"Practicality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sports, where it would seem that convention would rest practically at the zero point, the bugbear of good form, although mashed and disguised, rises up to confuse the directed practicality. The average man is wedded to his theory. He has seen a thing done in a certain way, and he not only always does it that way himself, but he is positively unhappy at seeing any one else employing a different ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... by achievements of mind and spirit. Old truths have been relearned; untruths have been unlearned. We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays. We are beginning to wipe out the line that divides the practical from the ideal; and in so doing we are fashioning an instrument ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... Christianity. This universality of his mind is interesting. These elements have not been unattractive to some portions of his following. One wearied with the Philistinism of the modern popular urgency upon practicality turns to Schleiermacher, as indeed sometimes to Spinoza, and says, here is a man who at least knows what religion is. Yet nothing is further from the truth than to say that Schleiermacher had no sense for the meaning of religion in the outward ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... extension of abortion—a criminal practice which ever flourishes where birth-control is neglected. But to-day we suddenly see a new movement in the United States. In a flash, America has awakened to the true significance of the issue. With that direct vision of hers, that swift practicality of action, and, above all, that sense of the democratic nature of all social progress, we see her resolutely beginning to face this great problem. In her own vigorous native tongue we hear her demanding: "What in the thunder is all the secrecy about, anyhow?" And we cannot doubt that America's ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... small areas, but necessity is the mother of invention, and the children of the city become expert in outwitting those whose business it is to keep them within bounds. This kind of education has a smack of practicality in that it sharpens the wits for the struggle for existence that makes up much of the experience of city folk, but it also tends to develop a crookedness in mental and moral habits through the constant effort to get ahead of the ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... there are ravines or small depressions on the home-grounds over which a rustic bridge could be thrown with pleasing effect, from the ornamental standpoint, and prove a great convenience from the standpoint of practicality. If there is a brook there, all the better, but few of us, however, are fortunate enough to be owners of grounds possessing so charming a feature, and our bridges must be more ornamental in themselves ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... science into ordinary education was timidly whispered, until now, the advocates of scientific education have met with opposition of two kinds. On the one hand, they have been pooh-poohed by the men of business who pride themselves on being the representatives of practicality; while, on the other hand, they have been excommunicated by the classical scholars, in their capacity of Levites in charge of the ark of culture ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... twelve per cent. interest on the capital invested. Of course it is necessary to keep an oil-motor to provide for windless days or nights and also to keep a reserve of electrical power on hand, but this is but another evidence of the practicality and the extreme cleverness of the Dutch. The cows that browse around the windmills of Schiedam are of the same spotted black and white variety that one sees on the canvasses of the Dutch painters. If you are not fortunate enough to see Paul Potter's ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... cadence of the rhythm itself. Furthermore, great care should be taken to avoid hiatus between words, as when the first word ends and the word following begins with a vowel. But the glory of style to the classical rhetorician lay in its use of figures. Here rhetoric vindicated its practicality by a preoccupation with the impractical; and here, as in analysis, rhetoric bore the seeds of its own decay. Although Aristotle devoted relatively little space to the rhetorical figures, later treatises emphasized them more and more until in post-classical ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... of Theodor Koerner (1791-1813), the son of Schiller's intimate friend, shows that mixture of idealism and practicality for which the Germans are becoming more and more noted. Koerner was aroused from his poetic diletantism by the alarms of war. He enlisted in the famous Luetzow corps and died a soldier's death, thus becoming the symbol of all that was ideal for the patriotic youth of his day, the hero ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... (this was, incidentally, the beginning of the expression of the terms Left and Right to denote ideological preferences, but I digress). Uniform in all the fortress was the architecture, it being a strange mix between elegant and gentle arches and curves and brute practicality, for while the ceilings were high and open, and the walls wide, they were rendered homely by their plain surfaces and the absence of small triflings, conditions that were necessitated because of its identity: an impregnable fortress ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... width of sympathy, his practicality, his range of interests were in nothing more seen than in his contributions to the history of Samoa, as specially exhibited in A Footnote to History and his letters to the Times. He was, on this side, in no sense a dreamer, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... Englishmen individually, brood gloomily over that defeat, or, with active and conscious malignity, long for the desolation of their brothers in blood, language, and a common history. To say that would be as strained and exaggerated, and as contrary to British practicality and freedom from vengefulness, as to deny that some degree of soreness and distance remains would seem to me uncandid. Englishmen are quite ready to believe, and to light upon the casual evidences, that Frenchmen remember Waterloo, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... they had gone on with it for the two years, with a prospect of going on with it forever, Haldane growing daily quieter, more reserved, if anything more gently kind, and more pathetically hopeless. With Ida it was, rather, a large, legitimate outlet for all the sensibleness, practicality, capable qualities, she so generously possessed. It seemed to her, when she knew her child was coming, that she was wonderfully reaching the culmination of womanhood and wifehood. Yet, after all, it had been ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... all have seen enough remnants of its past glories to be thankful for modern ways and days. The over-draped, stuffy, upholstered nightmares have entirely disappeared, and in their place have come curtains of a high standard of beauty and practicality—simple, appropriate, and serving the ends they were ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... It was then, when the frontier was broken and all the world aquake with alarm, that he consulted his generals; the only time he ever did so. Says Velleius Paterculus, who served uner him:—"There was no ostentation in his conduct; it was marked by solid worth, practicality, humaneness. He took as much care of any one of us who happened to be sick, as if that one's health were the main object of his concern." Ambulances, he continues, were always in attendance, with a medical ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... glorious reception; apartment near the King's; King gliding in, at odd moments, in the beautifulest way; and for seven or eight days, there was, at Berlin and then at Potsdam, a fine awakening of the sphere-harmonies between them, with touches of practicality thrown in as suited. Of course it was not long till, on some touch of that latter kind, Friedrich discerned what the celestial messenger had come upon withal;—a dangerous moment for M. de Voltaire, "King visibly irritated," admits he, with the aquiline ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... up, then arose—for he slowly drew her—breathless, the color gone, much of the capable practicality that was hers completely eliminated. She felt limp, inert. She pulled at her hand faintly, and then, lifting her eyes, was fixed by that hard, insatiable gaze of his. Her head swam—her eyes were filled ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... the belief that great and widespread economic and social changes are needed, there is a risk that men or States may act hastily, rushing to new schemes which seem promising chiefly because they are new, catching at expedients that have a superficial air of practicality, and forgetting the general theory upon which practical plans should be based. At such moments there is special need for the restatement and enforcement by argument of sound principles. To such principles so far as they relate to education it is the aim of these essays to recall ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... undoubtedly partook somewhat of the nature of an Eastern myth in this little New England village. Although with the uncompromising practicality of their natures the people had given it a name so directly significant as to make it lose all poetical glamour, and render it the very commonplace of ghastliness, it still appealed to ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a proper and ostentatious horror of corruption. Secretly, however, they quickly dispensed with what were to them idle dronings of political cant. As capitalists they ascribed their success to a rigid application and practicality; and being practical they went about purchasing laws by the most short-cut and economical method. They had the money; the office-holders had the votes and governmental power; consequently the one bought the other. It was a systematic corruption springing ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... And I perceived fully how silly, weak, grotesque, and vain I was; and yet, how big and wonderful, it would be to swim counter, as I meant, to the huge, swollen, successful currents of the commercial, bourgeois practicality of present-day America. ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... James Anthony Froude, John Forster, and my brother John, will make earnest survey of the manuscript and its subsidiaries there or elsewhere in respect to this as well as to its other bearings; their united utmost candour and impartiality, taking always James Anthony Froude's practicality along with it, will evidently furnish a better judgment than mine can be. The manuscript is by no means ready for publication; nay, the questions how, when (after what delay, seven, ten years) it, or any portion of it, should be published are still dark to me; but ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... of twelve young ladies belonging to our best families has been chosen to speak to the shop girls at noon meetings on the subject of good taste, health, and morality in women's dress. My daughter Gladys is one of them. In this way, we hope to convince them that simplicity, and practicality, and neatness are the only proper notes in the costume of the working girl. Occupying as you do a position unique in the business world, Mrs. Buck, we expect much from your cooperation with us in ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... out a good deal," observed Presson, with the practicality of the politician. "Harlan, you're going to find a winter at the State House worth while. With your grandfather to set you going right and post you up, ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... A man of great virility. A man of undoubted courage. An honest man, honest with himself and with the public. A man of good judgment and entire practicality. A generous, kind-hearted, and thoughtful man. Thoughtful of his subordinates, generous to his adversaries, and cordial to his equals. A man whose head has not been turned by the honors thrust upon him. A plain, everyday, practical man without illusions or visionary ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... trade of harlotry; the daughter does not know until the end the atrocious origin of all her own comfort and refinement. The daughter, when the discovery is made, freezes up into an iceberg of contempt; which is indeed a very womanly thing to do. The mother explodes into pulverising cynicism and practicality; which is also very womanly. The dialogue is drastic and sweeping; the daughter says the trade is loathsome; the mother answers that she loathes it herself; that every healthy person does loathe the trade by which she lives. And beyond question the general effect of the play ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Shrewd practicality trod hard upon the heels of romantic fancy in the mind of Spotswood. His Order of the Knights of the Horseshoe had a fleeting existence, but the Vision of the West lived on. Frontier folk in growing numbers were ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... in his own life, strive measurably to realize the ideals that he preaches for others. Let him remember also that the worth of the ideal must be largely determined by the success with which it can in practice be realized. We should abhor the so-called "practical" men whose practicality assumes the shape of that peculiar baseness which finds its expression in disbelief in morality and decency, in disregard of high standards of living and conduct. Such a creature is the worst enemy of the body politic. But only less desirable as a citizen is his nominal opponent ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... apart the first day and began to cross-examine me: that is, she told me to go outside and wait for her, and by the time she came it was dusk. Why is it that the garish day seems to freeze our finer emotions, and reduce us to the monotonous level of a dull cold practicality? It is under the calm light of moon and stars that soul speaks to soul, and we gain those subtler experiences, those deeper views of our own nature and that of our nearest and dearest, which so far transcend the plodding ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... lips and displayed the concern of a friend who had heard bad news regarding a favorite. "I always found the boy a bit inclined to mix high-flown notions in with the business practicality of his family. But I didn't realize that he was going so far wrong in his theories. That's the danger in permitting even one unsound doctrine to get into a level-headed chap's apple-basket, gentlemen! First thing you know, it has affected all the fruit. I'm ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... uplifting and will get a man into heaven, and on the other hand there is the realism that works. The fact that the Jews cling to both, thus running, as it were, upon two tracks, is what makes them so puzzling, now and then, to the goyim. In one aspect they stand for the most savage practicality; in another aspect they are dreamers of an almost fabulous other-worldiness. My own belief is that the essential Jew is the idealist—that his occasional flashing of hyena teeth is no more than a necessary concession to the harsh demands of the struggle for existence. Perhaps, in many ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... woman's attack on man's life, apart from the essential soundness of the impulse which drove her to make it, lay then in its directness and practicality. She began by asking to be educated in the same way that man educated himself. Preferably she would enter his classroom, or if that was denied her, she would follow the "just-as-good" curriculum of the college founded for her. In the last sixty or seventy years tens of thousands ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... hardly possible to exaggerate either the personal, family or society influence which would flow from these schools. Every class, yea, every girl in an out-going class, would be a missionary of thrift, industry, common-sense, and practicality. They would go forth, year by year, a leavening power into the houses, towns and villages of the Southern black population; girls fit to be the wives of the honest peasantry of the South, the worthy matrons of their ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. XLII. April, 1888. No. 4. • Various
... ever open to conviction. To him, truth had no stereotyped forms. His mind never became a petrifaction, but was ever growing and vital. At first he was opposed to civil service reform; but after a study of the subject, he was convinced of its reasonableness and practicality, and became ever afterwards a hearty upholder of this method of selecting the servants of government, in the nation, the State, ...
— Charles Carleton Coffin - War Correspondent, Traveller, Author, and Statesman • William Elliot Griffis
... slightly compressed, too, which fling the mouth rather forward; as if asking silently, "Anything astir, then? All right here?" Face, figure and bearing, all in him is expressive of robust insight, and direct determination; of healthy energy, practicality, unquestioned authority,—a certain air of royalty reduced to its simplest form. The face in Pictures by Pesne and others, is not beautiful or agreeable; healthy, genuine, authoritative, is the best you can say of it. ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... once everything was spoiled, for her fairy castle of illusion or a higher reality was demolished, and that not by any blow of practicality, but by pity and sentiment. Ellen was a woman-child, and suddenly she struck the rock upon which women so often wreck or effect harbor, whichever it may be. All at once she looked up from the dazzling mosaic of the window and saw the dead partridges and grouse hanging in their rumpled ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... eagerness to find out what was inside the ancient spacer was tempered by hard practicality. Too much depended on what he might find inside that hull. Every step of the work must be documented beyond any refutation. Some method of establishing date, time, and location had to be prepared. There must be a record of every action. And that would require equipment and planning. ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... one of those little ten-pound gigs for market—and nice flowers, and birds—cocks and hens I mean, because they be useful," continued Gabriel, feeling balanced between poetry and practicality. ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... told that she was good, and that her biscuits surpassed those of the capable Nell. But such compliments, for all their practicality and worth, sent no flush to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... called to see whether Ernest had followed his suggestion, and was agreeably surprised to find a whole article already finished. He glanced through the neatly written pages, and was still more pleased to discover that Ernest, with an unsuspected outburst of practicality and practicability, had really hit upon a possible subject. 'This may do, Ernest,' he said with a sigh of relief. 'I dare say it will. I know Lancaster wants leader writers, and I think this is quite good enough to serve ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... is true; that Jesus did mean all, and even more than he said or deemed it safe to say at that time. His [5] words are unmistakable, for they form propositions of self-evident demonstrable truth. Doctrines that deny the substance and practicality of all Christ's teachings cannot be evangelical; and evangelical religion can be established on no other claim than the authenticity of [10] the Gospels, which support unequivocally the proof that Christian Science, ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... The practicality of this suggestion charmed Sarah beyond words, and the pig was immediately christened. "Bony" he became in that hour and "Bony" he remained, with the use of his full name on state occasions, long after he was as plump as any of his more ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... than a year older than his brother and biographer. Very pleasant is the glimpse of child life in an English county forty years ago that is given in the story of his first years. From the first he showed the calm fearlessness, the practicality and the helpfulness which seem to have been among his most prominent characteristics. These qualities, and with them a rigorous conscientiousness, a sensitive unselfishness, and—no trifling advantage in these or any other days—a splendid physique, he took ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... advanced expense money while further efforts at improvement were made.[12] Hopkins' absence from the Washington city directory of 1877 is perhaps explained by this work he was doing on his patent. While this was completed to Hopkins' satisfaction, it still fell short of Merritt's idea of practicality, and the latter abandoned the idea of manufacturing the watch;[13] what had started out as a very simple watch of few parts grew, with every effort to make it workable, more and more complicated by involved and ...
— The Auburndale Watch Company - First American Attempt Toward the Dollar Watch • Edwin A. Battison
... Providence, was devoted to him, served him admirably. It was the one instance of Mr. Dalmaine's having interested himself in an individual; he had no thought of anything but his own profit in doing so, but none the less he had made a mortal happy. You observe the beneficence that lies in practicality. ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... true prayer and true practicality are the closest and most harmonious friends, you will of course aim with forethought and persistency at method in the pastoral work. The visits will be arranged as far as possible with economy of space; no difficult task in most town parishes, while in the country, of course, ...
— To My Younger Brethren - Chapters on Pastoral Life and Work • Handley C. G. Moule
... discoveries. Sitting on a wind-overturned tree- trunk, looking out from the edge of the fringing woods of the Grannoch bank towards the swells of Cairnsmuir's green bosom, they entered upon their position with great practicality. Nature, with an unusual want of foresight, had neglected to provide a back to this sylvan seat, so Ralph attended to the matter himself. This shows that self-help is a virtue ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... with a refusal as firm as it was silent. She neither smiled nor scintillated now, but wore an expression of amiable practicality as she presently said, receiving back the rent-notice ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... them than their own leaders, though he would not perhaps have liked to be told so. His man-of-the-world, political shrewdness had been superimposed by life on a nature whose prime strength was its practicality and lack of imagination. It was his business to be efficient, but not strenuous, or desirous of pushing ideas to their logical conclusions; to be neither narrow nor puritanical, so long as the shell of 'good form' was preserved intact; to be a liberal landlord up to the point of not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ever been practical men, and such is Governor Cox. But practicality need not, and does not, imply a lack of vision. There is such a thing as ideality in vision and a practical hand to make good the picture of the mind. The combined qualities are considered as essentials to the adequate man of the times, for a vision of a new world order is the rarest gift ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... story,—love was king. Wisdom to the winds! Practicality to the corners of the earth! Prudence, power, and grandeur, hide your diminished heads! Here were two people who cared nothing for you, and who flung you aside without a fear as they stood together under the trees in the raw evening air,—one a penniless little hired entertainer of elderly ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... with the news that the baby still slept and Peter was playing near Mr. Reynolds' gate. She seated herself as before. She wanted to hear more of Suzanna's fancies, but Suzanna remained silent, having been chilled a little by Maizie's practicality. So Maizie put out her hand and touched her sister. "Will the petticoat be a petticoat?" she asked, and wondered excitedly into what beauty Suzanna's imagination would transmute this ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... have? You probably know that he can give you every luxury within reason,—so much for honest practicality. As to Louis himself, the most fastidious could find nothing to cavil at,—he will make you a perfect husband. You are familiar enough with him to know his faults; but no man is faultless. I hope you are not so silly as to expect ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... he felt, had won him his place in the greatest splendor of the Moonlight Quill. It was due to them that he was not still making "chests useful for keeping things," as he was taught with breathless practicality in High School, and selling them to whoever had use of such chests—possibly undertakers. Nevertheless when the progressive Moonlight Quill became the retrogressive Moonlight Quill he preferred to sink with it, and so took to letting his suits gather undisturbed the wispy burdens ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... continually pride themselves upon being exceedingly "practical," but many times those who of themselves think nothing about this are the most practical people the world knows. And, on the other hand, those who take great pride in speaking of their own practicality are many times the least practical. Or again, in some ways they may be practical, but so far as life in its totality is concerned, ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... Terran fauna and flora before it was attempted to be colonized. Terran life-forms could play the devil with alien ecological systems, very much to humanity's benefit. Familiar microorganisms and a standard vegetation added to the practicality of human settlements on otherwise alien worlds. But sometimes ...
— Pariah Planet • Murray Leinster
... Harriet carte blanche to go ahead and fit it up before he and Rose came back from the seashore, and the layette was a monument to Harriet's thoroughgoing practicality. There had been a wild day of supplementing of course, when it was discovered that there were ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Carmencita made her purchases, and only once or twice did she overstep the limitations of practicality and insist upon a present that could be of little use to its recipient. For the giving of joy the selection of a pair of shining slippers, a blue satin sash, and a string of amber beads were eminently suitable, however, and, watching, Van Landing saw her eyes gleam over ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... fire! The Reading-room was his true home; its warmth enwrapped him kindly; the peculiar odour of its atmosphere—at first a cause of headache—grew dear and delightful to him. But he could not sit here until his last penny should be spent. Something practical must be done, and practicality was not his ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... of Prussian policy since 1713 lay in its premonition and appreciation of the principle of mechanism even before it became common to all the world. Organization and improvement, the war machine and money, science, practicality and conscientiousness—all this is clearly mechanization seen from ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... thought of. The mental healer, regardless of his success, is looked upon as an enthusiast, or worse, and even the citizen who modestly accepts the theory of possible mind-healing, is regarded as credulous and visionary by those who pride themselves upon their practicality. Why does this prejudice exist, when advancement in physical science uniformly meets with a ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... it in revolt against the cramping sectarianism of another college. He had gloried in the spirit which gave it birth, and it was he who, through the encroachings of problems of administration and the ensnarements and entanglements of practicality, had fought to keep unattached and unfettered that spirit of freedom in ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... Susy was a dreamer, a thinker, a poet and philosopher, and Clara—well, Clara wasn't. In after-years a passion for music developed the latent spirituality and intellectuality in Clara, and her practicality took second and, in fact, even third place. Jean was from the beginning orderly, steady, diligent, persistent; and remains so. She picked up languages ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... conceit, this unassuming practicality, the sort of thing with which Gargoyle's mind had been carefully inoculated for a long time, baffled, while it reassured Mrs. Strang. Also the sense of sacred trust placed in her hands made her refrain from ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... good, strong, dark eyes, modest in bearing, self-possessed in manner, sensible-who made ready and incisive comments, and seemed to have thought deeply on a large range of topics, but had a sort of downright practicality and cool independence, with all her femininity of bearing, that rather, puzzled her interlocutor. It occurred to Mr. King to guess that Miss Selina Morton might be from Boston, which she was not, but it was with a sort ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... true but practically useful only as a mantel ornament, or for a mistress in the parlor to direct the maid in the cellar! But, professor, cui bono? In imagination one can make a new earth and improve all the land communications of our old one, but my unfortunate practicality stands in the way of ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... critic, to a degree, to thoroughly appreciate the art of painting, but that is another thing. The common people in France are universally fond of pictures, much more so than the English. The Americans are next to the French in ideality, notwithstanding their great practicality. The common people of England are far behind those of America in their fondness for the beautiful—at least I judge so from a pretty fair experience. America as yet, to be sure, can show few works of art, but the vast number of enlightened Americans who continually ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... one may believe of the feasibility of the carrying out of Fourier's doctrines of united industry or the practicality of any of his theories, they must stand amazed at the bold and often extremely beautiful conceptions of his brain; such as the actual forecasting of the development theory before Darwin, Spencer and Huxley were born— though not exactly in detail with ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... theory of their exemplary social importance, the Hostels themselves with a haste that she felt constantly was premature, were achieving a concrete existence. They were developing upon lines that here and there disregarded Mr. Brumley's ideas very widely; they gained in practicality what perhaps they lost in social value, through the entirely indirect relations between Mr. Brumley on the one hand and Sir Isaac on the other. For Sir Isaac manifestly did not consider and would have been ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... specially about these young men was their rare practicality. They were no mere dreamers, helpless visionaries, with ideas they had no notion how to embody. Dreamers, of course, they were,—otherwise there had been no point in their being practical,—but they were dreamers who understood something of how dreams are best ...
— The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.] • Richard Le Gallienne
... stairs now," said Josephine with a creditable effort after practicality: "we shall have you both seriously ill unless you get your ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... or hurry over business: and Crebillon observes this doctrine in the most praiseworthy fashion. With the thorough practicality of his century and of his nation (which has always been in reality the most practical of all nations) he sets to work to give us the ways and manners of his world. It is an odd world at first sight, but one gets ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... necessity for such work, one cannot but see in the common impulse which prompts and directs it a symptom of the deep-seated unity of the two peoples. Nothing I saw in America impressed me more than the thorough practicality as well as the untiring devotion which was apparent in the work carried on by Miss Addams in Chicago and Miss Lillian D. Wald in Henry-street, New York. And in both Settlements I recognised the same atmosphere ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... does the essayist return to this note of mysticism, so distinct from the daylight practicality of his normal utterance. And it was surely with these musings in his mind that the poet makes Prospero pronounce upon the phantasmagoria that the spirits have performed at his behest. We know, indeed, that the speech proceeds upon a reminiscence ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... boy, in the back settlements of the Mississippi Valley, where a gracious and beautiful Sunday school simplicity and practicality prevailed, the 'Yankee' (citizen of the New England States) was hated with a splendid energy. But religion had nothing to do with it. In a trade, the Yankee was held to be about five times the match of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... freedom in this country, and the absolute medical freedom (until within a few years the colleges have procured medical legislation to help their diplomas, and their graduates) have given a progressiveness and practicality to American physicians which are beginning to be ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... excuse his constant absence from home, and as a pretence for shutting himself up in his dear college, with his cherished Latin authors. It was partly for the sake of avenging himself on his mother, whose decisive practicality jarred the delicate music of a nature extravagantly ideal, that he so severely criticised all that she held sacred; and his strictures fell heaviest on the bow window, looking somewhat like a temple with its small pilasters supporting the rich cornice from which the dwarf vaulting ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... same flower enters the heart of men its aspect of busy practicality is gone, and it becomes the very emblem of leisure and repose. The same object that is the embodiment of endless activity without is the perfect expression of ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... the acknowledged "Father of his country?" Washington was modeled on the best Saxon and Franklin of the age of the Stuarts (rooted in the Elizabethan period)—was essentially a noble Englishman, and just the kind needed for the occasions and the times of 1776-'83. Lincoln, underneath his practicality, was far less European, far more Western, original, essentially non-conventional, and had a certain sort of out-door or prairie stamp. One of the best of the late commentators on Shakespeare (Professor Dowden), makes ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... democrat, independent of foreign criticism; confident in the validity and value of his own ideas and judgments; believing loyally in his country's institutions, and upholding them fearlessly before the world; fundamentally serious and self-reliant, yet with a practicality tempered by humane kindliness, warmth of heart, and a strain of persistent idealism; rude, boisterous, even uncouth, yet withal softened by sympathy for the under-dog, a boundless love for the weak, ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... and not with the artisans. We must acknowledge with deep penitence that we are on wrong lines. For himself, the Bishop admits that he has 'a permanently troubled conscience' in the matter. Then, with that admirable courage and practicality which is the secret of much of his influence, he proceeds to indicate four 'lines of hopeful recovery.' First, the Church must get rid of the administration of poor relief. Where the charity of the Church is understood to mean the patronage of the rich, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... means exclusively occupied in hearing and seeing new things. With that strain of practicality which contrasted so oddly with his sentimental and romantic temperament, he kept firmly before his eyes the main object of his visit to England. He had determined at the outset not to sell himself and his title for less than L50,000, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... literary life with her in the atmosphere of such a quiet place as Burymouth, when he might have chosen money and unrest in New York, she on her side saw what her husband meant in liking the shrewd, able fellow who had such a vein of gay romance in his practicality, and such an intelligent and respectful sympathy with her tradition ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... diplomacy and undemocratic control of foreign policy. By every social tradition I should be in opposition to Sir Edward Grey, but I think Grey was the best Foreign Secretary that the Liberal Party could have chosen and that he worked well on the only possible plane, the plane of practicality. I am quite sure he is an honest man, and I strongly resent, as Englishmen of all opinions will resent, any ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... equipped as many who had held the office; and, without troubling his sleep, determined that should the boss-made boom attain genuine popularity, it might drift where it would without hindrance from him. Precisely this occurred. The governor's practicality smoothed the way to his indorsement by men whose foremost interest was business rather than politics, and a banquet given him late in April by a great commercial organization of New York, which approved his policy of letting the city mind its own ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... of her supremacy in India appealed to both sides of Bonaparte's nature. The vision of the tricolour floating above the minarets of Cairo and the palace of the Great Mogul at Delhi fascinated a mind in which the mysticism of the south was curiously blent with the practicality and passion for details that characterize the northern races. To very few men in the world's history has it been granted to dream grandiose dreams and all but realize them, to use by turns the telescope and the microscope of political survey, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... practical man." Even reform administrations have been known to advocate a liberal enforcement of the laws. Can you blame Delany for being practical when others so much greater than he have prided themselves upon the same attribute of practicality? There were of course a lot of things he simply had to do or get out of the force; at any rate, had he not done them his life would have been intolerable. These consisted in part of being deaf, dumb and blind when he was told to be so—a comparatively easy ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... the girl, with sudden practicality, "you say you ain't been at Doctor Dawson's for three months! Why, only last week he drew on dad for two hundred and fifty dollars ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... was more than dubious concerning the practicality of the cooeperative round-up. The cowmen were passionately devoted to the idea of the open range; to believe in fences was treason; but it was in fences that ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... answered in a firm, resolute tone. It became a little hard in its practicality as she added: "You were quite right. We took the ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... the future of my country, which stands for the only true progress in the world today, and a far higher ideal of mortal happiness than the most benevolent paternalism can bestow, had in store for it, with Germany victorious, and America (always profoundly moved by success owing to her very practicality) ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... indifferent so long as it was in the United States. He thought Washington as good an authority on spelling as Dr. Johnson, and much better than King George. He took the Bible as a book to be used, not as a piece of antiquity to be sheltered in a museum, and with an American practicality set about making it more serviceable in his own way. He foresaw the vast crowds of American children; he knew that the integrity of the country was conditioned on the intelligibility of their votes, and ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... machines, sheds, bridges, trams, motor-cars: not one line corrected, not one angle smoothed, for the sake of the eye, of the nerves of the spectator. And all of it, both decorative futility and cynically hideous practicality (let alone the various exotic raree shows from distant countries or more distant centuries) expect to be enjoyed after a jostle at the doors and a scurry along the crowded corridors, and to the accompaniment of every rattling and shrieking and jarring sound. For mankind in our days ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... learn our full lesson. His teaching goes far beyond the schoolroom; he gathers in conference the heads of families, the fathers and mothers; he sets them to study and practice the curriculum of the family and the neighborhood. In his intense practicality he lacks something of the spiritual inspiration which Armstrong had and gave. But his teaching is in no wise narrow or selfish, for always it is animated by the spirit of brotherhood and service. His personal story, Up from Slavery, is one of the most ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... on the whole and in the main. The dogmatic character of Marxian Communism finds support in the supposed philosophic basis of the doctrine; it has the fixed certainty of Catholic theology, not the changing fluidity and sceptical practicality of ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... do our rambling in other directions. This being so, I bethought me again of the wrecked sloop lying under the cliffs on the north shore of the cove. I remembered that there had seemed to be a way down the cliffs. I resolved to visit the sloop again. The terrible practicality of the beautiful youth made it difficult to indulge in romantic musings in his presence. And to me a derelict brings a keener tang of romance than any other relic of man's ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... An intense practicality was a mark of the later Greek philosophy. This was common to Stoicism with its rival Epicureanism. Both regarded philosophy as 'the art of life,' though they differed in their conception of what that art should be. Widely as the two schools were opposed to one another, ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... happiest experiences were in dreamland, Miss Barrett was keenly susceptible to the strong humanity of Browning's song, nor less keenly attracted by his strenuous and fearless outlook, his poetic practicality, and even by his bluntness of insight in certain matters. It was no slight thing to her that she could, in Mr. Lowell's words, say of herself ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp
... Her immense practicality refused to be embarrassed in the least. Feeling immensely foolish Billy accepted hers, but then he discovered his own handkerchief and stuffed hers away ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... morality, he could not even know where the geese were, or get at the geese! If he spent his time in splenetic atrabiliar reflections on his own misery, his ill usage by Nature, Fortune and other Foxes, and so forth; and had not courage, promptitude, practicality, and other suitable vulpine gifts and graces, he would catch no geese. We may say of the Fox too, that his morality and insight are of the same dimensions; different faces of the same internal unity of vulpine life!—These things are worth stating; for the contrary of them acts with manifold very ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... from a feeling that every dollar spent in the interest of art (!) should be so gewgawed to the outer world that all who passed might note the costliness and wonder. The second extreme had its birth in an elementary practicality that believes anything artistic must be ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... broke in Teresa. Once again, as several times before, Coffin admired her decisiveness. She cut through nonsense with a man's speed and a woman's practicality. "Take our word for it, June, if we don't turn about within two months, we'll do better to go on to Rustum. So, voting is out. We could wake a few sleepers, but those already conscious are really ...
— The Burning Bridge • Poul William Anderson
... actual fact, his brain was busy weighing millions of money,—the fate of an accumulated mass of wealth hung on the balance of his decision,—and he was mentally arranging his plans with all the clearness, precision and practicality which had distinguished him in his biggest financial schemes,—schemes which had from time to time amazed and convulsed the speculating world. A certain wistful sadness touched him as he looked on the quiet country landscape in the wintry sunlight of this Christmas morn,—some ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... the spread-eagle style, and nothing can be more remote from that than his. We are reckoned a practical folk, who would rather hear about a new air-tight stove than about Plato; yet our favorite teacher's practicality is not in the least of the Poor Richard variety. If he have any Buncombe constituency, it is that unrealized commonwealth of philosophers which Plotinus proposed to establish; and if he were to make an almanac, his directions to farmers would be something ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... not here say anything further to show that this is the sole correct method of establishing the necessary principles of our science. The aim is only to test the practicality of this method in the routine of a criminal case, and to see if it is not, indeed, the only one by which to attain complete and indubitable results. If it is, it must *be of use not only during the whole trial—not only in the testing of ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... sometimes done not merely over stitches, but upon the surface of them, not penetrating the ground-stuff. Unless, in such a case, the first stitching is of such compact character as to want no strengthening, it amounts almost to a sin against practicality not to take advantage of the second stitching ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... He might very possibly bottle things, but would he stick a label round 'em and sell 'em? The Beaver is a dreamy fool, I'll admit, him and his dams, but after all there's a sort of protection about 'em, a kind of muddy practicality! They prevent things getting at him. And it's not your poetry only. It's the poetry of the customer too. Poet answering to poet—soul to soul. Health, Strength and Beauty—in a bottle—the magic philtre! Like ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... instead of wild as applied to animals; two as applied to land; three as applied to people who have not been civilized; three as applied to a storm, an uncontrolled temper, or a mob; three as applied to a scheme that has no basis in reason or practicality. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Precisely that it should not be an entanglement, but a marshalling of powers in two sets according to their true religions and political affinities, was the essence of his aspiration; there were deep tendencies towards that result; sagacity consisted in perceiving these, and practicality in promoting them. Cromwell's aspiration in connexion with the Swedish-Danish war was also, it could be proved, that of other thoughtful Protestants then contemplating the war and speculating on its chances. But, in the ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... workings of the Time-telespectroscope involve all the intricate postulates and mathematical formulae of Time-traveling itself. As a matter of practicality, however, the results obtained are simple of understanding. The etheric vibratory rate of the vehicles while traveling through Time was constantly changing. Through the telespectroscope one cage was visible to the other across the five hundred feet of intervening Space when they approached ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... were left with their scientific discovery; and, indeed, Morse in the New World of practicality and quick adaptations, was about to be rejected and cast out. The sorrows through which he passed need not here be recounted. They are sufficiently sad and sufficiently humiliating. His unavailing appeals to the American Congress are happily ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... it is. That is the art and manner of the man. A man full of English accuracy; English veracity, solidity, simplicity; by whom this universal Jail-commission, not to be paid for in money but far otherwise, is set about, with all the slow energy, the patience, practicality, sedulity and sagacity common to the best English commissioners paid in money and not ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... that I have an odd mixture of practicality and mysticism within me, and I have sometimes thought that one has damaged the other. My mysticism has pulled me back when I ought to have taken a decided step, urging "Leave it to God"—and then, when I have failed to get what I wanted, ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the aesthetic piety of our Saint Catherine. But she did more than smile at our national practicality when, one evening, from the gay drawing-room we heard the clamor ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... to Ireland; I am quite certain that all our failure in Ireland arose from the fact that we would not in spirit treat it as a nation. It would be difficult to find, even among the innumerable examples that exist, a stronger example of the immensely superior importance of sentiment to what is called practicality than this case of the two sister nations. It is not that we have encouraged a Scotchman to be rich; it is not that we have encouraged a Scotchman to be active; it is not that we have encouraged a Scotchman to be free. It is that we have quite definitely ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... the augmentation of the power of the peers might be risked without real fear of serious harm. Our present practice, as has been explained, only works because of the good sense of those by whom it is worked, and the new practice would have to rely on a similar good sense and practicality too. The House of Lords must deal with the assent to treaties as they do with the assent to laws; they must defer to the voice of the country and the authority of the Commons even in cases where their own judgment might guide them otherwise. In very vital treaties ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... row in the smoking car, Thorpe laid aside his letter and watched with keen appreciation the direct practicality of the trainmen's method. When the bearded man fell before the conductor's blow, he turned to ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... with feminine practicality, while the man talks, has reached her decision.) We daughters of the Valori are so much merchandise.... Heigho, since I cannot help it, since bought and sold I must be, one day or another, at least I will go at a noble price. ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... with her pretty native practicality, she picked up the cloak, carefully folded and ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... marriage in June, had kept her pledge to come to South Dakota. She was pleased with the way Carrie not only heroically filled every difficult engagement, but sized up the campaign for herself and planned for the future. In Carrie's report of her work there was a ruthless practicality which was rare and which instantly won Susan's approval. Here was a young woman to watch and ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... Raleigh. His was the large imagination which conceived a new and expanding England beyond the seas; the broad grasp of ideas which made him a leading exponent of the theory of the Oceanic policy and the new naval methods; the ready practicality which made him, after Drake's day, perhaps the ablest of Elizabeth's captains; the versatility and culture, which place him securely in the second flight of the writers of the time; the breadth of intellectual outlook which ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... Puritan character, as most fully worked out in Scotland and New England, was a mixture of intense idealism and sternest practicality. The idealism aimed to control every action of life, and to base itself on the ultimate reality. It renounced the aid of art and embodied imagination; it renounced human authority; it had no aid from material beauty, none ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... For some reason her brain was unusually clear tonight. At any other time she would have defended, or at least excused, her brother. She knew it, and found time to wonder at her new practicality as she answered: ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the number of garments that they made—surely a single machine might produce as many within a week. But there is danger that their work was only a sentimental expression of their world-grief. I'll sink to depths of practicality and claim that a pittance from their allowances would have bought more and ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... no basis in history for assuming that poetry will cease. Is there any ground in speculation? The assertion goes that imagination will be shrivelled by the chill of scientific practicality, that minds trained and informed by physical and mental science will possess too overpowering a sense of logic, too habitual a consciousness of the matter-of-fact, to indulge in the visions and imaginings which are supposed to be the life of poetry. It is urged that, when every inch ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... forget, the value of thinking that functions, as the farmer's does, in the effort to control Nature for a livelihood that directly contributes to human welfare. If such thinking is often prosaic and rigid, it is also close to reality and insistent upon practicality. Narrow it may be at times, as a result of lack of opportunity to have wide contact, but it is substantial and born of knowledge of the necessary limitations that Nature places upon the wishes of men and women. The farmer ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves |
