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Diffusion   /dɪfjˈuʒən/   Listen
Diffusion

noun
1.
(physics) the process in which there is movement of a substance from an area of high concentration of that substance to an area of lower concentration.
2.
The spread of social institutions (and myths and skills) from one society to another.
3.
The property of being diffused or dispersed.  Synonym: dissemination.
4.
The act of dispersing or diffusing something.  Synonyms: dispersal, dispersion, dissemination.  "The diffusion of knowledge"



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"Diffusion" Quotes from Famous Books



... Christ, apprehending His Cross as the great example to which our lives are to be conformed. I believe that the growing sense of brotherhood amongst us, even where it is not consciously connected with any faith in Christianity, is, to a very large extent, the result of the diffusion through society of the spirit of Christianity, even where its body is rejected. Thank God, the river of the water of life can percolate through many a mile of soil, and reach the roots of trees far away, in the pastures of the wilderness, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... subjects a path of continual progress toward the fullest and most transcendent knowledge of the Deity.... It clusters around a series of essentially Christian conceptions—equality, fraternity, the suppression of war, the elevation of the poor, the love of truth, and the diffusion of liberty. It revolves around the ideal of Christianity, and represents its spirit without its dogmatic system and its supernatural narratives. From both of these it unhesitatingly recoils, while deriving all its strength and nourishment from ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... Starkfield with a good chance of getting there for supper. But at sunset the clouds gathered again, bringing an earlier night, and the snow began to fall straight and steadily from a sky without wind, in a soft universal diffusion more confusing than the gusts and eddies of the morning. It seemed to be a part of the thickening darkness, to be the winter night itself descending ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton

... concomitant characters of the tomb in which it occurs, indicate a later period. If so, it is a fair inference for the ethnological archaeologist to conclude, that although the earliest colonists reached Britain late enough to avail themselves of boats, their migration was earlier than the diffusion of the arts of metallurgy. And this has induced the best investigators to designate the earliest stage in British ethnology by the name of the STONE PERIOD, a technical and ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... no effort untried which might in any manner promote the interests of the cause, regarded as one important means to this end the diffusion of knowledge concerning that unknown and mysterious region. He had therefore procured from Africa specimens of some of the actual products of the country, to which he called the attention of the Premier. The specimens of ivory and gold, of ebony and mahogany, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... quit it with a glow of patriotic fervour over the fact that the Smithsonian Institute here, one of the most important scientific institutions in the world, was founded by an Englishman, who, so far as is known, never even visited the United States, but left his large fortune for "the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men," to the care of that country with whose generous and popular principles he ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead

... the thought of God, and is above space and time. He calls it "non-natured nature," as opposed to "diu gena-turte nature," the world of phenomena.[240] Eckhart's doctrine here differs from that of Plotinus in a very important particular. The Neoplatonists always thought of emanation as a diffusion of rays from a sun, which necessarily decrease in heat and brightness as they recede from the central focus. It follows that the second Person of the Trinity, the [Greek: Nous] or Intelligence, is subordinate to the First, and the Third to the Second. But with Eckhart there is no subordination. ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... India to Scotland, with indubitable signs of being the same story dressed up according to local requirements. The Master-Maid is, accordingly, one of the most instructive of all folk-tales, from the point of view of the problem of diffusion. ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs

... stand forward, and (let every man have his own, and that be counted mine which but for and through me would not have existed) will challenge the proudest of my literary contemporaries to compare proofs with me of usefulness in the excitement of reflection, and the diffusion of original or forgotten yet necessary and important truths and knowledge; and this is not the less true because I have suffered others to reap all the advantages. But, O dear friend, this consciousness, raised by insult of enemies and alienated friends, stands me in little ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day

... revival of the Sanskrit language first became noticeable in the second century, were fostered by the satraps of Gujarat and Surashtra during the third, and made a success by the Gupta emperors in the fourth century. [373] The decline of Buddhism and the diffusion of Sanskrit proceeded side by side with the result that by the end of the Gupta period the force of Buddhism on Indian soil had been nearly spent; and India with certain local exceptions had again become the land of the Brahman. [374] The Gupta ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell

... deplore the lack of religious training, for in the remote settlements this was often still an unaccustomed luxury, albeit some thirty years had now gone by since Sir Francis Nicholson, then the Governor, declared that no colony could flourish without a wider diffusion of the gospel and education, and forthwith ordered spiritual drill, so to speak, in the way of preaching and schooling. Although himself described as "a profane, passionate, headstrong man, bred a soldier," as if the last fact were an excuse ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... the polish of erudition in the arts, sciences and belles-lettres." Eventually he reduced this idea to a plea for the people to "promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge," because "in proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened." By his will he left to the endowment of a university in the District ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... The diffusion of knowledge is greater than in any other part of the globe of equal dimensions. Such are the excellent provisions of our laws, and the virtuous habits of our citizens, that schools of instruction in all useful knowledge are to be found in every place where ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast

... by the visible interposition of divine power are above the power of human genius to dignify. The miracle of creation, however it may teem with images, is best described with little diffusion of language: "He spake the word, and they ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... that there has consequently been less destruction of the old and young and that nearly all the young have been enabled to breed. Their geometrical ratio of increase, the result of which never fails to be surprising, simply explains their extraordinarily rapid increase and wide diffusion ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin

... is in the realm of fiction what Frederic Amiel is in the realm of thinkers and philosophers—a subtle, ingenious, highly gifted student of his time. With a wonderful dexterity of pen, a very acute, almost womanly intuition, and a rare diffusion of grace about all his writings, it is probable that Bourget will remain less known as a critic than as a romancer. Though he neither feels like Loti ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... his life, he usually spent sixteen hours of the twenty-four in study. In 1822 he came to Boston as editor of "The New England Farmer," a weekly journal, the first established, and devoted principally to the diffusion of agricultural knowledge. ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... before his fragment saw the light there appeared, in 1547, a Spanish translation of the Arcadia. It must be remembered that Sannazzaro was himself of Spanish extraction, and that he may have had relations with the land of his fathers of a nature to facilitate the diffusion of his works. ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... authority and with the sanction of the God of the Bible: and it belongs to our government, while indulging the largest and most liberal toleration of religious opinions and practices, still to seek the diffusion and establishment of Christianity throughout the length and breadth of our land. It is right that our government enforces, to a good degree, the observance of the Christian Sabbath. It is demanded that ...
— National Character - A Thanksgiving Discourse Delivered November 15th, 1855, - in the Franklin Street Presbyterian Church • N. C. Burt

... bright intellectually, for it was to be given to Miss Winthrop, of Boston, and was to include Miss Winthrop's niece, Miss Grace Winthrop, also of Boston. These ladies, as she knew, belonged to clubs which, while modestly named after the days of the week, were devoted wholly to the diffusion of the most exalted mental culture. Moreover, they both were on terms of intimacy with Mr. Henry James. On the other hand, it was her desire that the dinner should be perfect materially, because among her guests was ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier

... like a temple without an avenue. They belonged to the temple and they met in the grounds; they were in the stage at which grounds in general offered much scattered refreshment. But Kate had meanwhile had so few confidants that she wondered at the source of her father's suspicions. The diffusion of rumour was of course, in London, remarkable, and for Marian not less—as Aunt Maud touched neither directly—the mystery had worked. No doubt she had been seen. Of course she had been seen. She had taken no trouble not ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... greater ratio than they existed before: and if England owes its very superior wealth to any other causes besides its free government, its superior industry, and improvements in machinery, those causes must be sought for in the very extensive diffusion of commercial confidence and credit. The funding system, which took place about the same, time that the Bank of England was established, may be regarded as another powerful cause of the increase of our commerce: we do not mean to contend that ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson

... at the free border of the bowel, but in these injuries it was just as frequently at the mesenteric margin. The importance of this factor is considerable, since wounds near the mesenteric edge are much more likely to be accompanied by haemorrhage, and thus the opportunity for diffusion of infection is considerably multiplied, to say nothing of the ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... conformation created by the diffusion of this superstitious spirit is an obstacle, an insuperable barrier set up against the development of the moral sense. We shall sow principles of morality as the farmer who sows in the fields the seeds properly selected which will ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera

... a half, whereas a folio probably cost about twenty francs. These two innovations on type and on format constituted a veritable revolution in the printing press and in the book trade, which now began to reach a far more extensive market than it had ever touched before. With this wide diffusion of books came the popularization of knowledge at which Aldus aimed. Scholarship began to lose its exclusive and aristocratic character when the classics were placed within the reach of any student ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... rum-puncheon. (A vulgar man that sometimes—but he's deep.) We all sign the initials of the society after our names, in the fashion of the R. S. A., Royal Society of Arts—the S. D. U. K., Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, &c, &c. Dr. Moneypenny says that S. stands for stale, and that D. U. K. spells duck, (but it don't,) that S. D. U. K. stands for Stale Duck and not for Lord Brougham's society—but then Dr. Moneypenny is such a queer man that I am never sure when he is telling ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... there was the same disturbance round them as round Fox himself, and they had the same hard treatment—imprisonment, duckings, whippings. It is necessary that the reader should remember that in 1654 Quakerism was still in this first stage of its diffusion by a vehement propagandism carried on by some sixty itinerant preachers at war with established habits and customs, and had not settled down into mere individual Quietism, with associations of those who had been converted to its principles, and could be content ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... enough to point out the revolution that would take place in Parliamentary reporting, and in the diffusion of political instruction through the press, by the system of printing the speeches direct. The full importance of this result will be more apparent in a little. There has been much talk of late about the desirability of a more ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... expression through the printed page, and yearning to behold their thoughts and ideals permanently crystallized in the magic medium of type. But while a few persons of exceptional talent manage eventually to gain a foothold in the professional world of letters rising to celebrity through the wide diffusion of their art, ideals, or opinions; the vast majority, unless aided in their education by certain especial advantages, are doomed to confine their expression to the necessarily restricted sphere of ordinary conversation. To supply these especial ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... meeting a spot within the colonial empire of England, you could not have selected a colony which better deserved the distinction, either in respect of the warmth of its affection for the mother country, or in respect of the desire of its inhabitants for the diffusion of knowledge and of culture. (Applause) In a young country such pursuits must be carried on in the face of some difficulty and of the competition of that material activity which must to a great extent engross the time and absorb the attention of a rapidly developing community such as this. ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh

... now not to stimulate as much as in the morning, but to allay all excitement, harmonize the co-ordination of all parts, remove all local activities in the different parts of the body, establish centrality of the vital functioning and the diffusion of blood and feeling ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry

... called—of Alexandria, though he himself had been devoted to the grave labors of science, and he compelled them to seek a new home. The exiled sons of learning settled in various cities on the shores of the Mediterranean, and thus contributed not a little to the diffusion of the intellectual results of the labors ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of other visits, of companionships now ended—an insinuating eloquence which was at the same time somehow identical with the general sharp contagion of Paris. There was youth in the air, and a multitudinous newness, for ever reviving, and the diffusion of a hundred talents, ingenuities, experiments. The summer clouds made shadows on the roof of the great building; the white images, hard in their crudity, spotted the place with provocations; the rattle ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James

... and spiritual change which came over western Europe at the beginning of the sixteenth century was the result of a number of converging causes, of which the most important were the diffusion of classical literature consequent upon the break-up of the Byzantine Empire at the hands of the Turks, the brilliant civilization of the Italian city-states, and the establishment, in France, Spain and England, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey

... the cypresses, tipped with fire by the setting sun, stood up tall and motionless like votive candles. The sea was the colour of aloe leaves, dashed here and there with liquid turquoise; there was an indescribable delicacy of varying pallor—a diffusion of angelic light, in which each sail looked like an angel's wing upon the waters. And the harmony of faint and mingled perfumes seemed like the soul ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... conceal our rapidly growing importance and matchless prosperity. They could not conceal that these are owing, not merely to physical and local, but also to moral causes—to the political liberty, the general diffusion of knowledge, the prevalence of sound, moral, and religious principles, which give force and sustained energy to the character of a people, and which in fact, have been the acknowledged and wonderful supporters of their own ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... written, and are now published, under the solemn conviction, that the danger to be apprehended from the extensive diffusion of this creed, both to religion and the Church, renders it impossible that it should be allowed to pursue its unmolested course, without correspondent efforts, on the part of sound Churchmen, ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull

... President Jefferson negotiated in vain for a territory in Africa, and the Brazils. The legislature of Virginia again renewed its pledge, and as much of the bigotry of former times had now been obliterated by the diffusion of enlightened principles, the renewal of the proposition was followed by the best results. General Mercer, familiarly designated as the Wilberforce of America, opened a correspondence with the ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... the idea of a natural descent of man, which was only briefly indicated in the work of 1859, had been eagerly welcomed in some quarters. It has been already pointed out how brilliantly Huxley contributed to the defence and diffusion of Darwin's doctrines, and how in "Man's Place in Nature" he has given us a classic work as a foundation for the doctrine of the descent of man. As Huxley was Darwin's champion in England, so in Germany Carl Vogt, in particular, made himself master of the Darwinian ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... such disorders. The practices above alluded to, have in my opinion, a contrary effect. Those who live constantly in the region of tobacco, by the effect of habit cease to be stimulated and over excited by the diffusion of its lighter particles in the air they breathe. But those who employ it, occasionally, whether in smoking, chewing or snuffing, undergo an excitement, more or less considerable; which is infallibly followed by a proportionate debility, in which state, they would be subject to the attacks ...
— A Dissertation on the Medical Properties and Injurious Effects of the Habitual Use of Tobacco • A. McAllister

... magic, nor sorcery, nor any operation of the demon; that the venomous drug which Hocque placed in the stables, and by means of which he caused the death of the cattle stalled therein, was nothing but a poisonous compound, which, by its smell and the diffusion of its particles, poisoned the animals and caused their death; it required only for these drugs to be taken away for the cattle to be safe, or else to keep the cattle from the stable in which the poison ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... dominant, varying, and far-spreading species, which already have invaded to a certain extent the territories of other species, should be those which would have the best chance of spreading still further, and of giving rise in new countries to new varieties and species. The process of diffusion may often be very slow, being dependent on climatal and geographical changes, or on strange accidents, but in the long run the dominant forms will generally succeed in spreading. The diffusion would, ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin

... is so named from resemblance to the moline, or crossed iron, in the center of the upper millstone. Its ends are divided and curved backward. As they are turned in all directions, they are said to express the universal diffusion of the blessings of the Cross; or, as they decline both to the right and the left, they express willingness to do exact justice and ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester

... so peculiar to the Middle Ages, and which, happily for mankind, has yielded to an improved state of civilization and the diffusion of popular instruction, accounts for the origin and long duration of this extraordinary mental disorder. The good sense of the people recoiled with horror and aversion from this heavy plague, which, whenever malevolent persons wished to curse their bitterest enemies and adversaries, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... he must have near him, and probably also the means necessary for the publication of his works. Not only did the monks of Monte Cassino itself devote themselves to the copying of his many books, but other Benedictine monasteries in various parts of the world made it a point to give wide diffusion ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh

... reflections and striking allusions, a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The wild diffusion of the sentiments and the digressive sallies of imagination would have been compressed and restrained by confinement to rhyme. The excellence of this work is not exactness but copiousness; particular ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson

... performed the ever-thankless task of translation; and, in preparing Madame Lenormant's work for the American public, has somewhat restrained the author's tendency to confusion and diffusion. Here and there, as editor, she has added slight but useful notes, and has accompanied the Memoirs with a very pleasantly written introduction, giving a skilful and independent analysis of Madame ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various

... rate in the State. The growth of the place was normal and healthy; it had increased only to five thousand during the time he had known it, which was almost an ideal figure for a county-town. There was a higher average of intelligence than in any other place of its size, and a wider and evener diffusion of prosperity. Its record in the civil war was less brilliant, perhaps, than that of some other localities, but it was fully up to the general Ohio level, which was the high-water mark of the national achievement in the greatest ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... according to the color that it wears, it may promote the success of the side upon which its opinion has been staked. It is a ludicrous and desperate game, but it is certainly not the honest collection and diffusion of news. It is a losing game also, because, whatever the sympathies of the reader, he does not care to be foolishly deceived about the situation. If he is told day after day that Smith is immensely ahead and has a clear field, he is terribly shaken by the shock of learning at the final moment that ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis

... of the origin and diffusion of narrative material were those of the sensible man trying to look at the matter in a reasonable way. Here again he adopted an attitude of compromise, in that he admitted the partial truth of various theories which he considered erroneous only in so far as any one of them was stretched ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... unconsciously pushes back passing shadows, has, or imagines that he has, a vague fear of adverse contact with the invisible, and feels at every moment the obscure pressure of a hostile encounter which immediately dissolves. There is something of the effect of a forest in the nocturnal diffusion of dreams. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... with the previous article, the investigation has been based on the assumption that the temperatures produced by radiant heat at given distances from its source are inversely as the diffusion of the rays at those distances. In other words, the temperature produced by solar radiation is as the density of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various

... been too much accustomed to set arbitrary limits to the diffusion of the life of Christ among men. Let us rather rejoice when we see forms of beauty, which bear the mark of His hand, drawn from depths that we deemed waste, and thankfully confess that the bounds of our expectation, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... wider diffusion of knowledge in the days of the Toltecs, and more especially with the establishment later on of an initiated priesthood and an Adept emperor, increased opportunities were offered to the people for the attainment of a truer conception of the ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot

... regulate the generation, diffusion, and preservation of heat as yet are a sealed mystery to thousands of young women who imagine they are completing a suitable education in courses of instruction from which most that is practical in future domestic life is wholly excluded. We therefore give a brief outline of some of the ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... bloodshed, and every species of terror erected into a system, as remedies equally ferocious, unjust, and inefficacious against evils that can only be cured by the diffusion ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... concluded his momentary pause by walking up the broken cement path, which was hard beset by plantain-weed and the long grass of the ill-kept lawn. Ascending the steps, he was assailed by an odour as of vehement bananas, a diffusion from some painful little chairs standing in the long, high, dim, rather sorrowful hall disclosed beyond the open double doors. They were stiff little chairs of an inconsequent, mongrel pattern; armless, with perforated ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington

... of shield are in use, the Mandya and the Manbo. The diffusion of the former is limited to the district south of the 8 latitude, not including the Ihawn and Babo River district; the latter, to the rest of the Agsan Valley with the exception of the portion where Banuon influence is prevalent,[19] such as the upper Agsan and rivers ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan

... says Burnett, "to have been one of the ingredients in the sweet incense of the Jews; and it is still burnt as incense in the Greek and Romish churches, where the diffusion of such odors round the altar forms a part ...
— The Art of Perfumery - And Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants • G. W. Septimus Piesse

... added in mid-ocean a small crew of slaveholders, countenanced by a large body of passengers, is smothering four millions under the hatches, and yet the politician asserts that the only proper way by which deliverance is to be obtained, is by "the quiet diffusion of the sentiments of humanity," without any "outbreak." As if the sentiments of humanity were ever found unaccompanied by its deeds, and you could disperse them, all finished to order, the pure article, ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau

... been by the silent organization of circles of ladies in all the different towns of the United Kingdom, who raise a certain sum for the diffusion of the principles of peace on earth and good will to men. Articles, setting forth the evils of war, moral, political, and social, being prepared, these circles pay for their insertion in all the principal newspapers of the continent. They have secured to themselves ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... Internal improvement and the diffusion of knowledge, so far as they can be promoted by the constitutional acts of the Federal Government, are of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson

... Some of the South American republics have the American Constitution, more or less, but are not shining examples of republican success. No one can question that monarchies like the United Kingdom and Germany enjoy a larger diffusion of ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various

... into two teacups two level spoonfuls, four in all, of Epps's soluble cocoa and proceeded according to the directions for use printed on the label, to each adding after sufficient time for infusion the prescribed ingredients for diffusion in the manner and ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... practically all igneous and most sedimentary rocks. It occurs in sea-water, and quite frequently in beach-sands. Traces of it are also usually to be found in alluvial deposits and in the soils of most mountain-folds. In spite of its wide diffusion, however, all the gold that has been mined could be stored readily in the vaults of ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway

... only to those who consider the commercial interests of nations, but also to all who favor the progress of knowledge and the diffusion of religion, to see a community emerge from a savage state and attain such a degree of civilization ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson

... without one exception, every criticism which the Translator has seen has shown him that his prayer for 'gentle' readers has been fully heard. It will be forgiven him, he hopes, when he says that he has not seen good ground to change or even to modify any of the opinions as to the origin and diffusion of popular tales put forth in the first edition. Much indeed has been said by others for those views; what has been urged against them, with all kindness and good humour, in one or two cases, has not availed at all to weigh down mature convictions ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... passing traveller who has never been taught to expect anything in architecture except five orders: yet he can hardly fail to be struck by the simplicity and dignity of the great shafts themselves; by the frank diffusion of light, which prevents their severity from becoming oppressive; by the delicate forms and lovely carving of the pulpit and chancel screen; and, above all, by the peculiar aspect of the eastern extremity of the church, which, instead of being withdrawn, as in later cathedrals, into a chapel dedicated ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... sink away down towards the absolute cold of space. This will be followed without an instant of twilight by full daylight. For another fourteen days the sun's rays will bear straight down, with no diffusion or absorption of their heat, or light, on the way. It does not follow, however, that the temperature of the moon's surface must rise enormously. It may not even rise to the temperature of melting ice. Seeing there is no air there can be no check on radiation. The heat that the moon gets will radiate ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... which was collected on a vessel three hundred miles from the land, I was much surprised to find particles of stone above the thousandth of an inch square, mixed with finer matter. After this fact one need not be surprised at the diffusion of the far lighter and smaller sporules of ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin

... the Romans, though the most clearly ascertained of any, and the circumstances the best known, is only in part applicable to an inquiry into the effects of luxury at the present day. The nature of luxury, the nature of the wants of man, and the diffusion of that luxury, its distribution amongst the different classes, are so unlike to what they were, that the comparison scarcely ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair

... that, by acknowledging the doctrine involved in Secession, by allowing it to govern the intercourse between nations, the morality of society would be shaken from its base. The anti-slavery character of the strife in which we are involved is made to appear,—slavery-diffusion being the object of the South, slavery-restriction the aim of the North. It is shown that the Secession ordinances utterly failed to point out a single instance in which the rights of the Southern people were infringed upon by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various

... style. Now Maidment remarks that 'this ballad was popular in Galloway, Selkirkshire, Lanarkshire, and Aberdeen, AND THE VERY STRIKING DISCREPANCIES GO FAR TO REMOVE EVERY SUSPICION OF FABRICATION.' Chambers uses (1829) against Sharpe the same argument of 'universal diffusion in Scotland.' Neither Mr. Child nor Mr. Courthope draws the obvious inferences from the extraordinary discrepancies in the eighteen variants. Such essential discrepancies surely speak of a long period of oral recitation by men or women accustomed to interpolate, alter, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang

... however, to have roused any enthusiasm. Perhaps France felt herself too guilty: perhaps the extraordinary calm of contemporary opinion which was still too near the catastrophe to see it fully: perhaps that difficulty in the diffusion of news which hindered the common knowledge of a trial—a thing too heavy to be blown upon the winds,—while it promulgated the legend, a thing so much more light to carry: may be the cause of this. But it is an extraordinary fact that Jeanne's name remained in abeyance ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant

... our day has led many into a readiness to appreciate more really the minute imitation of a satin dress, or a red herring, than the noblest figure in the best of Raffaelle's cartoons. Much good should come of the diffusion of ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... four years the process of diffusion, as applied to the manufacture of sugar from sorghum and sugar cane, has been introduced into this country and fully perfected by the experiments carried on by the Department of Agriculture. This process is now universally considered to be the most economical ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland

... strengthen men in their struggle for goodness and holiness by the association and mutual help of fellow-believers. To the evangelical it was hardly more than a collection of congregations commended in the Bible for the diffusion of the knowledge and right interpretation of the Scriptures, the commemoration of gospel events, and the linking of gospel truths to a well-ordered life. To the high anglican as to the Roman catholic, the church was something very different from this; not a ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... disqualifications stand in his way;—his lack of political intelligence, and his consequent inability to make quick decisions in a political atmosphere. His present diffusion of his energies springs, I think, from indecision; for in politics he can not make up his mind, as he can in business, where the greatest ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... without loss of time. The Evangelical Alliance needed a man of personality and power to carry on its work in the slums of South Chicago among the iron-workers. The church cared nothing about creeds or methods—applied no gauge but results; the best result was a diffusion of human kindness. The salary was twenty-five hundred a year, with one week vacation at Christmas and one month at midsummer. He, John Hopkins, as President of the Board of Deacons, was empowered ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton

... conclusion that it was something immensely greater than what we call a star—a kind of monster sun. So with the prodigious birth men call 'Festus.' Our gifted young friend Yendys is more likely than any, if he live and avoid certain tendencies to diffusion and over-subtlety, to write a solid ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... three first acts was certainly to take place in the evening: Mrs. Grant and the Crawfords were engaged to return for that purpose as soon as they could after dinner; and every one concerned was looking forward with eagerness. There seemed a general diffusion of cheerfulness on the occasion. Tom was enjoying such an advance towards the end; Edmund was in spirits from the morning's rehearsal, and little vexations seemed everywhere smoothed away. All were alert and impatient; the ladies moved soon, the gentlemen soon followed them, and with the ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... 'By their constitution, the municipal and school corporations are reflections of the sentiments and feelings of the people within their respective circles of jurisdiction; their powers are adequate to meet all the economic exigencies of each municipality, whether of schools or roads, of the diffusion of knowledge, or the development of wealth.' [Footnote: Hon. Adam Crooks, Minister of Education, Report on Educational Institutions of Ontario, for Philadelphia Exhibition, p. 45.] As a result of such public spirit, we find in Ontario ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot

... December, 1831, he went to Macao, where he established a school for Chinese children, and commenced his translation of the Bible into Chinese. He founded, in conjunction with Morrison, a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in China, and edited a monthly Chinese magazine, in which he endeavoured to interest the people upon history, geography, and literature. In 1832 and 1833 he penetrated as far ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... lead to an infinite number of divergent and inconsistent views of the nature of things and of man's place in the world. But this is not found to be the case. Mr. Lang accounts as follows for the diffusion of the same stories all over the world: "An ancient identity of mental status, and the working of similar mental forces at the attempt to explain the same phenomena, will account without any theory of borrowing, or of transmission of myth, or of original ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... who strive to follow. May I reach That purest heaven, be to other souls The cup of strength in some great agony, Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, Beget the smiles that have no cruelty— Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, And in diffusion ever more intense. So shall I join the choir invisible Whose music is the gladness ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... from the invasion of Julius Caesar till their voluntary withdrawal from the island, A.D. 420,—that is, about five hundred years. In that time there must have been a wide diffusion of their arts and institutions among the natives. The remains of roads, cities, and fortifications show that they did much to develop and improve the country, while those of their villas and castles prove that many of the settlers possessed wealth and taste for the ornamental arts. Yet the Roman ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... position, although she could scarcely breathe in the keen frigidity. Snow had fallen, deeper than she had ever seen. With it had come that strange quality of visibility that seems to appertain to a sheeted world like an inherent luminosity; or was it perchance some vague diffusion of light from the clouded moon, skulking affrighted somewhere in the grim and sullen purlieus of the sky? She listened, thinking to hear the stir of horses in their stalls, some sound from barn or byre, the wakening of the restless poultry, all snugly housed; but the somnolent ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock

... Being alone existed; afterward there was universal darkness; next the watery ocean was produced by the diffusion of virtue." ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... in a recent Number of the Quarterly Review; with an abstract of Sir Henry Steuart's new method of transplanting trees, and a variety of information on this interesting department of rural economy. We are therefore pleased to see that the Society for the diffusion of Useful Knowledge, have appropriated the second part of their new work to what are termed "Timber Trees and their applications;" and probably few of their announced volumes will exceed in usefulness and entertainment that which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume XIII, No. 369, Saturday, May 9, 1829. • Various

... hodometer was contemporary with that of Hero and Vitruvius and very similar in design. There is no evidence whatsoever upon which to decide whether there may have been a specific transmission of this invention or even a "stimulus diffusion." ...
— On the Origin of Clockwork, Perpetual Motion Devices, and the Compass • Derek J. de Solla Price

... function for a philanthropic and progressive journal is to assist in the diffusion of liberal literature, and to keep an eye upon the prolific press of to-day, for the benefit of its readers, calling their attention to the meritorious works, which are often neglected, and warning against pretentious folly and sciolism. But it is not supposed ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... the organic world, almost inevitably follows from the principle of natural selection; for old forms are supplanted by new and improved forms. Neither single species nor groups of species reappear when the chain of ordinary generation is once broken. The gradual diffusion of dominant forms, with the slow modification of their descendants, causes the forms of life, after long intervals of time, to appear as if they had changed simultaneously throughout the world. The fact of the fossil remains of ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various

... activity set in, which has gone on increasing up to the present time. If it be true that never before in our history has so much attention been given to education as now; that never before did so many men devote themselves to the diffusion of knowledge, it is no less true that never was astronomical work so energetically pursued among us as at ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... disappear from the Union? This is a startling and momentous question, but the answer is easy and the proof is clear—it will certainly disappear if Texas is reannexed to the Union, not by abolition, but in spite of all its frenzy, slowly and gradually, by diffusion, as it has thus nearly receded from several of the more Northern of the slaveholding States, and as it will certainly continue more rapidly to recede by the reannexation of Texas, into Mexico and Central and ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Roswell believed he might now beat his schooner off the land far enough to double the cape altogether, could he but keep her in that current. It doubtless expended itself, however, a short distance in the offing, as its waters diffused themselves on the breast of the ocean; and it was this diffusion of the element that produced the eddy which ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... which have a mottled, reddish-brown color because of decomposition, exposure to severe heat, or diffusion with blood present a problem of lack of contrast between ridges and depressions for photographic purposes. This lack of contrast can be overcome to a large extent by the use of a yellow or light red filter. Sometimes, in those cases where the discoloration is due to the diffusion ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation

... the rustic and uncultured classes. Every one is without exception under its influence. The superfluity of the subtle spirit expands far and wide, and finding nowhere to betake itself to, becomes, in due course, transformed into dew, or gentle breeze; and, by a process of diffusion, it pervades ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... addressed, in the sense above indicated, may be inferred from the knowledge of the religious Jews of that time respecting the events of the future age, as conveyed to them by the writings of the prophets of the Old Testament, with which they were familiar. In proof of the general diffusion of such knowledge we may cite the response of Martha to the Lord respecting the resurrection of Lazarus, "I know that he shall rise again at the resurrection in the last day" (John xi. 24), and the common belief of a resurrection of the dead entertained by the numerous sect of the ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis

... is becoming very important in Austria, but the evidences of the Exhibition indicate that the diffusion-process holds better credit there than in France, where it is not approved of. The rotative apparatus shown is an immense affair, with a series of eight tall tanks arranged on a circular carriage and rotating on a vertical ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various

... the wider diffusion of knowledge we require: more heads and hands still are wanted, qualified for acting in concert, or at least acting generally on right principles. Too many persons capable of generous feeling are absorbed and corrupted by luxury and frivolity; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... The Agency of Missionaries in the Diffusion of Secular Knowledge in China II. Unmentioned Reforms III. A New ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... and the preparation of plans for their conservative use with the Bureau of Forestry, which is also charged with the general advancement of practical forestry in the United States. These various functions should be united in the Bureau of Forestry, to which they properly belong. The present diffusion of responsibility is bad from every standpoint. It prevents that effective co-operation between the Government and the men who utilize the resources of the reserves, without which the interests of both must suffer. ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt

... recently been directed to systems and means of Education, and the truth has at length been generally recognized that the stability and glory of nations must depend upon the intelligence and virtue of their inhabitants. In our own country, which is most of all interested in the diffusion of knowledge, unexampled efforts are being made not only for the general improvement of the culture offered in the seminaries, but for that elevation of the laboring classes which, whatever may be said by ambitious feeble-minds, seeking for reputation as reformers of the social system, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... tobacco-fields and the slave-pens of Virginia. The war passion burned like scattered coals of fire in the households of Revolutionary times; now it rushes all through the land like a flame over the prairie. And this instant diffusion of every fact and feeling produces another singular effect in the equalizing and steadying of public opinion. We may not be able to see a month ahead of us; but as to what has passed a week afterwards it is as thoroughly talked out and judged as it would have been in a whole ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... one thousand one hundred and seventy-nine years; but from its first building, till this last destruction, were two thousand one hundred and seventy-seven years; yet hath not its great antiquity, nor its vast riches, nor the diffusion of its nation over all the habitable earth, nor the greatness of the veneration paid to it on a religious account, been sufficient to preserve it from being destroyed. And thus ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... time of the first collision with Philip, the Tarenteens, or Eastern Indians, had attacked the settlements in Maine and New Hampshire, plundering and burning the houses, and massacring such of the inhabitants as fell into their hands. This sudden diffusion of hostilities and vigor of attack from opposite quarters made the colonists believe that Philip had long been plotting and had gradually matured an extensive conspiracy, into which most of the tribes had deliberately entered for the extermination ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... aside a certain portion of its revenues to be spent annually upon education. But long delays had been caused by an interminable and fierce controversy over the rival merits of the vernaculars and of English as the more suitable vehicle for the diffusion of education. The champions of English were much encouraged by the immediate success which attended the opening of an English school in Calcutta in 1830 by Dr. Alexander Duff, a great missionary who was convinced that English education could alone win ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... control of the reformer; and the inferior clergy were taught by his lessons to resist the cardinals, who had usurped a despotic command over the twenty-eight regions or parishes of Rome. [27] The revolution was not accomplished without rapine and violence, the diffusion of blood and the demolition of houses: the victorious faction was enriched with the spoils of the clergy and the adverse nobles. Arnold of Brescia enjoyed, or deplored, the effects of his mission: his reign continued above ten years, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... gloriously as now, Armand, never! Never has there been such a diffusion of information upon the subject of the rights of labor as now. Pagnerre tells me every day that volumes, tracts and pamphlets on this topic disappear like magic ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg



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