect of life; just as, in spite of the fact that we shut our eyelids every second, it is the openings of the eye that count. Life as a whole never takes death seriously. It laughs, dances and plays, ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore

... appropriate one, because the sun is apprehended in the water erroneously only while the antaryamin really abides within all things, and therefore must be viewed as sharing their defects (19); we reply that what the simile means to negative is merely that Brahman should, owing to its inherence in many places, participate in the increase, decrease, and so on, of its abodes. On this view both similes are appropriate (20).—Analogous similes we observe to be employed in ordinary life, as when ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... asked whether her grandsire was at home, or near at hand, and being answered in the negative, appeared much disappointed. He then said that he must borrow the skiff for a short while, as he wished to visit some nets on the lake. Mabel readily assented, and the stranger quitted the house, while ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth

... a few minutes later, when I had rejoined him, after returning the letter. He was poring intently over what looked like a negative. ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... to little children, stage illusion is to men, provided they retain any part of the child's sensibility; except, that in the latter instance, the suspension of the act of comparison, which permits this sort of negative belief, is somewhat more assisted by the will, than in that of ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... Chapman, Anne W. Weston, Sarah T. Smith, and Sarah Lewis; and opposed by Margaret Dye, Margaret Prior, Henrietta Wilcox, Martha W. Storrs, Juliana A. Tappan, Elizabeth M. Southard, and Charlotte Woolsey. Those who voted in the negative stated that they fully concurred with their sisters in the belief that slaveholders and their apologists were guilty before God, and that with the former, Northern Christians should hold no fellowship; but that, as it was their full belief ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... expressions used to complement the negative, cf. Gustav Dreyling, "Die Ausdruckweise der ubertriebenen Verkleinerung im altfranzosischen Karlsepos", in Stengel's "Ausgaben und Abhandlungen", No. 82 (Marsburg, 1888); W.W. Comfort in "Modern Language ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... themselves as the favored of mankind because of the competence and faithfulness of their slaves. The African spirit and character had disappeared, and in their place were coming into being the elements of a new character, existing in 1860 purely in a negative form. The slave had become an American. He was now a civilized slave, and had received his civilization from his masters. He had separated himself very far from his brother slave in St. Domingo. The ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward

... a visit from the inquirer. Therefore only the information which seems best adapted to bring about that visit should go into the letter. The temptation is to tell too much, and the danger of telling too much is that one may inadvertently force a negative conclusion. It is better to keep down to the bare, although complete, description rather than to attempt any word painting. The description is best supplemented ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther

... Fiddles. Away he started in search of his Fiddle's head, dead to all around him but the sense of his loss; he demanded of every one he met whether they had by chance picked up the head of a Fiddle. The answers were all in the negative; and many were the looks of astonishment caused by the strange nature of the question and the bewildered appearance of the questioner. At length he arrived at the house of the Fiddle doctor, whose want of punctuality had brought about the misfortune. Here was his forlorn hope! He might possibly ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... "Existential Import" of Propositions. The use of "is-not" (or "are-not") as a Copula. The theory "two Negative Premisses prove nothing." Euler's Method of Diagrams. Venn's Method of Diagrams. My Method of Diagrams. The Solution of a Syllogism by various Methods. My Method of treating Syllogisms and Sorites. Some account of ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll

... an errand into the toll-house to get one, and, by way of marking his attention, when he returned he said, in the negative way that country people ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... features of a confederacy, has grown the federal system which constitutes the Germanic empire. Its powers are vested in a diet representing the component members of the confederacy; in the emperor, who is the executive magistrate, with a negative on the decrees of the diet; and in the imperial chamber and the aulic council, two judiciary tribunals having supreme jurisdiction in controversies which concern the empire, or ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison

... he awoke long before the dawn and lay awake until daylight, his mind racked by these apprehensions. He chafed bitterly at his inaction and he plied Crook with questions as to whether he had any orders for him. Each time Crook replied in the negative. ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams

... gain the covert of a clump of shrubbery standing by the fence, over against the house, before the former made his appearance, and, turning into the yard, galloped up to an open window, and addressed a hasty inquiry to the mistress of the house; when, hardly waiting for the negative reply that appeared to be given, he suddenly wheeled about, and, regaining the road, pursued ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson

... to her chamber; and her woman observing that she appeared much agitated, inquired if she was ill? To this she returned a short answer in the negative, and her woman was soon afterwards dismissed. But she had hardly shut the door of the room when she heard her lady's voice recalling her. She returned, and received some trifling order, and observed that Maria looked uncommonly pale; ...
— A Sicilian Romance • Ann Radcliffe

... Indolence inclines a man with each of the four infinitive phrases that follow. You will see that the thought is repeated. It is first expressed in a general way; by the aid of the second phrase we see the same thought from the negative side; the third phrase makes the statement more specific; the fourth puts the specific statement negatively. The needless repetition of the same thought in different words is one of the worst faults in writing. But Mr. Beecher's repetition is not needless. By every repetition ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg

... went, I was answered with "Los Apaches," and a shake of the forefinger in front of the nose—a negative sign ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... three degrees of this hiding and veiling of a man's self. The first, closeness, reservation, and secrecy; when a man leaveth himself without observation, or without hold to be taken, what he is. The second, dissimulation, in the negative; when a man lets fall signs and arguments, that he is not, that he is. And the third, simulation, in the affirmative; when a man industriously and expressly feigns and pretends to ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon

... occurs, Are there no extenuating circumstances to be adduced on the part of the Japanese? Were there no acts of provocation on the part of foreigners? If we rely merely on the testimony of the complainants, the reply would be an unqualified negative. An impartial witness, however, finds no difficulty in presenting apologies, which have some claims to be considered as a justification of their conduct. The Japanese affirm that nearly every case of assault was designed to avenge personal insult. The linguist and the sentries ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... associations, is not itself ugly) to choose from, should have invented this horrible solecism, I never could make out. It is, I believe, confined to Scotland, and the only comfort connected with it is the negative one that, in two considerable residences there, I never heard of a "Charlesina." I suppose "Caroline" and "Charlotte" sufficed; or perhaps, while Whigs disliked the name (at least before that curious purifier of it, Fox), Tories ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... stood resolutely upon the negative when examined by Lord Evandale. As for Halliday, he could only say that as he entered the garden-door, the supposed apparition met him, walking swiftly, and with a visage on which anger and grief ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... spoke very slowly, and for a moment Owen wondered whether it would be possible to continue the present arrangement. Then common sense and creative ardour combined to utter a decided negative, and feeling himself to be brutal ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes

... the presence of something which passes comprehension. The idea of the absolute and unconditioned he regards as accompanying all our consciousness of things conditioned and limited, and as being not a negative notion, not merely the denial of limits, but a positive one. The unconditioned is that of which all our thoughts and ideas are manifestations, but which we never can know, with regard to which we cannot affirm anything but that it exists. ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... England—which prompted Lord Gosford, the previous Governor, to declare that the ulterior object of the French Canadian politicians was "the separation of this country from England, and the establishment of a republican form of government," and who met the imaginary demand with a sharp and scornful negative, would soon have brought Canada to the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... because one holds Italian, one French, another German cards, and therefore they cannot understand one another. I have heard unanimity of opinions mentioned; but there exists perhaps among us rather a unanimity of negative opinions. We are probably unanimous in believing that the Catholic Church has grown to resemble a very ancient temple, originally of great simplicity, of great spirituality, which the sixteenth, seventeenth, ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro

... and I hope that Mr. Edkins, Mr. Chalmers, and others, will not allow themselves to be discouraged by the ordinary objections that are brought against all tentative studies. Even if their researches should only lead to negative results, they would be of the highest importance. The criterion by which we test the relationship of inflectional languages, such as Sanskrit and Greek, Hebrew and Arabic, cannot, from the nature of the case, be ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller

... continue to live in my tent: of course I joyfully accepted the former proposal. After being refused permission to send a letter to Dorjiling, except I would write in a character which they could read, I asked if they had anything more to say, and being answered in the negative, I was taken by Meepo to Campbell, heartily glad to end a parley which had lasted for an hour and ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... of a double negative is frequent in Chaucer; as in the "Miller's Tale": "That of no wife toke he non offering For curtesie, he ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell

... take any personal part in the meeting of the Tonkunstler- Versammlung in the year '63? [This meeting did not take place in 1863, but in 1864.] And unfortunately this question I am forced to answer decidedly in the negative. Owing to its being my custom not to enlighten others by giving an account of my own affairs, I avoid, even in this case, entering further into particulars. Of this much you may meanwhile be assured ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated

... begin, my friends, with the definition of a pseudoscience. A pseudoscience consists of a nomenclature, with a self-adjusting arrangement, by which all positive evidence, or such as favors its doctrines, is admitted, and all negative evidence, or such as tells against it, is excluded. It is invariably connected with some lucrative practical application. Its professors and practitioners are usually shrewd people; they are very serious with the public, but wink and laugh a good deal among ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... answer in the negative, he laid his hand upon Moffat's breast and said, "Father, I love you much. Your visit and your presence have made my heart as white as milk. The words of your mouth are sweet as honey, but the words of a resurrection ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane

... every kind would fall to a fourth of its present amount, and the whole tone of moral feeling in the lower order might be indefinitely raised. Not only does this vice produce all kinds of wanton mischief, but it has also a negative effect of great importance. It is the mightiest of all the forces that clog the progress of good. * * * The struggle of the school, the library and the church, all united against the beer-shop and the gin-palace, is but one development ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... Brown, a sound which meant a negative reply. "Here's an old tin can, so we aren't ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith

... of Sterne, be read with more delight, or have a better chance of immortality, had they without any change in the diction been composed in rhyme, than in their present state? If I am not grossly mistaken, the general reply would be in the negative. Nay, I will confess, that, in Mr. Wordsworth's own volumes, the ANECDOTE FOR FATHERS, SIMON LEE, ALICE FELL, BEGGARS, and THE SAILOR'S MOTHER, notwithstanding the beauties which are to be found in each of them where the poet interposes the music of his own thoughts, would have ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... The first to give free expression again to intimate sensations is Christian Guenther, and he arouses thereby contradiction, together with admiration. The court poets about the year 1700 work more in a negative way, i. e., by that which they did not express in their verses. The great merit of the pre-classical writers is to have created space, on the one hand, for personal sensations, and, on the other, for the great new thoughts ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... country has first learned the true theory and practical intent of the Constitution, in giving to the Executive a qualified negative on the legislative power of Congress. Far from being an odious, dangerous, or kingly prerogative, this power, as vested in the President, is nothing but a qualified copy of the famous veto power ...
— Thomas Hart Benton's Remarks to the Senate on the Expunging Resolution • Thomas Hart Benton

... The boy is still very ill. Won't you let my love for you plead for them, and withdraw from the case? Do, Dear, and let me call Horace. Will you, Everett? He's so sad over it! Oh! may I call him?" She had risen from her chair; but a negative shake of the man's head made her resume her place again, and she continued, "It will be a dreadful thing for them, if they have to go back. Now, listen, Everett! If you will withdraw and let Horace settle it with that man, our arrangements," her face was ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White

... was composed of such faithful representatives of the people, who voted, by a considerable majority, against Colonel Wardle's motion, would agree to a vote of thanks to him, although it was talked of by some of the honourable members. Mr. Canning, as the organ of the ministers, put a negative upon such a measure, by saying that, if it were proposed, he should feel it his duty to resist it; in which opposition Mr. Whitbread, the organ of the Whigs, concurred. But the people were actuated by a more honest and more generous feeling, and the brave men of GLASGOW ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt

... examine our problem a little more closely we see that the word monopoly seems to be only a negative, expressing the fact that competition is absent. We will therefore direct our studies to competition itself, and will consider first its action as the basis of ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker

... suddenly turned, levelled his gun, and fired. Washington was startled for an instant, but, feeling that he was not wounded, demanded quickly of Mr. Gist if he was shot. The latter answered in the negative. The Indian in the mean time had run forward, and screened himself behind a large white oak, where he was reloading his gun. They overtook, and seized him. Gist would have put him to death on the spot, but Washington humanely prevented him. They permitted him to finish ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... it brought to a discussion; to secure as large a vote as possible and to ascertain which members were friends and which were enemies. In spite of most unfavorable conditions this was accomplished and the amendment received a majority. There were no more negative votes than when it was acted upon in 1887 by the Senate and over twice as many favorable votes. The opposition was based almost entirely on the doctrine of State's rights, as was to be expected; but three Southern Senators voted in the affirmative. Before another session of Congress ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... eternal truths I was telling them, but at finding that their broken jargon could be written and read. The only words of assent to the heavenly doctrine which I ever obtained, and which were rather of the negative kind, were the following, from a woman: 'Brother, you tell us strange things, though perhaps you do not lie; a month since I would sooner have believed these tales, than that I should this day have seen ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow

... illumination. I don't wonder that men refuse to give up evil if it simply seems to them to be giving up the evil way, and no vision opens before them of the thing that they may be and do. I don't wonder that, if the negative, restricting, imprisoning conception of the new life is all that a man gets hold of, he lingers again and again in the old life. But just as soon as the great world opens before him then it is like a prisoner ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks

... centuries the pretensions of Elizabeth to the title, "The Virgin Queen," and it is utterly impossible to dispose of the issue in a note. However, the weight of opinion appears to be in the negative. Many and great were the difficulties attending the marriage of a Protestant princess in those troublous times, and Elizabeth finally announced that she would become wedded to the English nation, and she wore a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... be inferred, therefore, that for persons of a certain temperament this doctrine has charms so powerful as to negative the calm dictates of the judgment, and practically to render the mind insensible ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull

... maintain a national database of each system or asset that— (A) the Secretary, in consultation with appropriate homeland security officials of the States, determines to be vital and the loss, interruption, incapacity, or destruction of which would have a negative or debilitating effect on the economic security, public health, or safety of the United States, any State, or any local government; or (B) the Secretary determines is appropriate for inclusion in the database. ...
— Homeland Security Act of 2002 - Updated Through October 14, 2008 • Committee on Homeland Security, U.S. House of Representatives

... having seen depths in the Baby, they supposed there were none. They had fallen into the habit of taking the Baby by the throat and asking him in trenchant tones, 'Have you spoken to her?' The Baby found it convenient to be able to give a truthful negative, not that he would have minded fibbing in the least, but in this case the fib would certainly have been detected; he could not expect his goddess to enter into any clandestine ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall

... when it was to her benefit. What, then, had been his idea of her benefit? Was it that he wished to meet the desire that she had manifested to have some man to—to love? . . . The way she covered her face with her hands whilst she groaned aloud made her answer to her own query a perfect negative. ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker

... distinguished-looking young man who had called to ask for Miss Brent. Mrs. Amherst, innocently inquisitive in small matters, had followed her son into the hall to ask the parlour-maid if the gentleman had left his name; and the parlour-maid had answered in the negative. The young man was evidently not indigenous: all the social units of Hanaford were intimately known to each other. He was a stranger, therefore, presumably drawn there by the hope of seeing Miss Brent. ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... Panchatmakeshu. Hence, he properly points out that bhava and abhava and kala are included by the speaker within bhutas or primary elements. Bhava implies the four entities called karma, samanya, visesha and samavaya. By abhava is meant a negative state with respect to attributes not possessed by a thing. We cannot think of a thing without thinking of it as uninvested with certain attributes whatever other attributes it ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... more. But she accompanied the simple negative with a clear and honest sincerity of the eyes that set his mind completely at rest. He felt that this girl had never in her life ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... less light under the table but the light above has to our sense of sight created or made manifest a greater darkness. Thus, throughout the Universe, as interpreted by our Physical Ego, we find phenomena ranging themselves under the form of positive and negative, the apparently Real ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein

... once, and his observation is called "unlucky," being but a negative proof, and Dr. Macmichael adds, what everybody must agree with him in, that positive instances of contagion must outweigh all negative proofs:—to be sure:—but Dr. Macmichael's saying this, does not show that positive proofs exist. Give us but positive proofs, give even but a few, which surely may be done, if the disease be really communicable, and where contagion has ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest

... enable the reader to form a general notion of the several subjects on which the Mishna treats. The Gemara or Commentary is often overloaded with ineptitudes and ridiculous subtilties. For instance, in the article of "Negative Oaths." If a man swears he will eat no bread, and does eat all sorts of bread, in that case the perjury is but one; but if he swears that he will eat neither barley, nor wheaten, nor rye-bread, the perjury ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... question; black men should be shot on the same ethical principles as white men. But it makes one distrust scientific communications which permitted so startling an alteration of the photograph. I am sorry we got hold of a photographic negative in which a black man came out white. Later we were told that an Englishman had fought for the Boers against his own flag, which would have been a disgusting thing to do. Later, it was admitted that he was ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... incorporeity of God divide the Arabic philosophers into two schools. Maimonides naturally espoused the view permitting the most exalted conception of God, that is, the conception of God free from human attributes. He recognizes none but negative attributes; in other words, he defines God by means of negations only. For instance, asserting that the Supreme Being is omniscient or omnipotent, is not investing Him with a positive attribute, it is simply denying ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... irascible, and if I could have shaken this negative gentleman vigorously, the relief would have been immense. The prejudices of society forbidding this mode of redress, I merely glowered at him; and, before my wrath found vent in words, my General appeared, having seen me from an opposite window, ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott

... not do. The subsequent conversation with Ursula Petulengro under the hedge might be only a companion piece; even the more wonderful, though much less interesting, dialogue with the Irish girl in the last chapters of Wild Wales might be so rendered by a hardy exegete. But the negative evidence in all the books is too strong. It may be taken as positively certain that Borrow never was "in love," as the phrase is, and that he had hardly the remotest conception of what being in love means. It is ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... time Morton had considered her as a genial but rather negative personality, a soul naturally subordinate to others, but she now rose to an importance in his life which made her real self of the highest significance. His first glance was one of sincerest admiration. Doubtless ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland

... By this negative policy—the pressure, that is to say, of not going to war—Bulgaria had induced Turkey, by the time I came through Sofia again three months later, to turn over enough territory on the east so that the Bulgars ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... found such interference necessary in the case of Germany and Venezuela. But it had been interference in a purely negative sense. He had merely insisted that the European power should not occupy American territory even temporarily. In the later case of the Dominican Republic he supplemented this negative interference with positive action ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland

... written so few days after the battle, detailing affirmatively the command to the guards as heard by one of themselves, will probably countervail the negative testimony of C. as derived from the Duke's want of recollection: as well as the "Goodly Botherby's" of MR. CUTHBERT BEDE. As an instance of the Duke's impressions of the battle, I may add, that he stated that there was no smoke, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various

... indebted to the kindness of DR. DIAMOND, amongst other friends, for my original initiation into the mysteries of photography, it may appear somewhat presumptuous in me to differ from one who has had so much more experience in a point of practice. I allude to that of washing the collodion negative after developing, previously to fixing with the hyposulphite of soda; but, probably, the reasons I urge may have some weight. As the hyposulphite solution is intended to be used repeatedly, it appears to me ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 187, May 28, 1853 • Various

... select Audubon as the next speaker. My reason was that Ellis, as I thought, under cover of an extravagant fit of spleen, had made rather a formidable attack on the doctrine of progress as commonly understood by social reformers. He had given us, as it were, the first notes of the Negative. But Audubon, I knew, would play the tune through to the end; and I thought we might as well have it all, and have it before it should be too late for the possible correctives of other speakers. Audubon ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson

... speaking to her, and yet if she hadn't he would have judged her an underbred woman. It was odd that when nothing had really ever brought them together he should have been able successfully to assume they were in a manner old friends—that this negative quantity was somehow more than they could express. His success, it was true, had been qualified by her quick escape, so that there grew up in him an absurd desire to put it to some better test. Save in so far as some other poor chance might help him, such a test could be only to meet her ...
— The Altar of the Dead • Henry James

... at the panel of the door with the hilt of his sword, and Denis heard him breathing heavily as if after some great exertion; but there was no reply, and he tapped again, with the same negative result. Then with an ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn

... rooms—but—she had thought—remembering his tastes the last time, that the long blue room? Exactly! The long, low-arched room, with the faded blue tapestry, looking upon the gallery—capital! He had always liked that room. From purely negative evidence he had every reason to believe that it was the one formidable-looking room in England that Queen Elizabeth had not ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... behaving like that with me," she said, with the same challenging definiteness, finality: a flat negative. ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... positive has its negative, every affirmation its denial. But the opposites never mingle. And, moreover, the positive always dispels the negative, thus proving the specious nature of the latter. Darkness flees before the light, and ignorance dissolves in the morning rays of knowledge. Both cannot be real. The ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... young Balmawhapple pass arm in arm, apparently in deep conversation; and he hastily asked, 'Did Mr. Falconer sleep here last night?' Rose, not much pleased with the abruptness of the first question which the young stranger had addressed to her, answered drily in the negative, and the conversation again sank ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... day, professes to believe that "the causes of disunion did not differ from those that loosen the links of most such marriages," and writes several pages on the trite theme that great genius is incompatible with domestic happiness. Negative instances abound to modify this sweeping generalization; but there is a kind of genius, closely associated with intense irritability, which it is difficult to subject to the most reasonable yoke; and of this sort was Byron's. His valet, Fletcher, is reported to have said that ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... Sssuri's negative answer. "Within days they have been here. But they have gone once more. It will be wise for us to learn what ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton

... turning angrily upon my rival, and accusing him of having brought about my death. At a favourable moment I rushed up the ridge of the hollow and stood before the horrified medicine-man, who, in response to my triumphant demand to go and do likewise, returned a feeble and tremulous negative. Even he, I think, was now sincerely convinced that I possessed superhuman powers; but it would have been awkward had he come along when I was laboriously and surreptitiously extracting the poison fangs from the snakes, and placing my "hall ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont

... philosophy thus prone to use the language of extreme nihilism would slip into a destructive, or at least negative system. But Mahayanism was pulled equally strongly in the opposite direction by the popular and mythological elements which it contained and was on the whole inclined to theism and even polytheism quite as much as to atheism and ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... voice of a man who emphasises a negative in the hope of eliciting a stronger argument on the other side. But Richard allowed the negative finality in fact, if ...
— Demos • George Gissing

... dubious about trying to make a vice out of music, which would be all reliable for our purposes," remarked Lucifer, with a negative shake of the head. "I fear it might prove a sword which would cut both ways. It may, it is true, be doing a pretty fair business just now in some localities; but methinks I already see, in the dim vista of the earth's ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... beet-root in France yield a greater percentage of sugar? Will future varieties of wheat and other grain produce heavier crops than our present varieties? These questions cannot be positively answered; but it is certain that we ought to be cautious in answering by a negative. In some lines of variation the limit has probably been reached. Youatt believes that the reduction of bone in some of our sheep has already been carried so far that it entails great delicacy of constitution.[595] ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin

... of alum, 20 ounces; and hydrochloric acid, 1 ounce. Varnish. Brush over the negative a solution of equal parts of benzol and ...
— Practical Mechanics for Boys • J. S. Zerbe

... Bishop Briconnet's merely negative course, the Parliament of Paris at length cited him to appear and answer before a commission consisting of two of its own counsellors. The information thus obtained was next to be submitted to the judges delegated ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... themselves; one mutters something well known about risu inepto, and passes on. Such a tone on such a subject can only be carried off completely by the gigantic strength of Swift, though no doubt it is well enough in keeping with the merely negative and destructive purpose of Voltaire. It would be cruel to bring Literature and Dogma into competition with A Tale of a Tub; it would be more than unjust to bring it into comparison with Le Taureau blanc. And neither comparison is necessary, because ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury

... demanded, in this new formula of life. And it was delivered with conviction; as if the speaker verily saw into the recesses of the mental and physical being of the listener, while his own expression of perfect temperance had in it a fascinating power—the merely negative element of purity, the mere freedom from taint or flaw, in exercise [34] as a positive influence. Long afterwards, when Marius read the Charmides—that other dialogue of Plato, into which he seems to have expressed the very genius of old Greek temperance—the image of this speaker ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... said Richard Johnson observes, "I put down at his [the Nabob Fyzoola Khan's] particular desire, but otherwise useless; as my orders" (which orders do not appear) "were, not to receive any palliation, but a negative or affirmative": though such palliation, as it is called by the said Johnson, might be, as it was, in the strictest ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... William the Fourth. He had greatness thrust upon him by the mere fact that fate would have him King. He contributed nothing towards the accomplishment of the many important works which are the best monuments of his reign, except by the negative merit of having at least not done anything to prevent their being accomplished. Even this, however, is a claim to the respect of posterity which must be denied to some of his nearest predecessors. He ruled over a great country ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy

... both be speared," replied Kingozi promptly. "Positive and negative poles, and all that ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al

... religion arose. "I propose (he says) to define religion as: A SUM OF SCRUPLES (TABOOS) WHICH IMPEDE THE FREE EXERCISE OF OUR FACULTIES." (1) Obviously this definition is gravely deficient, simply because it is purely negative, and leaves out of account the positive aspect of the subject. In Man, the positive content of religion is the instinctive sense—whether conscious or subconscious—of an inner unity and continuity with the world ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... improving the quality of milk, yet, when closely studied, no material improvement can be determined, either where the milk is made into butter or sold as milk. Dean in Canada and Storch in Denmark have both experimented on the influence of aeration in butter making, but with negative results. Marshall and Doane failed to observe any material improvement in keeping quality, but it is true that odors are eliminated from the milk during aeration. The infection of the milk during aeration often more than counterbalances the reputed advantage. ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell

... shallow and threadbare nonsense about "virtual," or as it would be called nowadays constructive, representation of the colonies, likening them to Birmingham, Manchester, and other towns which sent no members to Parliament—as if problems in politics followed the rule of algebra, that negative quantities, multiplied, produce a positive quantity. But Franklin concerned himself little about this unreasonable reasoning, which indeed soon had an effect eminently disagreeable to the class of men who stupidly uttered it. For it ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.

... ponderable matter, the element with the feeling of like or desire, is continually striving to complete the process of condensation, and thus collecting an enormous amount of potential energy; the negative imponderable matter, on the other hand, offers a perpetual and equal resistance to the further increase of its strain and of the feeling of dislike connected therewith, and thus gathers the ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge

... course be no more than an experimental demonstration of the working of the brain into which we are looking, we must take note of two curious mental traits both living side by side, and both apparently negative of the other's existence: an intense and ever pulsatory horror of death, a sullen contempt and often a ferocious hatred of life. The stress of mind engendered by the alternating of these themes of suffering would have rendered life an unbearable burden to John, had he not found anchorage ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore

... k is negative. Let us call it -c squared, where c will be of the dimensions of a velocity. This case yields the formulae of transformation which Larmor discovered for the transformation of Maxwell's equations of the electromagnetic field. These formulae were extended by H. A. Lorentz, and used by Einstein ...
— The Concept of Nature - The Tarner Lectures Delivered in Trinity College, November 1919 • Alfred North Whitehead

... comet has driven them to a resisting medium, which, while according to Encke's hypothesis of increasing density around the sun, it explains the anomalies of one periodical comet, requires a different law of density for another, and a negative resistance ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... secret, at once, of his philosophy and his politics. He got endless abuse for his eternal tirades against the great and the "respectable,"—against big-wigs of every size and shape. But the critics who attacked him for this negative pole of his intellectual character overlooked the positive one. He had kindness and sympathy enough; but he always gave them first to those who wanted them most. And as humorist and satirist he had a natural tendency to attack power,—to play Pasquin against the world's Pope. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... so much with a negative air as with a shrinking one. Just in that first agony, to be content with it ...
— A Forgotten Hero - Not for Him • Emily Sarah Holt

... serious. When he pulled out the Vox angelica stop and began sobbing and snuffling and blowing his nose tragically, the learned doctor simply drove all the women voters into the arms of the Hon. Warren Gamaliel Harding, who was too stupid to invent any issues at all, but simply took negative advantage of the distrust ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

... Feiners, like John Mitchel and others in the past, and like the Hungarian patriots, attacked, with much point and satire, the whole policy of constitutional and Parliamentary agitation for Home Rule. The policy, they said, had failed for half a century; it was not only negative and barren, but positively harmful. Nationalists should refuse to send Members to Westminster and abide by the consequences. Sensibly enough, most Irishmen, while recognizing that there was an element of indisputable ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... of Her Majesty's Services on account of any physical defect? Was I aware of any such defect as would debar me from service? Had I ever been convicted of any crime or misdemeanour? To all these queries I was able to answer in the negative; but, whilst the solemn interrogation was going on, a young man with his head full of flour, and his hands and arms covered with little spirals and pills of dough, appeared at the top of a neighbouring wall. "Don't you believe a word of what ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... thing that struck him was a negative emotion—a sense that something external was lacking. He presently perceived ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... last and foulest atheism to free principles, the deliberate planting of slave institutions on virgin soil? If this question had been put to any despot of Europe,—we had almost said, to any despot of Asia,—his answer would undoubtedly have been an indignant negative. Yet the South confidently expected so to wheedle or bully us into dragging our common sense through the mud and mire of momentary expedients, that we should connive at the commission ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... hours are especially good for all matters relating to gold-mining.... The Sun negative rules the emerald, the musical note D sharp, and the number four. The lunar hours are a good time to deal in public commodities, and to ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... degree that eminent Christian virtue of tolerance. All creeds, all shades of religious opinion, were allowed, and it was generally conceded that one was as good as another. It is fair to say, however, that Black Rock's catholicity was negative rather than positive. The only religion objectionable was that insisted upon as a necessity. It never occurred to any one to consider religion other than as a respectable, if not ornamental, addition ...
— Black Rock • Ralph Connor

... pauses. Correspondingly, the next in the series of Turner drawings, the "Aysgarth Force," shows no attempt to give the real color of Nature, but a single color governing the whole drawing, a golden brown passing in shadow into its exact negative. There is an absolute tint, full, and inflected through every shade of its tones to the bottom of the scale. The strict analogy is broken in this case by a dash of delicate gray-blue in the sky and gray-red in the figures, the slightest possible accompaniment to his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... George went on ahead and interviewed a sentry, returning with a negative reply, and the information that Coulommiers was in a pretty mess ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard

... confusion and acquainted the commander with the frightful plight of the American. After firing with renewed ardor for several minutes Captain Pearson again called to know whether Jones had surrendered. He shouted back a defiant negative, and, pistol in hand, ordered his men to the guns, threatening to kill the first one who refused. All knew his temper too well to hesitate, and the battle was renewed with greater fury than before. Captain Pearson could not believe the condition of the Bonhomme Richard as ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis

... "Black Beaver," who was in my party, on arriving at a particular point, suddenly halted, and, turning to me, asked if I recognized the country before us. Seeing no familiar objects, I replied in the negative. He put the same question to the other white men of the party, all of whom gave the same answers, whereupon he smiled, and in his quaint vernacular said, "Injun he don't know nothing. Injun big fool. White man mighty smart; he know ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... was extremely good. Sometimes she used a word in its wrong sense; she had one or two charming little phrases of her own: "What a purpose to?" instead of: "Why?" and sometimes a double negative. She rolled her r's more than is ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... rather argue the contrary way, and say, 'If Mr. Newman can do so much, what might not God do by the very same method?' If he can thus break the spiritual yoke of his fellow-men by only teaching them negative truth, surely it may be possible for God to be as useful in teaching positive truth. I almost tremble, I assure you, lest, by his most conspicuous success in imparting to you such important truth, and reclaiming you from such ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... oscillation between atheism and Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism is indeed a great and fixed and formidable system, but so is atheism. Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas, more daring than the vision of a palpable day of judgment. For it is the assertion of a universal negative; for a man to say that there is no God in the universe is like saying that there are no insects in ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... the great Prophets of Judah. Like a flaming torch carried through dense darkness, they cast a glaring light upon the vices of society, at the same time illuminating the path that leads upward to the goal of the ethical ideal. At first the negative, denouncing element predominated in the exhortations of the Prophets: unsparingly they scourged the demoralization and the iniquity, the social injustice and the political errors prevalent in their time; they threatened divine punishment, that is, the natural consequences ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow

... bench, the commanders of our armies, the men to whom this English nation commits the conduct of its best interests, profane and sacred, what do we see to be the principles which guide our selection? How entirely do they lie beside and beyond the negative tests? and how little respect do we pay to the breach of this or that commandment in comparison with ability? So wholly impossible is it to apply the received opinions on such matters to practice, ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... crowd of people, and that nobody but myself and my interpreter must approach him. When I advanced the king desired me to come and sit by him upon the mat; and, after hearing my story, on which be made no observation, he asked if I wished to purchase any slaves or gold. Being answered in the negative, he seemed rather surprised, but desired me to come to him in the evening, and he ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park

... the land struggle—that was the soil and climate that would fight inexorably against the settlers; but with them we have little to do, since the Happy Family had nothing to do with them save in a purely negative way. ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower

... is to hold back from acting, proceeding, or advancing, either by physical or moral force. Constrain is positive; restrain is negative; one is constrained to an action; he is restrained from an action. Constrain refers almost exclusively to moral force, restrain frequently to physical force, as when we speak of putting one under restraint. To restrain an action is to hold it partially ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... room. All this is a propos of a suggestion on my part that the well-hole was a way by which the White Worm (whatever it was) went and came. At that time I would have had a search made—even excavation if necessary—at my own expense, but all suggestions were met with a prompt and explicit negative. So, of course, I took no further step in the matter. Then it died out ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker

... George, and myself," observed Mr. Dodge, glancing obliquely and pointedly at the rest of the party, as if he thought they were in a decided minority; "but in this instance, I feel constrained to record my vote in the negative. I believe America has as good a climate, and as good general digestion as commonly falls to the lot of mortals: more than this I do not claim for the country, and less than this I should be reluctant to maintain. I have travelled a little, gentlemen, ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... mooted among the orthodox authorities whether the damage done by storms should or should not be assessed upon the property of convicted witches. The theologians inclined decidedly to the affirmative; the jurists, on the whole, to the negative.(252) ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... stronger than those of Mr. Hogarth, being violent, and following immediately on the question wherever a negative or ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... proposed to wend his way. He wanted to gaze on "the rum jar reputed to be filled with explosive." But in the meantime there was the question of the pump—the ever-present question which is associated with all pumps. To work or not to work, and the answer is generally in the negative. ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile

... with such a set of impenitents and irreclaimable thieves as those who write books. Theft is their profession, and gets them the dishonest bread by which they live. These may always read the eighth commandment by leaving the negative out, and then take it in an injunctive sense. Such persons, in prosecuting another for stealing a book, cannot come into court with clean hands. Felons in literature, therefore, appear here with a very bad grace in prosecuting others for the very ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... He and Sophy might just as well have appealed to the alabaster Buddha in the drawing-room. Flora Krauss never argued—possibly this was one phase of her indolent nature. She merely assumed an immovable, negative attitude and met every suggestion with a smile and a shake ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... infinitesimal wedge of cheese reposing on its blade. Jennie tried to keep her hand steady as she delicately picked it off, nibbled as she had seen that other woman do it, her head on one side, before it shook a slow negative. The effort necessary to keep from cramming the entire piece into her mouth at once left her weak and trembling. She passed on as the other woman had done, around the corner, and into a world of sausages. Great rosy mounds of them filled counters and cases. ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber

... going on in the house,' contentedly Vida told off her maid's negative qualifications, 'and I hate having anybody do my hair for me. Wark packs quite beautifully, and then I do like some one ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... So you are thinking about camping out, and want my opinion as to whether the spot we chose for our trout-fishing in June is a suitable place for ladies to go? I should give a decided negative. My brother takes his wife and his sister usually, although he fortunately left them at home last time. I think they must have to "make believe" a good deal to think it fun. I am certain that had they been with us they would have been forced ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... skill to paint domestic pictures vividly and to invest them with a distinct local atmosphere. His art has won a signal triumph in arousing interest in simple scenes and average characters. He can present the romance of the commonplace,—of gray, dull monotonous, almost negative existence. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck

... large number of experiments had been made, but the results were of a negative value. The attempt to establish the reality of thought transferrence had not been very successful." What else but negative results are to be expected from negative people,—people who have been in this ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various

... A negative method trains the child to be hard and critical, and to be constantly looking for opposition to his wishes; it is the chief cause also of slyness, ill-temper ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall

... piles—turkeys, geese, pullets, as fat as aldermen—cream as rich as Croesus—and three gallons of poteen, one sparkle of which, as Father Philemy said in the course of the evening, would lay the hairs on St. Francis himself in his most self-negative mood, if he saw it. So far so good: everything excellent and abundant in its way. Still the higher and more refined items—the deliciae epidarum—must be added. White bread, and tea, and sugar, were yet to be got; and lump-sugar for ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton

... question is whether Mr. Barker has made us feel that a man of Trebell's character would certainly not survive the paralysing of his energies; and that question every spectator must answer for himself. I am far from answering it in the negative. I merely suggest that the playwright may one day come across a theme for which there is no conceivable ending but suicide, and may wish that he had let Trebell live, lest people should come to regard him as a spendthrift ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer

... too true that this gay, good-natured young man, who had entered the fashionable world without one bad habit, was fast becoming proficient in all its follies and vices. That kind of negative goodness which belonged naturally to him, unfortified by strict habits and strong principles, had not been able to repel the seductions and temptations that assail young men, rich, handsome, and well-born. There was an evil triumph in James' heart one night when Donald ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... see me, and we manifested our feelings in a natural, homely way, and without any display whatever of extravagant emotions. Greetings being over, about the first inquiry was whether I had yet had any breakfast, and my answer being in the negative, a splendid old-time breakfast was promptly prepared. But my mother was keenly disappointed at my utter lack of appetite. I just couldn't eat hardly a bit, and invented some sort of an excuse, and said I'd do better in the future, but, somehow, right then, ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... managed his defence, contributed greatly, no doubt, in saving him from becoming a victim, though his innocence of the charge of treason which had been brought against him could hardly have effected that acquittal. Here, then, his talents have done some good to his country, even if it be of a negative character. They saved it from a stain of blood, which would have been as indelible as is that of Admiral Byng upon the escutcheon ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis

... consciousness. And of what service would his privilege be to him, if this man could harass every hour of his life? The man was to be with him again in a day or two, and when the appointment had been proposed, he, Phineas, had not dared to negative it. And how was he to escape? As for paying the bill, that with him was altogether impossible. The man had told him,—and he had believed the man,—that payment by Fitzgibbon was out of the question. And yet Fitzgibbon was the son of a peer, whereas he ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope

... attain some knowledge of the truths of our holy religion, as well as some feeling of godliness. (4) Finally, the bishop in all episcopal churches, so far as my knowledge extends, is allowed to claim a negative voice in synods of his clergy, and can in no case be taken under discipline and judged by them, but only by a synod of his own order; while the superintendent in the Scottish Church was merely the permanent Moderator ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... adoration. He thought less of himself because his wife thought he could do no wrong. The power of doing wrong is, after all, a power, and George had a feeling of having lost that power and of being in a negative way wronged. Finally he spoke crossly to Lily over ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... my mother before beginning my work. They all saw a strange light in my eye. And by and by, when I talked, they discovered What had come in my mind. Then Jonathan Swift Somers challenged me to debate The subject, (I taking the negative): "Pontius Pilate, the Greatest Philosopher of the World." And he won the debate by saying at last, "Before you reform the world, Mr. Tutt Please answer the question of Pontius Pilate: "What ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters

... Massachusetts Bay in 1623, it was used as ballots in public voting. At annual elections of the governors' assistants in each town, a kernel of corn was deposited to signify a favorable vote upon the nominee, while a bean signified a negative vote; "and if any free-man shall put in more than one Indian corn or bean he shall forfeit for every such offence ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... how we still get divine direction. Bring your own wits to bear on your action, and then do not obstinately stick to what seems right to you, but ask God to negative it if it is wrong, and to confirm you in it if it is right. If we humbly ask Him, 'Am I to go, or not to go?' we shall not be left unanswered. We note the contrast between David's submission to God's guidance and Saul's self-willed taking his own way, in spite of Samuel. He began ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... other party maintains that it is a justiciable case, the Bench which is to serve as Bench of First Instance shall investigate the matter with regard to the question whether the case is more political than legal in nature. If the Court decides the question in the negative, then the same Court shall give judgment on the dispute; but, if the Court decides the question in the affirmative, then the case shall be referred by the Court to the International Council of Conciliation. Whatever the decision of the Bench of First Instance may be, each ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim

... ports on the Tanganika and elsewhere, are liable to forget that they should retain a portion for the down marches. As, indeed, I had but a bale left of the quantity of cloth retained for provisioning my party on the road, when outfitting my caravans on the coast, I could unblushingly reply in the negative. ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... Machiavelian minister, such as your lordship, both from nature and choice, is inclined to be, to prop the cause of despotism. In order to this, the dignity of the sovereign is not to be committed, but exalted. To bring forward the royal person to put a negative upon any bill in parliament, is a most inartificial mode of proceeding. It marks too accurately the strides of power, and awakens too pointedly the attention of the multitude. Your lordship has heard that the house of lords is the barrier between the king and the people. There is a sense ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... body. If, at the expiration of forty days, one-tenth of the primary assemblies in one-half of the departments vote No, there is a suspensive veto. In that event all the primary assemblies of the Republic must be convoked and if the majority still decides in the negative, that is a definitive veto. The same formalities govern a revision of the established constitution.—In all this, the plan of the "Montagnards" is a further advance on that of the Girondins; never was so insignificant a part assigned to the rulers nor so extensive a ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine



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