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Attribute   /ˈætrəbjˌut/  /ətrˈɪbjˌut/   Listen
Attribute

verb
(past & past part. attributed; pres. part. attributing)
1.
Attribute or credit to.  Synonyms: ascribe, assign, impute.  "People impute great cleverness to cats"
2.
Decide as to where something belongs in a scheme.  Synonym: assign.



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"Attribute" Quotes from Famous Books



... to become the scapegoat for the general transgression. This, he argued, was no fantastic scheme, but even easy of accomplishment; for the unlimited and sacred power of the Khan, so well known to the Empress, made it absolutely iniquitous to attribute any separate responsibility to the people—upon the Khan rested the guilt, upon the Khan would descend the Imperial vengeance. This proposal was applauded for its generosity, but was energetically opposed by Zebek-Dorchi. Were they to lose the whole journey ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... determined to share my home and my life with Jane Gray. Sentimental and visionary as she was, with the funny little twist in her tongue, the poor excuse of a body seemed the last place power of any kind would choose for a habitation. I was not disposed to attribute the supernatural to my companion, but from the day of her arrival unusual events popped up to ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... in a plaitless gown, the contours of womanhood so undeveloped as to be scarcely perceptible, the marks of poverty and toil effaced by the misty hour, she touched sublimity at points, and looked almost like a being who had rejected with indifference the attribute of sex for the loftier quality of abstract humanism. She stooped down and cleared away the withered flowers that Grace and herself had laid there the previous week, and put her ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... woman. Yes, there is in you something more precious than beauty; you are the beautiful Ideal of art, of fancy. The step you took, blamable as it would be in an ordinary young girl, allotted to an every-day destiny, has another aspect if endowed with the nature which I now attribute to you. Among the crowd of beings flung by fate into the social life of this planet to make up a generation there are exceptional souls. If your letter is the outcome of long poetic reveries on the fate which ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac

... it is said, "man is become as one of Us, to know good and evil," because God does know evil as well as good. This is His wonderful incommunicable attribute; and man sought to share in what God was, but he could not without ceasing to be what God was also, holy and perfect. It is the incommunicable attribute of God to know evil without experiencing it. But man, when he would be as God, could only ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman

... great hunter of the heavens, killed and ate the gods. The mortality of gods has been dwelt on by Dr. Frazer (Golden Bough), and the many instances of tombs of gods, and of the slaying of the deified man who was worshipped, all show that immortality was not a divine attribute. Nor was there any doubt that they might suffer while alive; one myth tells how Ra, as he walked on earth, was bitten by a magic serpent and suffered torments. The gods were also supposed to share in ...
— The Religion of Ancient Egypt • W. M. Flinders Petrie

... presence of God" that he was utterly ignorant of the transaction till it was over; and in the same Letter (June 7) he "dares be confident" the officers and the body of the Army were equally ignorant. Royalist and Presbyterian writers attribute the act directly to Cromwell. It was planned, says Holles, at a meeting at Cromwell's house in London, May 30; and Clarendon and others lay stress on the fact that the very day of Cromwell's flight from London "was the ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... suppose. We err more often than we are aware of, when we judge of others by ourselves. English tourists have all fallen into this mistake, in their, estimate of the Americans. They judge them by their own standard; they attribute effects to wrong causes, forgetting that a different tone of feeling, produced by a different social and political state from their own, must naturally produce ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... Ellis, "I'm not much impressed by the argument you attribute to Nature, that if we don't agree with her we shall be knocked on the head. I, for instance, happen to object strongly to her whole procedure: I don't much believe in the harmony of the final consummation—even ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson

... transcendent God, a being who is real and yet is "without body, parts and passions," who cannot receive idolatrous worship, and is not an object of sense. Impassibility was one of the highest attributes of this being. The attribute does not involve or imply absence of feeling. Originally it had no reference to feeling, in the psychological sense of that word. It certainly excludes incidentally the lower, specifically human feelings, feelings caused by external stimuli, ...
— Monophysitism Past and Present - A Study in Christology • A. A. Luce

... Awatska Bay. It had been always kept with the most scrupulous care during the voyage, having never been trusted for a moment into any other hands than those of Captain Cook and mine. No accident could therefore have happened to it, to which we could attribute its stopping; nor could it have arisen from the effects of intense cold, as the thermometer was very little below the freezing point. As soon as the discovery was made, I consulted with Captain Clerke what course it was best to pursue; whether to let it remain as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr

... sir," said Mrs. Lecount; "you kindly attribute to me a knowledge that I don't possess. Propositions, I regret to say, are quite ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... having allowed the white men to obtain a footing in their country, a proof of which they think they see in the greater mortality that has recently prevailed among them. This, however, they at other times attribute to the God of the Christians, whom they also denounce, accordingly, as a cruel being, at least to the New Zealander. Sometimes they more rationally assign as its cause the diseases that have been ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... indication of time, because a pole-star moves very slowly, and the pole-star of Cheops' day must have been in view through that tunnel for more than an hour at a time. But, apart from the mystical significance which an astrologer would attribute to such a relation, it may be shown that this slant tunnel is precisely what the astrologer would require in order ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor

... Petitioners lost a horse and his loading in Sudbury river, and a week after his wife and children being upon another horse were hardly saved from drowning." That the kindly hearted Winthrop could coolly attribute the pitiable disaster of the brave pioneer to the wrath of God towards the political philosophy of Robert Child, pictures vividly the bigotry natural to the age and race, a bigotry which culminated in the ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... Maxwell are entertained by some very able medical men; but they violate the public understanding, and, as usual, the people are right and the specialists are wrong. We do not find desire, as here understood, in plants and the lowest development of animal life, it being particularly an attribute of the higher biogeny. As the more perfect the animal organism the more acute the sensations of pleasure and pain, it follows that in man, most complex of earthly creatures, is found the most powerful ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... but then I'm a very funny Bishop. Since we are both funny people, let us not forget that humor is a divine attribute. ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw

... Trojans fall back to the place where they left their chariots. They are just mounting in confusion, in order to flee, when Jupiter, rousing from his nap, and realizing how he has been tricked, discharges his wrath upon Juno's head. Hearing her attribute the blame to Neptune, Jupiter wrathfully orders his brother back to his realm and despatches Apollo to cure Hector. Then he reiterates that the Greeks shall be worsted until Patroclus, wearing Achilles' armor, takes part in the ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... attribute my love for animals to the teaching of Mr. Dodgson: his stories about them, his knowledge of their lives and histories, his enthusiasm about birds and butterflies enlivened many a dull hour. The ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood

... have my suspicions; but I haven't yet followed them up to my satisfaction. Certainly whoever wrote it was very foolish;'—that sentence was from his heart!—'but even more to blame is the man who published it. To my surprise some people attribute it to me, merely on the ground of style, when it is nothing like my style, if I am any judge: though it would not be very wonderful if others did write like me, seeing that my books are in all men's hands. I am told that your Reverence is inclined to doubt me: with a few minutes' conversation I ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen

... an infirmity of our nature to mingle our interests and prejudices with the operation of our reasoning powers, and attribute to the objects of our likes and dislikes qualities they do not possess and effects they can not produce. The effects of the present tariff are doubtless over-rated, both in its evils and in its advantages. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson

... in these delays and long-suffering of the deity. For the slowness of punishment takes away belief in providence, and the wicked, observing that no evil follows each crime except long afterwards, attribute it when it comes to mischance, and look upon it in the light more of accident than punishment, and so receive no benefit from it, being grieved indeed when the misfortune comes, but feeling no remorse for what they have done amiss. For, as in the case of a horse, the ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... and for purposes of his own; and therefore he could not desire the sensible diminution of the power of a country the resources of which he expected to employ. Nicholas inherited his brother's ideas and designs, and we are to attribute much of the ill-feeling that he exhibited towards the Orlans dynasty to his disappointment; for the revolution that elevated that dynasty to the French throne destroyed the hope that he had entertained of having French aid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... go back to their lonely dwelling, and look on the chairs round the hearth where their children once were, but never shall be again—then, truly, can they not escape some part of the sorrow that comes, overwhelming, to those whose suffering no noble thought chastens. For it were wrong to attribute to beautiful feeling and thought a virtue they do not possess. There are, external tears that they cannot restrain; there are holy hours when wisdom cannot yet console. But, for the last time let us say it, suffering we cannot avoid for suffering there ever must be; still does ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck

... action, Lord Eynesford did not feel that more was required than a temperately expressed surprise and a hinted disapproval of the course adopted. He declined his wife's invitation to regard the matter in the most serious light, or to attribute any heinous offence to the Premier, contenting himself with remarking that Medland had a more powerful motive to maintain order than any one else; he also ventured to suggest that the best way of considering the question ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope

... constitutions, to injure, it may be, generations yet unborn. The middle classes, being mostly engaged in peaceful pursuits, suffered less of this decimation of their finest young men; and to that fact I attribute much of their increasing preponderance, social, political, and intellectual, to this very day. One cannot walk the streets of any of our great commercial cities without seeing plenty of men, young and middle-aged, whose whole bearing and stature shows ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... the anvil has, the more INERTIA and the less liable it is to be struck out of its place; because when it has by the blow receiv'd the whole MOMENTUM of the hammer, its velocity will be so much less than that of the hammer as it has more matter than the hammer. Neither are we to attribute to the anvil a velocity less than the hammer in a reciprocal proportion of their masses or quantities of matter; for that would happen only if the anvil was to hang freely in the air (for example) by a rope, and it was struck horizontally by the hammer. Thus is the velocity ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... intervention of the legislator, human or divine, no scientific prevision of them would be possible. Thus, we may concentrate the conditions of the spirit of positive social philosophy on this one great attribute of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... gold-traders, on the contrary, who are an active, laborious class of men but yet indulge as freely in opium as any others whatever, are notwithstanding the most healthy and vigorous people to be met with on the island. It has been usual also to attribute to the practice destructive consequences of another nature from the frenzy it has been supposed to excite in those who take it in quantities. But this should probably rank with the many errors that mankind have been led into by travellers addicted to the marvellous; ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... charities, both public and private, are practised on so noble a scale, especially by the women under the direction of the priests. I am inclined to believe that, generally speaking, charity is a distinguishing attribute of a ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... doubtless one of the things which made for the invention and multiplication of miracles. If the patron of the Decies is credited with a miracle, the tribesmen of Ossory must go one better and attribute to their tribal saint a marvel more striking still. The hagiographers of Decies retort for their patron by a claim of yet another miracle and so on. It is to be feared too that occasionally a less worthy motive than tribal honour prompted the imagination of our Irish hagiographers—the ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous

... he had deserted her; moreover, the marquis having complained to a monk of these reproaches, and the monk having reported his complaints to the marquise, she called her husband to her bedside, at a moment when she was surrounded by people, and made him a public apology, begging him to attribute the words that seemed to have wounded him to the effect of her sufferings, and not to any failure in her regard for him. The marquis, left alone with his wife, tried to take advantage of this reconciliation to induce her to annul the declaration that she had made before the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the thing that creates, is nothing in the world but a fusion of sex," said Killigrew swiftly. "It gives to the man intuition and to the woman creativeness—it adds a sixth sense, feminising the man and giving the woman what is generally a masculine attribute. But that's not what the Padre means. He's using the word in its ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse

... country spoken of water is quite scarce and Indians are careful not to pollute the streams or springs near which they live. Conjecture seems useless to establish a reason for this disposition of the dead, unless we are inclined to attribute it to the natural indolence of the savage, or a desire to poison the springs ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... could be suppressed by the armed forces of the United States and a government established in conformity with her wishes. Theoretically, Cuba is an independent nation. Practically, Cuba has signed away in her treaty with the United States every important attribute of sovereignty. ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing

... of vengeance he entertained. I was especially anxious to learn whether he had tracked his wife hither, or was merely here in pursuance of his general schemes against me, and to this end. I asked him with as much irony as I could compass to what I was to attribute his presence. 'I am afraid I cannot stay to offer you hospitality,' I continued; 'but for that you have only your friend M. Villequier ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman

... Government had no knowledge of the text of the Austrian note before it was handed in and has not exercised any influence on its contents. It is a mistake to attribute to Germany a ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... commercial travellers, this would have been child's play. But our education had been in an English school and university; and when finally we sat at breakfast at the Halifax hotel we felt like fish out of water. Such success as we obtained subsequently I attribute entirely to what then seemed to me my colleague's colonial "cheek." He insisted that we should call on the most prominent persons at once, the Prime Minister, the General in charge of the garrison, the Presidents of the Board of Trade and University, the ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... merited and won her unaffected gratitude. She received his visits with thankfulness, and courted them. The wealth which it was known he possessed acquitted him of all sinister designs; and it was easy and natural to attribute his regard and tenderness to the pity which a good man feels for a bereavement such as she had undergone. The close of six months found her still residing at the cottage, and Abraham still a constant and untiring friend. He had been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... I asked Mr. Lincoln what attribute he considered most valuable to the successful politician," said Captain T. ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... says, "This is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith." It is, indeed, saying very much for the Christian faith to attribute to it such power over the devil and the world—a power transcending all human ability. It requires an agency greater and higher than human strength to triumph over the devil, especially in the perplexing conflicts of conscience, when ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther

... around the corners of our narrow tree-shaded streets. He was a real Gory, was Giddy, with his thick waving black hair (which he tried for vain years to train into docility), his lean swart face, and his slightly hooked Gory nose. In appearance Winnebago pronounced him foreign looking—an attribute which he later turned into a doubtful asset in Nice. On the rare occasions when Giddy graced Winnebago with his presence you were likely to find him pursuing the pleasures that occupied other Winnebago boys of his age, if not station. In some miraculous ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber

... hand in the ordering of affairs here, who has more intellect than we are accustomed to attribute to the red man;" and the minister glanced at the young Indian, as if to say, "It ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... mentioned by its technical—or even by its exact name; no clear picture was to be raised before the inner eye; nothing was to be left definite or vivid. We shall make a very great mistake if we suppose this conventional vagueness to have been accidental, and a still greater if we attribute it to a lack of cleverness. When Pope referred to the sudden advent of a heavy shower at a ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... use of superfluity, go richly in embroideries, jewels, and what not, without vanity, and fare delicately without gluttony; and therefore (not without cause) is universally thought to be of fine humour. His symbol is, "divae optimae"; an attribute to express thy goodness, in which thou ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... insignia and the spoliation of royal houses to political turbulence engendered by acts of tyrannical misrule; but the mutilation of the cross—the universal Christian emblem—remains to be explained, unless we attribute it to the brutal ignorance of the spoilers. Its religious universality ought consistently to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 563, August 25, 1832 • Various

... of Pons or Madame Hulot. He himself was individualized by his knobbed cane abroad, and his Benedictine habit and statuette of Napoleon at home; but every single one of his creations seems to have in some shape or other a cane, a robe or a decorative attribute, which distinguishes each individual, as if by a badge, from every other member of the company in the ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden

... times, so long as he loved me with all the ardour of his fiery soul. But what happened at Actium? That shameful flight of the cooing dove after his mate, at which generations yet unborn will point in mockery! He who does not see more deeply will attribute to the foolish madness of love this wretched forgetfulness of duty, honour, fame, the present and the future; but I, Iras—and this is the thought which whitens one hair after another, which will speedily destroy ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... thirty-five years since my days on the football gridiron," writes Harding. "What little elementary training I got in football, I attribute to the old game of 'theory,' which for two years on spring and summer evenings, after supper, we used to play at St. Paul's School in Concord, N. H., on the athletic grounds near the Middle School. One fellow would be 'it' as we dashed ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards

... she said, in a tremulous voice, "that justice, religion, mercy—every human attribute which bears the name of virtue, calls loudly upon me no longer to hold you to vows made ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... attribute many of its defects to the "long ballot." In one county in North Carolina, at a recent election, there were twenty-five different candidates for county offices on each of three party tickets, making seventy-five candidates ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn

... Drusilla, he would make human motives supply the defects of divine; with Felix, he would make divine motives supply the defects of human. He would make this shameless woman feel that nothing on earth is more odious than a woman destitute of honor, that modesty is an attribute of the sex; that an attachment, uncemented by virtue, can not long subsist; that those who receive illicit favors are the first, according to the fine remark of a sacred historian, to detest the indulgence: "The hatred wherewith 'Ammon, the son of David,' hated his sister, after ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... "Then why should you attribute vulgar ingratitude to me?" retorted the Comte reproachfully. "My feelings I imagine are as sensitive as your own. Am I not trying my best to be kind to that Mr. Clyffurde, who is an honoured guest in my house—just because it was Sir Percy Blakeney ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... written. By all means let Rewa Gunga travel with you, for he is of royal blood, of the House of Ketchwaha and will not fail you. His honor and mine are one. Praying that the many gods of India may heap honors on your honor's head, providing each his proper attribute toward entire ability to succeed in all things, but especially in the ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy

... confinement it never paces its cage, but constantly remains crouched in a corner, though awake and vigilant; but I have always found that the confinement of a cage operates greatly against the chance of taming any wild animal. Sir Walter Elliot says that the Shikaris attribute to it the same habit as that which used erroneously to be ascribed to the glutton, viz., that of dropping from trees on to its prey and eating its way into the neck. It preys chiefly on small game—poultry, hares, and is said to destroy small deer. McMaster relates ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... Himself. There are no second causes at work, no chance, no laws of nature, no subordinate agents, nothing that is not the immediate manifestation of His free will.[4] This is evident to our senses. But what is equally obvious is that His acts do not tally with His attribute of goodness, and that no facts known or imaginable can help us to bridge over the abyss between the infinite justice ascribed to Him and the crying wrongs that confront us in His universe, whithersoever we turn.[5] His rule is such a congeries of evils that even the ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon

... strangulated suction-pump. With these interjections Mrs Polsue on the one hand, Farmer Best on the other, punctuated the following dialogue. And this embarrassed the company, which, obliged in politeness to attribute them to purely physical causes, could not but own inwardly that they might be mistaken for the comments—and highly expressive ones—of ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... I was advised by a friend to try your Sanative Wash and Vegetable Compound, which I did. After using your Vegetable Compound and Sanative Wash I am now enjoying better health than I ever did, and attribute the same to your wonderful remedies. I cannot find words to express What a godsend your remedies have been to me. Whenever I begin to feel nervous and ill, I know I have a never failing physician at hand. It would afford me pleasure to know that my words have directed my suffering sisters to the ...
— Treatise on the Diseases of Women • Lydia E. Pinkham

... while in New York, as I have before observed, the owners of many of the finest residences live almost exclusively in the basements thereof. This more social system at New Orleans, I am inclined to attribute essentially to the French—or Creole—habits with which society is leavened, and into which, it appears to me, the Americans naturally and fortunately drop. On the other hand, the rivalry which too often taints a money-making community ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... and valuable information concerning trees, plants, flowers, and animals. Such books should have a wide circulation beyond the list of regular subscribers. Some will criticise the author's inclination to attribute the marvellous things which are found in these plants, animals, etc., to a long process of development rather than to Divine agency. But the information is none the less valuable, whatever may be the process ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... towns in Normandy, and of pastoral scenes, have a curious family likeness, and a mannerism which the French may call 'chic,' but which we are inclined to attribute to want of power and patient study. There is an old-fashioned formality in the composition of their landscapes, which does not seem to our eyes to belong to the world of to-day, and a decidedly amateurish treatment ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... the late usurpation of his authority, and the contests which attended it, as to require the accession of an extraneous aid to restore the powers and to reanimate the constitution of his government,"—although he, the said Hastings, did for a long time before attribute the weakness of his government to an extraneous interference. And the said Council, on his engagement aforesaid, did consent thereto; and he did accordingly receive a commission, enabling him to act in the affairs of Oude, not only as the Resident might have ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... was not sure he cared about the personages of a story that had clutched his imagination and heart, until he reeled a little with responsive enchantment; though it is hard to say about what he cared if not about the romancer's powerful allies, who carried his meaning for him. Mr. Motley tries to attribute to the scenes he knew so well in reality, under their new guise of dreamy vividness, the spell which came, I believe, from the reality of moral grandeur, in both its sin and its holiness, but which we so entirely ignore every precious hour by sinking ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... a wide circulation, "You dare to speak of a country, Count Mirabeau! If your brow were not trebly bronzed, how must you have blushed at its very name! Have you one quality of father, friend, brother, husband, or relative? An honorable vocation? Any one attribute that constitutes the citizen? Not one! You are without a refuge, without a relative. I seek your most ordinary domiciles, and I find them but in the prison of Vincennes, the Chateau d'If, the fortress of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various

... carried the plan of operations of the French army, and Alexander declared in a dispatch that Jews had opened the eyes of the Russians, and the Government, therefore, felt itself bound to them by eternal gratitude.[7] It is to this proof of patriotism that some attribute Alexander's interest in the Jews and his order that three deputies should reside in St. Petersburg to represent them in Russia, and in Poland a committee consisting of three Christians and eight Jews should be appointed to devise ways and means of ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... lieutenant-general, had an eye on the situation and an ear for the stories of his defamers. Devers felt that the inspector came because of sudden and direct appeal from Brannan's friends. He could not longer attribute it to Davies. Well, it would take a week or ten days anyhow before Brannan's orders could come, and a week was a long time to a man with ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... if I admire the excellence of the Canadian section, obviously contributed by Mr. CROSBIE GARSTIN, who has knocked about most of the world marked red on the maps. Here his humour and vitality are at their keenest. The rest of a well-told tale I attribute to Mrs. ALFRED SIDGWICK, with the exception of a pugilistic episode, for which I imagine that the male fist was called in to supplement ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 13, 1920 • Various

... impotent, without the aid of thy members, so without thy people thy reign is nothing. My son, thou shalt fear and dread God above all things; and thou shalt love, honour, and worship him with all thy heart: thou shalt attribute and ascribe to him all things wherein thou seest thyself to be well fortunate, be it victory of thine enemies, love of thy friends, obedience of thy subjects, strength and activeness of body, honour, riches, or fruitful generations, or any other thing, whatever it be, that chanceth to thy pleasure. ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... too modest a young fellow to suppose that this happy change in all his circumstances arose from his own generous and manly disposition: he chose, from some perverseness, to attribute his good fortune to the sole agency and benevolence of little George Osborne, to whom henceforth he vowed such a love and affection as is only felt by children—such an affection, as we read in the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... what Mr. Ambassador Bayard has styled "that form of Socialism, Protection," it seems to me that we can find traces of this contradictory tendency. Americans consider their country as emphatically the land of protection, and attribute most of their prosperity to their inhospitable customs barriers. This may be so; but where else in the world will you find such a volume and expanse of free trade as in these same United States? We find here a huge section of the world's surface, 3,000 miles long and 1,500 miles wide, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... young and interesting woman. What agonies may we not imagine to have been her's? Her career of life, of rank, of honour, closing with circumstances so little befitting their proud claims. What horrors would we not naturally attribute to that hour of accumulating anguish, to that child, to that mother, to that wife? What wretchedness to that fatal moment which was about to sever their purest, freshest, sweetest ties? Quite otherwise. This ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 528, Saturday, January 7, 1832 • Various

... easily and freely, that you make it evident, you have a soul which is capable of all the tenderness of friendship, and that you only retire yourself from those, who are not capable of returning it. Your kindness, where you have once placed it, is inviolable; and it is to that only I attribute my happiness in your love. This makes me more easily forsake an argument, on which I could otherwise delight to dwell; I mean, your judgment in your choice of friends; because I have the honour to be one. After which I am sure you will more easily permit me to ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... We missed you badly at our board last night. K. The loss was mine. I could not get a cab. Whistling, as you're aware, is banned by law, And when I went in person on the quest The streets were void of taxis. J. And to what Do you attribute this unusual dearth? K. The general rush to Halls of Mirth and Song, Never so popular. The War goes well, And London's millions needs must find a way To vent their exaltation—else they burst. J. But could you not have travelled by the Tube? K. I did essay ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 10, 1917 • Various

... exercise of the human mind. Infinite power is so vast and incomprehensible an idea that the mind of man must necessarily be bewildered in the contemplation of it. With the crude and puerile conceptions which we sometimes form of this attribute of the Deity, we might imagine that God could call into being myriads and myriads of existences, all free from pain and imperfection, all eminent in goodness and wisdom, all capable of the highest enjoyments, and unnumbered as the points throughout infinite space. But ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus

... Ascher put in an appearance for the first time. She was a tall, lean woman, with dark red hair—Gorman called it bronze—and narrow eyes which never seemed quite open. Her face was nearly colourless. I was inclined to attribute this to her long suffering from seasickness, but when I got to know her better I found out that she is never anything but pallid, even when she has lived for months on land and has been able to ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... found others who attacked aristocracy openly; but I know of no one who does not regard provincial independence as a great benefit. In both countries I have heard a thousand different causes assigned for the evils of the state; but the local system was never mentioned among them. I have heard citizens attribute the power and prosperity of their country to a multitude of reasons: but they all placed the advantages of local institutions in the ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... government under which they lived, they have either supported Polytheism, Theism, Sabinism, Judaism, Popery, or Mahomedanism. The fate of Socrates has never been forgotten by any philosopher who possessed the chief attribute of wisdom—PRUDENCE; and no benevolent man will ever seek to disturb a public faith which promotes public virtue, because the memorials of history prove that no discords have been so bloody as those ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips

... medical profession was in the hands of women, to which we may attribute that country's almost entire exemption from infantile diseases, a fact which recent discoveries fully authenticate. The enormous death-rate of young children in modern civilized countries may be traced to woman's general enforced ignorance of the laws of life, and to the fact that the profession ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... his feet. He understood the hint implied and for an instant appeared to waver. There was something very winsome about Roger Ransom; some attribute or expression which ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green

... Majesty had authorised him to do. Lord Granville in that account laid much stress on the reasons which your Majesty gave for sending for Lord Granville, as he found that attempts had been made to attribute every sort of motive which might render the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... Quickness, however, is temper'd by a good-natur'd Modesty: so that the wildest of his Flights are thought rather diverting than troublesome. He is an hourly Foundation for Laughter, from the Top of the House to the Parlours: and, to borrow an Attribute from the Reverend Mr. Peters, (tho' without any Note of his Musick) plays a very good FIDDLE in the Family. I have told you the History of this Tom-tit of a Prater, because, ever since my first reading of PAMELA, he puts in for a Right to be one ...
— Samuel Richardson's Introduction to Pamela • Samuel Richardson

... house toward the lake. I know that you always have your windows open day and night—a habit that used to cause great annoyance to your Aunt Caroline when you were a boy. Thus you were exposed to the full effect of the water gases. That you did not feel the effects every night I attribute to differences in the wind, that from some directions would blow the fumes away from the house, thus relieving you. I gather from your account that the phenomena were most pronounced in close, foggy weather, when the poisonous ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram

... poetical justice, to imitate the Divine Dispensation, and to inculcate a particular Providence. 'Tis true, indeed, upon the stage of the world, the wicked sometimes prosper and the guiltless suffer; but that is permitted by the Governor of the World, to show, from the attribute of His infinite justice, that there is a compensation in futurity, to prove the immortality of the human soul, and the certainty of future rewards and punishments. But the poetical persons in tragedy exist no longer than the reading or the representation; the whole extent ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... to three and a half bales of cotton to the hand, with my provisions and pork; but some few make four bales, and last year two of my neighbors made five bales to the hand. In such cases I have vanity enough, however, to attribute this to better lands. I have no overseer, nor indeed is there one in the neighborhood. We personally attend to our planting, believing that as good a manure as any, if not the best we can apply to our fields, is the print ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips

... apparently causeless unfruitfulness in marriage that even physicians, with a knowledge of all apparent conditions in the parties, cannot explain; but when, as elsewhere related in this volume, impregnation by artificial means is successfully practised, it is useless to attribute barrenness to purely psychological ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis

... far into the night he bent over minutes and reports and other business of kingcraft. Naturally cautious and reserved, he was dignified and princely in public. In his private life, he was orderly and extremely affectionate to his family and servants. Loyalty was Philip's best attribute. ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... There are many primitive emotions, like anger and fear, which we do not think it desirable to encourage in complex civilized societies but rather seek to restrain and control, and even if we are inclined to attribute an original value to jealousy, it seems to be among these emotions that it ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... the one essential attribute of the soldier. He had a big heart. He was keen. He allowed nothing to come between him and his beloved duties. ("He was aye daft for to go sogerin'," his father explained to Captain Blaikie; "but his mother would never let him away. He was ower wee, and ower young.") ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... nations. There is reason to believe that if these wrongs had been resented and resisted in the first instance the present war might have been avoided. One outrage, however, permitted to pass with impunity almost necessarily encouraged the perpetration of another, until at last Mexico seemed to attribute to weakness and indecision on our part a forbearance which was the offspring of magnanimity and of a sincere desire to preserve friendly ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... one would fain attribute this and other excessive aberrations of the sexual impulse to the insane, but this cannot be done. Experience teaches that among the latter no disturbances of the sexual impulse can be found other than those observed among the sane, or among whole races and classes. Thus we find ...
— Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex • Sigmund Freud

... another House wherein the Overseer liveth. When I was there, in August last, the Valley, and the Mountains too, out of which the Mercury was dug, were of as pleasant a verdure, as if it had been in the midst of Spring, which they there attribute to the moistness of the Mercury; how truly, I dispute not. That Mine, which we went into, the best and greatest of them all, was dedicated to Saint Barbara, as the other Mines are to other Saints, the depth of it was 125. paces, every pace ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various

... abstractions, the theory kept advancing in complexity as facts accumulated, and was on the point of becoming altogether unmanageable, when it was supplanted by the theory of universal gravitation, which has ever exhibited the inalienable attribute of a true theory—affording an explanation of every new fact as soon as it was discovered, without requiring to be burdened with new provisions, and prophetically foretelling phenomena which had not ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... without conscious reasoning. She carries out, or realizes, trains of thought, or sequences with little comparison or deduction. Yet within her limits she can do great work, and when we consider, we shall find that by following mere Law she has effected a great, nay, an immense, deal, which we attribute entirely to forethought or Reason. As all this is closely allied to the action of the mind when hypnotized, it deserves ...
— The Mystic Will • Charles Godfrey Leland

... conceive how they could ever have been tolerated as a substitute for the spontaneous grace, the melting voice, and the soothing looks of a female. It was quite impossible to give the tenderness of a woman to any perfection of feeling, in a personating male; and to this cause may we not attribute that the female characters have never been made chief personages among our elder poets, as they would assuredly have been, had they not been conscious that the male actor could not have sufficiently affected the audience? A poet who lived ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... would renounce three worlds, the empire of heaven, anything that may be greater than that, but truth I would never renounce. The earth may renounce its scent, water may renounce its moisture, light may renounce its attribute of exhibiting forms, air may renounce its attribute of touch, the sun may renounce his glory, fire, its heat, the moon, his cooling rays, space, its capacity of generating sound, the slayer of Vritra, his prowess, the god of justice, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... I pretend that it was. Patience and industry dignified it; a certain rough jollity, a large amount of good temper and natural kindness, kept it from being foul; but of the namby-pamby or soft-headed sentiment which many writers have persuaded us to attribute to old-English cottage life I think I have not in twenty years met with a single trace. In fact, there are no people so likely to make ridicule of that sort of thing as my labouring-class neighbours have always been. ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... too, had an attribute of a most discomfiting nature. I am unable to say whether she was of an usually lymphatic temperament, or what else was the matter with her, but this young woman became a mere Distillery for the production of the largest ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens

... then Turgenieff did not understand what a mastery my father's new philosophy of life had obtained over him, and he was inclined to attribute his enthusiasm along with the rest to the same perpetual "crankinesses" and "somersaults" to which he had formerly attributed his interest in school-teaching, agriculture, the publication of a ...
— Reminiscences of Tolstoy - By His Son • Ilya Tolstoy

... the art of the second half of the nineteenth century than he did, even though the school, which he suggested rather than established, lapsed largely into mere impressionism—a term, by the way, which he himself coined already in 1858; for it is an error to attribute it—as is often done—to his friend ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... whether he was afraid of anything except possible damage to her reputation. She had, lately, considered this question on several occasions. Being no coward, as far as mere fear for her life was concerned, she found it difficult to attribute such fear to him. Indeed, one of the traits in her which he found inexplicable and which he disliked was a curious fearlessness of death—not uncommon among women who, all their lives, have ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... undertaking, and which is worthy of being remembered, is that, contrary to the proverb of the old Portuguese women, in the course of this war there was not one harsh word between the Spaniards and Portuguese, though they ate together at one mess. But your Lordship may attribute this to your good fortune, and to the intelligence and ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga



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