"Problem" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one can hate God," there is a scholium which shows that the problem of pain which Spinoza has left unsolved must have occurred to him. "But some may object that if we understand God to be the cause of all things, we do for that very reason consider Him to be the cause of sorrow. But I reply that in so far as we understand the causes of sorrow, it ceases to be a ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... instance of each successive light. Stephen knew the others fairly well through and through. The usual mixture of good and evil, of strength and weakness, of purpose and vacillation, was quite within the scope of her own feeling and of her observation. But this man was something of a problem to her; and, as such, had a prominence in her thoughts quite beyond ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... moderate competence and a decent home, the securing of which for them would have, at the same time, enhanced the wealth of the employers. The way to gain the allegiance, devotion, and fidelity of the poorer orders, is easy and simple. The problem of the harmonization of the interests of classes in community with mutual benefit to all, is scientifically solved. It only remains for the intelligent and benevolent to give due attention to the teachings of science in order to secure ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... be only too glad to help you in any way I can," returned Kennedy, his manner expressing the genuine interest that he never feigned over a particularly knotty problem in science and crime. "I had the pleasure of meeting Saratovsky once in London. I shall try to see him the first thing in ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... December, were now at hand, in which I had the pleasing prospect of a very good crop. But here I met with a new problem; for the goats and hares, having tasted of the outshoot of the blade, kept it to short that it had not strengthen to shoot up into a stalk. To prevent this, I enclosed it with a hedge, and by day ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... to the admitted familiarity of Miss Austen with Madame D'Arblay's work, it has been concluded that Miss Austen borrowed from Cecilia, the title of her second novel. But here comes in the little problem to which we have referred. Pride and Prejudice it is true, was written and finished before Sense and Sensibility—its original title for several years being First Impressions. Then, in 1797, the author fell to work upon an older essay in letters a la Richardson, called ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... conundrum. Much was their laughter at the wild guesses of the thoughtless and the giddy; and great the triumph of the swain who penetrated the mystery, and successfully removed the abstruseness of the problem. Many were the feats of skill exhibited by the dextrous shepherd, and infinite were the wonder and admiration of the gazing spectators. The whole scene indeed was calculated to display the triumph of ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... this declaration—to use the common expression—entirely free from artifice or affectation, charmed Henri for one reason, yet, on the other hand, redoubled his perplexity. How could he conciliate his scruples of conscience with the aspirations of his heart? The problem seemed then as insoluble as when it had been presented the first time. But Valentine was saved. For the moment that was the essential point, the only one in question. The involuntary revelation of her secret had brought the color to her ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... subjects; they were as English as the peasant or the trader. They had won English liberty by their swords, and the tradition of their order bound them to look on themselves as its natural guardians. The close of the Barons' War solved the problem which had so long troubled the realm, the problem how to ensure the government of the realm in accordance with the provisions of the Great Charter, by the transfer of the business of administration into the hands of a standing committee of the ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... matter reduced it to a definite problem. What was needed was some sort of protection for the screw that would keep the weed away from it and yet would allow it to work freely: and, having the case thus clearly stated, the thought presently occurred to me that I could secure this protection by building ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... be put into universal practice, and may always be depended upon within half a degree, which is sufficient for all nautical purposes. If, therefore, observing and calculating were considered as necessary qualifications for every sea officer, the labours of the speculative theorist to solve this problem might be remitted, without much injury to mankind: Neither will it be so difficult to acquire this qualification, or put it in practice, as may at first appear; for, with the assistance of the nautical almanack, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... wrestling with the problem of her complicated male attire; the most beautiful picture of puzzled distress imaginable. The port was open and showed her rosy as the morn when she looked up at him. The jack-boots were in a corner, ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... is a true saying that you will find twenty heroic women before you may meet one generous one; but Alice was not wholly without this rarest of qualities. The memory of a frank voice, very honest grey eyes, and a robust cheerfulness brought back some affection for the erring Lewis. The problem was beyond her reconciling efforts, so the poor girl, torn between common sense and feeling, and recognizing with painful clearness the complexity of life, found refuge ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... the ability to drop every subject but that centred upon. Tell one man to concentrate his mind on a difficult problem until he has worked it out,—he will clinch his fists, tighten his throat, hold his teeth hard together, and contract nobody knows how many more muscles in his body, burning and wasting fuel in a hundred or more ...
— Power Through Repose • Annie Payson Call
... collection.[1027] Some chasms of secondary importance have indeed been bridged; but the principal stand out more conspicuously through the denser scattering of orbits near their margins. Nor is it doubtful that the influence of Jupiter in some way produced them. M. de Freycinet's study of the problem they present[1028] has, however, led him to the conclusion that they existed ab origine, thus testifying rather to the preventive than to the perturbing power of ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... The delicacy of the change in Martin's manner when called upon to answer the detective momentarily distracted Trent's appreciative mind. But the big man's next question brought it back to the problem at once. ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... voluptuous nature, Vesta desired to see him married again, to complete and secure his reformation; and, while she was yet puzzling her brain to think of a wife to suit him, he solved the problem himself by cleanly cutting out Rhoda Holland from under the ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... boiled, for his eyes are as red as a mazer made of an alder-tree. The thigh of this leveret is good for those that have the gout. To the purpose of the truel,—what is the reason that the thighs of a gentlewoman are always fresh and cool? This problem, said Gargantua, is neither in Aristotle, in Alexander Aphrodiseus, nor in Plutarch. There are three causes, said the monk, by which that place is naturally refreshed. Primo, because the water runs all along by it. Secundo, because it is a shady place, obscure and dark, upon which the ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... kettle on the hearthrug, any frigidity that he may have observed in her manner may possibly find a natural explanation. His partisanship in the Carlyle affair, which was characteristically headlong and human, may not throw much light on that painful problem itself, but it throws a great deal of light on the character of Browning, which was pugnaciously proud of its friends, and had what may almost be called a lust of loyalty. Browning was not capable of that most sagacious detachment which enabled Tennyson to say that he could not agree ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... to say—though this also has been said—that 'Paul's problem was not that of the possibility of forgiveness; it was the Jewish law, the Old Testament dispensation: how to justify his breach with it, how to demonstrate that the old order had been annulled and a new order inaugurated.' There is a false contrast in ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... nearly a mile from Newlyn, and, at the moment when the younger artist sought him, he stood upon a footpath which ran through plowed fields to the village of Paul. In the bottom of his mind ran a current of thought occupied with the problem of Joan Tregenza, but, superficially, he was concerned with the spring world in which he walked. He stood where Nature, like Artemis, appeared as a mother of many breasts. Brown and solemn in their undulations, they rose about and around him to the sky-line, where ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... again and survive. The genius of man, if that is a happy term in discussing the horrors of conflict, has always made the latest war the most frightful. When we consider the development in the methods of human destruction between 1914 and 1918 and apply the problem of simple proportion, we are staggered even to think of the possibilities of the sons of men being again ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris
... Later might he not want to philosophise less stoically and more luxuriously? It was a problem. Meanwhile there was Cassy. He had no wish to lose her. Yet about him already was the shadow of the inevitable draft act. That was not a problem ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... several minutes. He could not deny the reality of the scene through the chimney, for it had the same forceful existence to him as anything in life. Ah Ben, seeing that he was still puzzling himself over the problem of mind and matter, the puzzle of life, the great sphinx riddle ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... guarding the river's mouth were only anchored, our problem would have been simplified; but they were constantly shifting, and as they showed no sailing lights, no telling where, after a signal flashed, they would fetch next up; and always, showing no signal-light whatever, would be the others guarding what ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... between meals, when she ought not to eat anything, much less such hearty food. When the little child sees the good things, she, of course, wants them, and having been humored in every whim, she must still be, she thinks, especially when she is ill. A problem then is here presented which I may help to solve for them. Jennie and I are growing very fond of each other, and she will do some things for me which she will not do for others who have obeyed her wishes so long. I begin by round-about ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... reputed honest men, assured the nephew there was no money to be found. Bankers in Sacramento and San Francisco were polite but disappointing. All the astronomer brought home was Mat Bailey's story of the murder of Cummins, a copy of Robert Palmer's will procured at Downieville, and a problem which defied his higher mathematics. "Set a thief to catch a thief;" the ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall
... The next problem to which special attention was given during this first year of the new government was that of the post. The courier-service between Eden Vale and Mombasa no longer sufficed to meet the demands of the increased intercourse. The mails had grown to be larger in quantity than could be transported ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... might have shuffled on is a problem which must now for ever remain unsolved; for his indolence was not permitted to take its natural course; his ruin was accelerated by the secret operation of an active and malignant power. Mr. Hopkins, who had determined to get that field which joined to Gray's mill, and who well knew that the pride ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... on the banks of the Tarka River; another was encamped in front of us on the banks of the Vlekpoort River; whilst a fifth was stationed near the confluence of the two streams. Thus five columns all around us; and the problem to be solved was, how to get ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... voice. "Though you are wrong in your conjectures, if you will attend, I will try and explain what I know about the matter. It is a very important one, for by means of this dust—for dust it is—which fills the air, philosophers have been able to determine in part the difficult problem of the track of the winds in their circuits. How is this? you will say. Dust coming from one place surely cannot be distinguishable from dust coming from another. To the ignorant man it is not, but to the man of science it is. There are certain minute animal productions ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... its cry. The rocker is worn by the feet of mothers whose hands were busy with needles or wheel as they rocked and sang. And from the fact that it is in the kitchen, you know that the servant-girl problem then had ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... While pondering this problem, I sat in the dormitory window-seat. It was a fine frosty afternoon; the winter sun, already setting, gleamed pale on the tops of the garden-shrubs in the "allee defendue." One great old pear-tree—the ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... prevented the adoption of violent measures against him; but they sent a message to him that he must not have Cappadocia, and Mithridates, waiting for a better opportunity, thought proper to comply. Of this message the bearer was Lucius Sylla. He had time to study on the spot the problem of how to deal with Asia Minor. He accomplished his mission with his usual adroitness and apparent success, and he returned to Rome with new honors to ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... minute, in Maclise's behalf, who has wrought a divine Venetian work, it seems, for the British Institution. Forster described it well—but I could do nothing better, than this wooden ware—(all the "properties", as we say, were given, and the problem was how to catalogue them in rhyme ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... think of that, Kit?" he called to me. "Your uncle is going to look as angular as a problem in geometry. I'll—I'll be the original reductio ad absurdum. Do you want me to stand on my head, ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... other foodstuffs might become contraband of war, nor in the doctrine of continuous voyages as applied by Great Britain to trading with the enemy. It was preferred at Washington to follow the usual rule and avoid passing upon hypothetical cases until occasion had called them into actual existence. The problem which had been before the Department of State was, not to force Great Britain to declare herself finally upon broad questions of international law, nor to express the final attitude of the United States upon questions which were not ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... it," he said, as he handed it back. "It's a fine dramatic piece of work. But it's only a starter here. To get any idea of our problem you'll have to go all over the harbor. When you've done that for a few months more, and I get back from my trip abroad, I'll be glad to ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... Park Lane did little to clear up the problem in which I was interested. The house was separated from the street by a low wall and railing, the whole not more than five feet high. It was perfectly easy, therefore, for anyone to get into the garden, but ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... make the discovery!" Stupidly Nona Davis repeated the words aloud, because they puzzled her. Then it occurred to her that the woman before her was so associated with mysteries that a family problem must be comparatively simple. Doubtless she had been able to discover more of Nona's mother's history than she herself had ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... honest citizen. Why in the world they collect all the data they do, file it away day after day, month after month and year after year, and publish it after it is of no use to anyone on this earth, I never could figure out! I know it is a difficult problem because if the Department of Agriculture should say today that Winesap apples grow beautifully on Maryland hills some fellow would promptly capitalize that and go to selling the Maryland hills, the water underneath, the air above them and everything around them for the modest ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... Adolphus, that a flag of truce should be half a messenger half a spy?—And, having finished burnishing his arms, he sate down patiently to compute how much half a dollar per diem would amount to at the end of a six-months' campaign; and, when he had settled that problem, proceeded to the more abstruse calculations necessary for drawing up a brigade of two thousand men on the principle of extracting the ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... The problem which was to be settled by a century of strife was now posed. On the one hand were the English plantations, populated, cultivated, profitable, stretching along the east coast of North America; on the other were the Canadian settlements, poverty-stricken, empty, over-officialled, a cause ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... business sense to this problem. That's the way I run my store. Find out what the people want and give it to 'em, is my motto. Now, people ain't comin' to church unless there's somethin' to draw 'em. We've tried preachin', and it won't draw. They say they want sociability, so let's give it to 'em strong. They want attention ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... her own rooms in Diana's Grove, she went over the whole subject again and again, always finding in the face of Lilla Watford a key to a problem which puzzled her—the problem of a way to turn Caswall's powers—his very existence—to ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... What were her imponderable emanations of goodwill and good intention when compared with the robust masculinity that was marching in firm phalanxes over solid ground toward the mastery of the great Problem? She drooped visibly. Little O'Grady, studying her pose and expression from afar, wrung his hands. "That fellow will drive her away. Ten to one we shall never see her profile here again!" Yes, Eudoxia was feeling, with ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... rock-mouth of Kythrea. This is simple nonsense, and can only be accepted by those who adore the unreal, instead of the guide, "common-sense." The actual volume of the outflow at Kythrea has never been calculated, although the problem is most simple; but a cursory examination is sufficient to explain the origin of the supply which a certain superficial mountain area collects and stores during the rainy seasons: to yield gradually through some small aperture or leak in a grand ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... North India, sixty years ago, a young missionary on an evangelistic tour among the villages paused to rest by the wayside. As he paced up and down beneath the tamarind trees, pondering the problem of India's womanhood, shut in the zenanas beyond the reach of the Gospel which he was bringing to the little villages, there fell at his feet a feather from a vulture's wing. Picking it up, he whimsically cut it into a quill. Thinking that his sister in far-away ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... ship. It seemed very much as if he were trying to make the best of a bad bargain. But if, on the other hand, he was entirely sincere in his protestations, it might well be true that he did not dare come over openly to our side. The problem had so many faces that it fairly made me dizzy, so I abandoned it and tore open my clothes to examine the flesh wound on ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... forehead wrinkled over the problem. "She has been good to me lately, and she'll expect an invitation. Still Mabel and Mary don't have half the fun that Ilga has, and I want them. Oh, dear, ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... a little. No doubt he found the incomprehensibility of the problem rather trying to ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... The problem of establishing such water communication has long attracted attention. Many projects have been formed and surveys have been made of all possible available routes. As a knowledge of the true topical conditions of the Isthmus was gained, insuperable ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 8: Chester A. Arthur • James D. Richardson
... which with great ingenuity and eloquence he proceeded to develop the theme of the supreme value of the human factor in modern life, social and industrial. With great cogency he pressed the argument against the inhuman and degrading view that would make man a mere factor in the complex problem of Industrial Finance, a mere inanimate cog ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... for a second. He seemed to ponder the matter. "I can't say off-hand what I'm going to do with you," he said. "You're—a bit of a problem, you know, Toby." ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... as if the problem might be solved; the two ladies at Jones's Hotel received a visit from Willie Woodley. Such was the social appellation of a young American who had sailed from New York a few days after their own departure, and who, having the privilege of intimacy ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... over. I was visiting our posts about 2.30 a.m. when I saw two large flashes on Gun Hill; on listening I could not hear any shells travelling or bursting, so concluded the enemy were amusing themselves by firing blank charges. It was not till we saw our column returning at dawn that we solved the problem. We found the spruit very unpleasant in wet weather, as the water used to come down like a mountain torrent and wash away bits of our wall and shelters; after wet nights we used to spend our time in digging our belongings out of the sand, having spent the ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... "it is quite fourteen and a half years since I was personally asked to test a personal problem: then it was the case of an attempt to poison the French President at a Lord Mayor's Banquet. It is now, I understand, a question of whether some friend of yours called Maggie is a suitable fiancee for some friend of hers called ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... a minute," begged Nat, and, while he assumed an attitude as though he was trying to solve a problem in geometry, Fred drew out a little tin fife and played such a doleful ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... chap!—and wondering what has become of that other one they call the wet-nurse. In another the future great historian is lying—and doubtless will continue to lie until his earthly mission is ended. In another the future President is busying himself with no profounder problem of state than what the mischief has become of his hair so early; and in a mighty array of other cradles there are now some 60,000 future office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him occasion to grapple with that same old problem a second time. And in still one more cradle, somewhere ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... during all the years Spain held the Islands she had never attempted to civilize them. To Pershing was given the task of going back into the mountains and capturing these Moros. To him was assigned the most stubborn problem the Islands presented. ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... The problem was thus solved: both had been cheating during the whole night, and were exactly equal in dexterity, both being unconscious of the dishonest practices of each other; and the result was that each got up from the table with the same ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... to his feet and slapped his knee with enthusiasm. He had solved his problem, and the solution was exceedingly simple. What, indeed, but another little girl! A real little girl, a flesh- and-blood little girl, a jolly, active little girl, who, as Mr. Prescott inelegantly put it to himself, "would make Lily Bell, with her ringlets and her pantalettes, ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... a careful and elaborate study of the behaviour of the animal cell and the body fluids vis-a-vis with the infecting bacterium that it becomes possible to throw light upon the complex problem whereby the cell opposes successful resistance to the diffusion of the invading microbe, or succeeds in driving out the microbe subsequently to the occurrence of ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... tabs on the trail, though he realized that if there arose any knotty problem that Tony could not solve, his own knowledge would ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... the poles with rushes and pulling out those which were superfluous. It was difficult, at first, to accustom them to the fact that the hop always twines the way of the sun, whilst the kidney bean takes the opposite course. And there was a problem which greatly exercised their minds: How were they to reach the hops at the tops of the poles—14 feet from the ground—when the time came? It did not occur to them that it was possible to cut the bine and pull up the pole. They ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... long time no mind dared to touch the problem. At length a young astronomer rises, unknown to fame, but with a mind capable of grasping all the difficulties involved in any of these questions. I refer of course to LEVERRIER. He began by taking up the movements ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... other ministers, who took their cue from their chief; but there was no hint that any of them had ever made a serious attempt to understand the problem which has arisen to confront ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... have the necessary teeth and muscle and claws; and the old lynx had them, without a doubt. But I fear that Nature, in adapting a wild animal to his environment, now and then forgets to allow for the human element in the problem. Brains are a good thing to have, after all. Even to a lynx the time is pretty sure to come, sooner or later, when he needs them in his business. Your fellow-citizens of the woods may treat you with all due respect, but the trapper ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... of lead in the middle of the casting. You see, it looks like stone, and the buyer will expect it to be heavy. So, for psychological reasons, we give it weight—only not so much that it becomes a problem ...
— The Egyptian Cat Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... of his Administration were convinced that the American problem could not be solved by their own party; that such a work could be accomplished by the Earl of Chatham alone, as he had a few years before, by his skill and energy, when the affairs of America were in a desperate state after five years' ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... The problem of raising a revenue without customs duties is solved by a stamp-tax, land-revenue, and (by far the most important), the sale of the monopolies of the preparation and retailing of opium for smoking, and of spirits and other excisable commodities, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... to do then? How avoid a consequence he found himself absolutely unable to face? It was a problem which this night must solve for him. But how? As I have said, he went down to ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... mental domain. The great problem of man—how to live in conscious harmony with himself, with his neighbour, and with the whole to which he belongs—admits of as many solutions as there are provinces in our Father's kingdom; and it is in this, and not in the material sphere, that individuals and nations ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... ethylene and hydrochloric acid.[11] Compound radicals came to be regarded as the immediate constituents of organic compounds; and, at first, a determination of their empirical composition was supposed to be sufficient to characterize them. To this problem there was added another in about the third decade of the 19th century—namely, to determine the manner in which the atoms composing the radical were combined; this supplementary requisite was due to the discovery of the isomerism of silver fulminate ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... his countenance that there seemed to be an aureole around him, and none of those there doubted that he had the solution of the impossible problem. ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... the speaker. He stood with his back to the fire, and his hands behind him, surveying Delia with a look of absent thoughtfulness; the look of a man of science on the track of a problem. ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dance destroys intellectual growth. The person who has the dance-craze cares no more for mental improvement and growth than a starving man cares for splendid recipes for fine cooking. The thought of a problem to be solved, of a book to be read, of an organ exercise to be practiced, of all things, are most tame to the one who is filled with dreams of the last dance, and with visions of the one that is to come. To grow, the mind must be free from excitement. The ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... complete, and would be large or small, in proportion to the time spent upon it. Perhaps succeeding generations built at some of the larger pyramids. They are monuments erected to the memory of kings or ruling families, and contain their tombs. Such, at least, is a plausible solution of the problem of pyramid-building. ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... weekly claims which could neither be deferred nor evaded. To give up her apartment, and shrink to the obscurity of a boarding-house, or the provisional hospitality of a bed in Gerty Farish's sitting-room, was an expedient which could only postpone the problem confronting her; and it seemed wiser as well as more agreeable to remain where she was and find some means of earning her living. The possibility of having to do this was one which she had never before seriously considered, and the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... in Acton's thoughts before, she was now never out of them. From the first she had been personally fascinating; but the fascination now had become intellectual as well. He was constantly pondering her words and motions; they were as interesting as the factors in an algebraic problem. This is saying a good deal; for Acton was extremely fond of mathematics. He asked himself whether it could be that he was in love with her, and then hoped he was not; hoped it not so much for his own sake as for that of the amatory passion itself. If this was love, love ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... she instructed herself. It made no sense, but everything else made even less sense. Just assume it's so. Set it up as a practical problem. Don't ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... intellectual, or technical purpose," as has such illustrious exhibition in France, for example. This is, we are told, one of the sacrifices to social consistency which menaces the fulness and intensity of American national life. And the most serious problem is to make a nation of independent kings who shall not exercise ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... teacher, the man whose golden slippers were awaiting him in the sweet by-and-by, began to lie awake at night and wrestle with the problem: "Is a man ever justified in breaking the sixth commandment?" The camp held that Tom bore a charmed life. Men had tried to kill him more than once, and had perished ingloriously in the attempt. His coolness and courage were indisputable. There are moments in a ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Parliament was sitting, in addition to all the rest, exhausted a man on whose decision important executive acts, dealing really with a state of revolution, were always depending. All through the second year, as it seemed to me, he was overwhelmed by a growing sense of a monstrous and insoluble problem, to which no one, through nearly another forty years—not Mr. Gladstone with his Home Rule Acts, as we were soon to see, nor Mr. Balfour's wonderful brain-power sustained by a unique temperament—was to find ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... territories should be sold, and that out of the proceeds, and out of the money which Pompey had sent home, farms should be purchased in Italy and poor citizens settled upon them. Rullus's scheme might have been crude, and the details of it objectionable; but to attempt the problem was better than to sit still and let the evil go unchecked. If the bill was impracticable in its existing form, it might have been amended; and so far as the immediate effect of such a law was concerned, it was against the interests of ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... pleasure which the Lord was supposed to have taken in seeing beings made to live aboveground turning into troglodytes, and set out for the Fedosy, or far catacombs, in the hope that they might assist us in solving that problem. ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... make up this charming play. This harmonious working together of diverse and opposite elements,—this smooth concurrence of heterogeneous materials in one varied yet coherent impression,—by what subtile process this is brought about, is perhaps too deep a problem ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... whatever we be able or unable to effect in the great problem which lies before us, any how we cannot undo the past. English Literature will ever have been Protestant. Swift and Addison, the most native and natural of our writers, Hooker and Milton, the most elaborate, never ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... world, so full of undreamed-of beauties, so exquisitely stimulating to his new powers of appreciation, he had found something which he did not understand. Truth for the first time had seemed unpleasant, not only in its effects but in itself. The problem was beyond him. Nevertheless, he pulled his bed up to the window, from which he could catch a glimpse of the varied lights of the city, ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... skulls like buckshot in a tin pan. Here we've been sitting for three months, and twiddling our thumbs, or lying awake nights trying to scheme a way out of our difficulties, when if we'd had the sense that God gives geese we would have solved the problem long ago and ceased worrying. Listen, now, with all your ears. When Bill Henderson wanted to build the logging railroad which he afterward sold to Pennington, and which Pennington is now using as a club to beat our brains out, did he have ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... The problem of time is still more difficult when the examination has to be made with regard to the estimation of still longer periods— weeks, months, or years. There is no means of making any test. The only thing that experience definitely ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... organic union of all the sects solve the problem of unity. In the first place, the tendency of such a union is toward imperialism, the creation on the federation plan of another world-church. In the second place, such a federation would strengthen rather than lessen the authority of human rule, while the compromises necessary ...
— The Last Reformation • F. G. [Frederick George] Smith
... shillings. I then told George to write down on a piece of paper how much money he had when he started on his silly journey, and how much he had in hand when he got back; to deduct the latter from the former and tell me the result; to go away, leave me to wrestle all night with the problem, come back next morning at nine, remain motionless and strictly in one country in the meanwhile, neither accommodated nor subsisting. He gave me the figure, 173 francs, and never mentioned the subject to me again for days owing to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... years of this brilliant and beloved woman were devoted to futile attempts to solve the problem of Perpetual Motion. I wish she had ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... her old age she is suffering still. This pressure it was which caused the fits of somnolency so frequently to come upon her, and which gave her the appearance of being stupid and half-witted in those early years. But that brain which seemed so dull was full of busy thoughts, and her life problem was already trying to work ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... strong men (as only a true leader can call men) to consider the calling of the ministry, facing squarely all of the difficulties connected therewith, problems of faith, problems of training, and the problem of support, which is entirely too meagre to-day; but with a strong purpose he has been making an effort to lead some of the best and ablest men into this, the highest of all callings. The same thing ...
— The Demand and the Supply of Increased Efficiency in the Negro Ministry - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 13 • Jesse E. Moorland
... of this as he looked at Carmen. This barefoot girl, who walked humbly, trustingly, with her God, had she not supplied him with a working formula for his every problem, even to the casting out of the corroding fear planted in his heart by that awful experience in Maganguey? Though he had suffered much, yet much had been done for him. The brusque logic of the explorer had swept his mind clear of ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to make a working selection of books for general study, really implies a complete scheme of education. A scheme of education ultimately implies a system of philosophy, a view of man's duty and powers as a moral and social being—a religion. Before a problem so great as this, on which readers have such different ideas and wants, and differ so profoundly on the very premises from which we start, before such a problem as a general theory of education, I prefer to pause. I will keep silence ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... worst came to worst, but I did see that it was two to one; so I thought of evading the search, but the hiding of a team of four cows and a covered wagon on the open Iowa prairie was no easy trick. If I turned off the road my tracks would show for half a mile. If once the problem of hiding my tracks was solved, the rest would be easy. I could keep in the hollows for a few miles until out of sight of the Ridge Road, and Gowdy might rake the wayside to his heart's content and never find us ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... Keith are inverted to the word Athene. The identity of the two goddesses must rest upon far stronger proof. But, in order to obtain this proof, we must know with some precision the nature and attributes of the divinity of Sais—a problem which no learning appears to me satisfactorily to have solved. It would be a strong, and, I think, a convincing argument, that Athene is of foreign origin, could we be certain that her attributes, so eminently intellectual, so thoroughly out of harmony with the barbarism of the early ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Rue Saint-Honore, in no special direction, and feeling much discomposed. At the corner of a street he ran against Alexandre Crottat, just as a ram, or a mathematician absorbed in the solution of a problem, might have knocked against another of ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... Balzac does not remain satisfied with photographing the facts collected by him, but interferes in a direct way to place his characters in certain conditions, and of these he remains the master. The problem is to know what such a passion, acting in such surroundings and under such circumstances, would produce from the point of view of an individual and of society; and an experimental novel, Cousine Bette, for example, is simply the report of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... is the preoccupation of genius," remarked Mrs. Dickens. "I'm sure it must be that. When 'C.' is engaged with some particularly trying literary problem he frequently loses all his appetite and does not speak for hours together. Isn't it ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... kind of psychical affliction that claimed his special powers. It was never necessary for him to resort to the cheap mysteries of divination; for, as I have heard him observe, after the solution of some peculiarly intricate problem— ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... evening and sinking in the morning, is of interest as giving the foundation from which the specialised sleep-movements of many leaves and cotyledons, not provided with a pulvinus, have been developed. the above periodicity should be kept in mind, by any one considering the problem of the horizontal position of leaves and cotyledons during the day, whilst illuminated from ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... change in my mode of life cannot rectify the evil which I have seen: by altering my manner of life, I shall only make myself and those about me unhappy, and the other miseries will remain the same as ever. And therefore my problem lies not in a change of my own life, as it had first seemed to me, but in aiding, so far as in me lies, in the amelioration of the situation of those unfortunate beings who have called forth my compassion. ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... proclaims that men attain perfect liberty, we cannot but remark the stress he lays upon a principle which has well-nigh faded from the Protestant mind. It is that of expiation—(and) expiation is no musty dogma of the schoolmen, but a living truth.... Dante placed more emphasis on the human side of the problem than we, and for this reason he deserves attentive study, having portrayed most powerfully some truths which our age, so eager to break from the narrowness of the ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery |
