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Existence   /ɛgzˈɪstəns/  /ɪgzˈɪstəns/   Listen
Existence

noun
1.
The state or fact of existing.  Synonyms: being, beingness.  "Laws in existence for centuries"
2.
Everything that exists anywhere.  Synonyms: cosmos, creation, macrocosm, universe, world.  "The biggest tree in existence"



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"Existence" Quotes from Famous Books



... petition and the rescript are in existence, and confirm Cellini's veracity in this transaction. See Bianchi, ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini

... which, like a child's, must ever bear its trouble to a protecting strength, she looked up at the darkness of the cloudy sky and prayed for the better fortune of the man who had indeed not remembered her existence after the moment he had made her his obeisance. She was too plain and sober a creature to ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... against it, they have been overwhelmed by the current or driven before it; now reduced within limits too narrow for the hunter's state, humanity enjoins us to teach them agriculture and the domestic arts; to encourage them to that industry which alone can enable them to maintain their place in existence and to prepare them in time for that state of society which to bodily comforts adds the improvement of the mind and morals. We have therefore liberally furnished them with the implements of husbandry and household use; we have ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various

... pitifully that it would make your heart bleed to hear. People who were born on a Saturday can see these monsters, and they have described them accurately, so that there can be no doubt whatever about their existence. It is, therefore, a matter of great importance to the peasant to protect his flocks and herds against the ravages of such dangerous vampyres. The way in which he does so is this. On a Saturday morning before sunrise the village drummer gives the signal to put ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... They did not talk much. Thomas's mind had gone back to that morning when he had looked out and seen Daniel Magor at the gate with letters in his hand—that wonderful letter which had so altered and beautified their existence for a time, only to ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... the existence of a tumour is the main feature in the diagnosis between the conditions of pure varix and varicose aneurism. It was not always existent or prominent in the earliest stages, probably from temporary blocking of the artery, or from the diffuse and irregular nature of the cavity offering ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... walls. Never have I been more pained than I then was; for in that place I found myself close to making discoveries of surpassing archaeological value, and yet I was as completely cut off from them as though they had no existence. ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier

... certain measure of space, and consequently his observation is stinted to a certain number of objects. The sphere in which we move, and act, and understand, is of a wider circumference to one creature than another, according as we rise one above another in the scale of existence. ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... Celtiberic letters which have from time to time been brought to the notice of the public, have been without exception the products of foreign civilization or simply frauds. Not a single coin, inscription, or memorial of any kind whatever, has been found on the American continent showing the existence, either generally or locally, of any other means of writing than ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... "C'est surtout entre mari et femme que l'amour a le moins de chance de succs. Ils vieillirent ensemble comme deux portraits de famille, sans aucune intimit, aucun profit pour l'esprit, et arrivs au dernier relais de leur existence, le souvenir n'avait rien ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... idea of yours was simply an inspiration. I don't know when I've been so pleased with myself and existence generally. At the moment my moral is as high ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 16, 1919 • Various

... attract their attention I shouted, hello. My voice sounded rather harsh and peculiar on this occasion, and was more like the bray of an ass than anything else, but they made no motion as if they heard me, or were aware of my existence. Walking over to the nearest one, I reached up and touched him on the shoulder. Then I sprang back in amazement, for instead of giving any sign of recognition he merely placed his instrument in position, as did all the others, and with slow, graceful movements ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson

... back when they attempted to gain the open country. Numbers, unwilling to accept a second time the fatal hospitality of the city, preferred to remain in their exposed situation, miserably dragging out a precarious existence by subsisting upon snails, buds of trees and shrubs—even to the very grass ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... efforts of Moreni and others could have been thus unsuccessful; and I thought that with common energy and diligence they might have ascertained whether the painting, so clearly pointed out by Vasari, was or was not in existence: several months, however, of wearisome labors in the same pursuit taught me to judge more leniently of the failures of my predecessors. Mr. Wilde put Moreni's note before me, and suggested and urged, that being an Italian by birth, though ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... hardships, and at times were almost in a state of mutiny. The interminable extent of sand utterly dispirited them, and they came to believe that all that they had heard of Egypt was false, and that they had been deliberately sent there by the directory to die. They doubted even the existence of Cairo. Some, in their despair, threw themselves into the river and were drowned. Many died on the march, less from sunstroke and exhaustion than from despair. At last the Pyramids came in sight, and their spirits rose again, for here, they were told, the whole army of Mamelukes, Janizaries, ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty

... hundred yards across, and as deep as the cliffs in that part are high. It is about fifty or eighty yards from the edge of the cliffs, and resembles an old quarry; but it is cut so sharply out of the flat field that it shows no sign of its existence until the traveller is close upon it. The rocky sides, too, are so steep, that at first sight it seems as if no man could descend into it. But the most peculiar point about this hole is, that at the foot of it there is the opening of a cavern, through which the sea rolls ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne

... faint beginnings of a university at Cambridge arose. A generation later there were other secessions to Salisbury and Northampton, but neither of these schools succeeded in maintaining themselves. Cambridge itself had a somewhat languid existence throughout the whole of the thirteenth century, and was scarcely recognised as a studium generale until the bull of John XXII. in 1318 made its future position secure. In early days the university owed nothing to endowments, buildings, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... to describe in a very few words the nature of the warfare. It may be said that the existence of Ireland as a province of England depends on the tenure of the land. If the land were to be taken altogether from the present owners, and divided in perpetuity among any possible number of tenants, so as to be the property of each tenant, without payment of any ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... to have spent herself in vain; but her resignation was only of the body, and this dejected body moved mechanically through the tasks and recreations that go to make up the grey monotone of conventual existence; in which one day is as another day, one hour as another hour; in which the seasons of the year lose their significance; in which time has no purpose save for its subdivision into periods devoted to sleeping and waking, to eating and ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini

... limited as the islands in the South Seas, the natives of which, before they were discovered by European navigators, probably had not an idea of the existence of other lands, it is not unnatural that an increasing population should occasion apprehensions of universal distress. Orders of celibacy which have proved so prejudicial in other countries might perhaps in this have been beneficial; so far ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh

... They disliked each other on sight; indeed, the dislike was anterior to sight, and may be said to have commenced when Harry first heard how thoroughly at home Julius had made himself at Seat-Sandal, and when Julius first saw what a desirable estate and fine old "seat" Harry's existence deprived him of. And in half an hour this general aversion began to particularize itself. The slim, suave youth, with his black eyes and soft speech, and small hands and feet, seemed to Harry Sandal in every respect an interloper. The Saxon in this Sandal was ...
— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... leaders will be manifest to thee. The mind, which is created apt to love, is mobile unto everything that pleases, soon as by pleasure it is roused to action. Your faculty of apprehension draws an image from a real existence, and within you displays it, so that it makes the mind turn to it; and if, thus turned, the mind incline toward it, that inclination is love, that inclination is nature which is bound anew in you by pleasure.[1] Then, as the fire moveth upward by its own form,[2] ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 2, Purgatory [Purgatorio] • Dante Alighieri

... that some of the witnesses did not hesitate to say that they should know her among ten thousand; that they were as certain the plaintiff was Salome Muller, the daughter of Daniel and Dorothea Muller, as of their own existence." ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft

... Bence's porch turned to blood crimson. Its leaves parted from the stem in the gay Autumn wind, and sifted lightly down to join the painted foliage of the two little maples which struggled for existence against an adverse world, crouching beaten and torn at ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke

... to read it. Perhaps it stirs mine because it is not long since tragedies like that have been enacted in my own family. Love and jealousy and revenge are a part of our heritage, and at times I long to come into my birthright, for such existence as I ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney

... for settlement. In advancing these ideas on a national scale, however, he was rendered helpless by the utter weakness of Congress, which even his influence was powerless to overcome. He therefore began, immediately after his retreat to private life, to formulate and bring into existence such practical measures as were possible for the development of the West, believing that if Congress could not act, the people would, if any opportunity were given ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge

... is the more usual form, but [Greek: elora] is recognized by Hesychius. "If correct," Kennedy says, "it may be explained by the existence of [Greek: eloron] from [Greek: elor] (Hesych. t. i. p. 1186, from Il. v. 488), signifying the price of slaughter, by the same analogy as [Greek: threpiron] (iv. 478) the price ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... does not expect or even wish the Austrian-Succession War to be. Enough for him if it could be understood sufficiently to render his poor History of Friedrich intelligible. For it enwraps Friedrich like a world-vortex henceforth; modifies every step of his existence henceforth; and apart from it, there is no understanding of his business or him. "So much as sticks to Friedrich:" that was our original bargain! Assist loyally, O reader, and we will try to make the indispensable ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... lazarettos were established upon islands at some distance from the city, seemingly as early as the year 1485. Here all strangers coming from places where the existence of plague was suspected were detained. If it appeared in the city itself, the sick were despatched with their families to what was called the Old Lazaretto, were there furnished with provisions and medicines, and when they were cured, were detained, together with all those who ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker

... this aspect, the question becomes one, not of intention, but of power; so doubtful, as to forbid the exercise of it. Every man must lament the necessity of the disabilities; but slavery is to be dealt with by those whose existence depends on the skill with which it is treated. Considerations of mere humanity, however, belong to a class with which, as judges, we have nothing to do; and, interpreting the constitution in the spirit of our own institutions, we are bound to pronounce that men of colour are destitute ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... Oh, very well, then; please yourself, I'm sure! (CHOCOLATE's small black eyes regard her admiringly, as he tries one last persuasive smile, probably to express the degree to which the possession of a nodding monkey would brighten his existence.) It ain't a bit o' good, CHOC'LIT, I can't lower my price for you; and what's more, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various

... picturesque old place, with no greater trouble to disturb his peaceful life than some puzzling problem or a trivial fit of illness. All so bright, so joyous, so happy,—and now gone, perhaps, for ever; and some strange, wild life to come, but what kind of existence ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... forms should have existed in ancient times is a necessary consequence of the truth of the hypothesis of evolution; and, hence, the evidence I have laid before you in proof of the existence of such forms, is, so far as it goes, in favour of ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley

... a conscience, nobody was supposed to be that. Russian agents had come to Leesville with seventeen millions of the money which the Paris bankers had put up; and so overnight whole blocks of homes were swept out of existence, and a huge new steel structure was rising, and on the spot where for four years Jimmie had made certain motions of the hands, they were preparing to manufacture new machinery for the quantity ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... being thus alone in a wilderness was grand, but it was somewhat appalling and trying to the nerves. How long would Obed be absent? I thought to myself. Three weeks or a month at shortest. Could I manage to preserve existence for that length of time? I was still weak and ill, and could scarcely crawl about, so I spent the greater portion of my time on my couch. I placed my firearms close at hand around me, so that I might seize them ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston

... general movement was a failure. Indeed, the only result was the construction of a post at the point then known as Council Bluff (now Fort Calhoun, Nebraska), which after an existence of eight years was abandoned. Congress, disgusted with the management of the undertaking, refused to vote the funds necessary for the complete fulfillment of the project.[60] Accordingly, no permanent military post ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen

... can put into the field as a mobile army available for attack as well as for defence. I think thirty-five thousand men a safer estimate than twenty-five thousand. The Boers are fighting for their political existence, which to their minds is identical with their monopoly of political rights, and therefore their States will and must exert themselves to the uttermost. This view is confirmed by the action of the British military authorities, who estimate ...
— Lessons of the War • Spenser Wilkinson

... phrase may pass, so monstrous an anomaly, that it dares not exercise its power, and dreads the scandal which it would raise by acting on its rights, and seems as it were paralysed with terror at the very thought of its own existence. ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... what is now in process of disintegration? Were this earth all, we might dream of universal advance by shutting our eyes to a great many incompatible facts; but when our telescopes show us the co-existence of integration and disintegration everywhere, what can we conclude but that in the past as in the future, no alteration is to be looked for beyond the shifting of the waves' crest from side to side of the sea of matter—the total ratio of depressions to elevations remaining ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... mankind—is too obvious to need remark. It arises from the instincts of mankind, the irrepressible spirit of emulation, and the ardent longings after immortality; and this restless passion to perpetuate their existence which they find it impossible to suppress, impels them to secure the admiration of succeeding generations in the performance of deeds, by which, although dead, they may yet speak. In commemorating events thus ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various

... it. The castellan, or keeper, conducted the party down a winding staircase, to an ancient Roman bath, by a passage made in modern times; for originally the only access to the dungeons was by a perpendicular shaft in the centre of the castle, which is still in existence. Tradition declares that the prisoners, blindfolded, and lashed to an armchair, were lowered through this shaft to the gloomy vaults hewn out of the solid rock. The dark and mysterious dungeons were closed by a stone slab, revolving on a pivot, and weighing from half ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic

... 'do you not think it would be better if the poor creature's life could be preserved? Its death must be a great loss to its owner, and life is, no doubt, happiness to the creature itself. Why terminate the existence of any animal by which we are not annoyed, and which is not necessary to our subsistence? We certainly have ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas

... third destination to the enormous pile he contemplated. It should be a palace as well as a monastery and a royal charnel-house. He chose the most appropriate spot in Spain for the erection of the most cheerless monument in existence. He had fixed his capital at Madrid because it was the dreariest town in Spain, and to envelop himself in a still profounder desolation, he built the Escorial out of sight of the city, on a bleak, bare hillside, swept by the glacial gales of the Guadarrama, parched by the vertical suns of summer, ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay

... of the dictator comes from ancient Rome, from the classical Republic of antiquity. (Laughter.) When the State was fighting for its existence it was found necessary to place supreme power in the hands of a single man, and to give this Roman dictator authority which was much greater than the authority belonging to preventive arrest and martial law. The whole development proceeds by way of compromise between the needs of the State ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... anything more purely confessional. The whole composition is of the spirit, spiritual. The scenery is in the chambers of thought; the agencies are powers and passions; the events are transitions from one state of spiritual existence to another.' ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... Preacher's Synagogue, where many other young men would gather for the same purpose. We would sit up reading, side by side, until the worshipers came to morning service. To spend a whole night by his side was one of the joys of my existence in those days ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... Animals become depressed and dejected after it. The flower which shines so brilliantly at the moment of its amours, after the consummation of that act, withers and falls. It is wise, therefore, in imparting life, to have a care not to shorten one's own existence. Nothing is more certain than that animals and plants lessen the duration of their lives by multiplied sexual enjoyments. The abuse of these pleasures produces lassitude and weakness. Beauty of feature and grace of movement are sacrificed. When the excess is long continued, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys

... take them in," he said. "He has a loft in the top of his house, and can bestow them there safely, for none would be likely to suspect its existence, even if they searched the house. My uncle is a true Fleming, and would have taken them in without payment, but I say not that he will refuse what my master may be ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty

... hopes to take. This belief, which was the earliest mould into which the treasure of the new revelation was poured, has never quite disappeared from the Church, and in times of excitement and upheaval it tends to reassert itself. The maturest Greek philosophy regards eternity as the divine mode of existence, while mortals are born, live, and die in time. Man is a microcosm, in touch with every rung of the ladder of existence; and he is potentially a 'participator' in the divine mode of existence, which he can make his own by living, so far as may be, in detachment ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... in dismissing the matter from her mind. It was no longer anything but a bad dream, which grew more indistinct each day. Then, how it was she could not tell, but amidst the profound quietude of her existence, the image of that young man who had befriended her had returned to her once more, becoming more and more precise, till at last it occupied her daily thoughts. Why should she forget him? She had nothing to reproach him with; on the contrary, she felt she was his debtor. The thought ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... there are boundless stores of moral and historic truth, and no less of passion and imagination, laid up—that from these, lessons of infinite worth may be derived, if only our attention is roused to their existence. I shall urge on you how well it will repay you to study the words which you are in the habit of using or of meeting, be they such as relate to highest spiritual things, or our common words of ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... back with her into the life she had led there as a child. Perhaps his ardent guesses at this were as near reality as anything that could be made to appear, for, after her mother and brothers and sisters had died out of the wide old house, her existence there was as lonely as if she had been a little ghost haunting it. She had inherited her mother's temperament with her father's constitution; she was the child born to his last long absence at sea and her mother's last solitude at home. When ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells

... movement—that movement in every turn and twist of which the influence of Cezanne is traceable—the movement which may be said to have come into existence contemporaneously almost with the century, and still holds the field—it is necessary to know something of the aesthetic theories which agitated it. One of the many unpremeditated effects of Cezanne's life and work was to set artists ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell

... no dreams of future joy, could make him forget the wealth of love he was leaving. Nor did he wish to forget. And woe to the man or woman who would buy composure and contentment by forgetting!—by really forfeiting a portion of their existence—by being a suicide of their ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr

... Some believed in him, but others did not. Such a person was, however, sure to have a number of followers and ardent admirers, who quoted him on all occasions,—stuck by him through thick or thin, right or wrong, and looked upon him as one of the finest fellows in existence. ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... explained. "I am not exactly all-to-myselfish, but I demand plenty of elbow-room in my existence. Generally speaking, my own society bores me less than the society of the mutable many. I like Hynds House. And I like you two women. You are not tiresome to the ear, wearisome to the mind, nor displeasing to the eye. ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler

... captain of the vessel went to work as privately as possible to lay in his stores and make his other preparations for sea. He did this with the utmost precaution and secrecy, and succeeded in deceiving every body but his wife. Wives have the opportunity to perceive indications of the concealed existence of matters of moment and weight which others do not enjoy, in studying the countenances of their husbands. A man can easily, through the day, when surrounded by the world, assume an unconcerned and careless air, though oppressed with a very considerable ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott

... expeditions destined for the West Indies; and this ought to have been possible after Howe's victory of 1st June 1794. The fact that the Republic strenuously prepared to regain those islands at the very time when the Coalition in Europe and the revolt in Brittany threatened its existence, suffices to justify Pitt and his colleagues in attacking France in that quarter. A colony which is worth regaining must be worth gaining. To the capture of Louisburg, a weaker stronghold than Mole St. Nicholas, England devoted several expeditions a generation earlier. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... struggle and temptation. Then the golden arrows of the day followed fast. The silver and blue sky grew roseate with that wide wild blush which testifies to the modest delight of nature, satisfied and grateful for her silent existence and her amorous repose. I breakfasted, went down into the donga with a black boy, poor Jim-jim, who was afterwards, as I said, to perish by an awful fate, otherwise he would testify to the truth of ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang

... to paint him in two words, du Bousquier ennobled. Between the two men there was precisely the difference which separates the vulgar style from the noble style. If they had both been present, the most fanatic liberal would not have denied the existence of aristocracy. The viscount's strength had all the distinction of elegance; his figure had preserved its magnificent dignity. He had blue eyes, black hair, an olive skin, and looked to be about forty-six years of age. You might have thought him a handsome Spaniard preserved in the ice of Russia. ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... Stock Exchange in existence in which the public has that control over the execution of orders, which is given to it by the practice—unique to the New York Stock Exchange—of having every single transaction immediately recorded when made and publicly announced on the ...
— The New York Stock Exchange and Public Opinion • Otto Hermann Kahn

... wants. It flashes from parent to parent, and from parent to child, making-up the sunshine and the loveliness of domestic life. Without it home would have no meaning. It engenders the "home-feeling" and the "home-sickness," and is the moral net-work of the home-existence and economy. It is stronger than death; it rises superior to adversity, and towers in sublime beauty above the niggardly selfishness of the world. Misfortune cannot suppress it; enmity cannot alienate it; temptation cannot enslave it. ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips

... records of such corporation or hustings court shall thereupon become a part of the records of such circuit court, and be transferred thereto, and remain therein until otherwise provided by law, and during the existence of the corporation or hustings court, the circuit court of the county in which such city is situated, shall have concurrent jurisdiction with said corporation or hustings court in all actions at law and suits ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox

... her and Wilhelm. Never a word had passed; never a look or tone to betray that he knew whether she were fair or not,—whether she lived or not. She came and went in his presence, as did all others, with no more apparent relation to the currents of his strange veiled existence than if they or he belonged to a phantom world. But it was also true that never since the first day of his mysterious coming had Wilhelm been long absent from Carlen's thoughts; and she did indeed find ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson

... some that porcupines lay eggs, the hard, smooth shells of which are furnished by a kind and thoughtful Providence for the protection of the mothers from their prickly offspring until the latter have fairly begun their independent existence. Other people say that two babies invariably arrive at once, and that one of them is always dead before it is born. But when my Porcupine discovered America he had neither a shell on his back nor a dead twin brother by his side. Neither was he prickly. He was covered ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert

... romance, that Hawthorne always adopted this laborious mode of making several drafts of a book. On the contrary, it is understood that his habit was to mature a design so thoroughly in his mind before attempting to give it actual existence on paper that but little rewriting was needed. The circumstance that he was obliged to write so much that did not satisfy him in this case may account partly for his relinquishing the theme, as one which for him had lost its seductiveness through ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... for about two weeks, during much of which time the arrival of the rebel raiders was hourly expected, and kept the Convention alive by adjourning from day to day, without which, by the rules adopted for the government of the Convention, it could not have maintained a legal existence. ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... mournfully over the reef. The moon had just risen, when, in deep and solemn silence, the bodies of these misguided men were lowered into the graves prepared for them. Away from home and country, they had found a fearful termination of a miserable existence. Perhaps ties had still bound them to the world; friends whom they loved were looking for their return, and, prodigals though they had been, would have blessed them, and forgiven their offences. Perhaps even at that sad moment, mothers ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous

... to Darwin's theory that anything more should be assumed than the facts of heredity, variation, and unlimited multiplication; and the validity of the deductive reasoning as to the effect of the last (that is, of the struggle for existence which it involves) upon the varieties resulting from the operation of the former. Nor is it essential that one should take up any particular position in regard to the mode of variation, whether, for example, it takes place per saltum or gradually; whether it is definite in character or ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley

... back in your chairs, you children of the city, lean down and look at your mother. Look at her smoke-hung arms, stretched out as though to gather in the universe; and the lights upon her bosom—see how they come twinkling into existence." ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... the combination of a note or two more in this anti-harmonic scale. If Protestant ascendency means the proscription from citizenship of by far the major part of the people of any country, then Protestant ascendency is a bad thing, and it ought to have no existence. But there is a deeper evil. By the use that is so frequently made of the term, and the policy which is engrafted on it, the name Protestant becomes nothing more or better than the name of a persecuting faction, with a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... of a self-conscious mind. It is the very reverse of your father, who is the most really humble man in existence." ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... successful imitation. Still they are entitled to our gratitude; many of the precious remains of antiquity have come down to us only in their extracts and abridgments; and their voluminous compilations have transmitted to us much useful information which has no other existence. Sacred biography, in particular, has great obligations to them. The earliest work on that subject we owe to the care which the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus bestowed on the literary education of his son; an example which, at the distance ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... really was. She was always wondering how auntie would take this or view that; but the very topics she was moved to enlarge upon in her letters were those which circumstances forbade her to mention. All her interests were connected with Miss Pritchard, of whose very existence Mrs. Moss was unaware, with the school, and less directly with Elsie Marley, whose name she was masquerading under. Leaving all these out of consideration, and depending almost wholly upon the fragments she received concerning life in the parsonage ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray

... cost him such infinite labour to erect, falls to the ground along with it. It is well if his personal exertions, and the annoyances to which he has subjected himself during the best period of his existence, form the whole of his sacrifices. But, alas! it too often happens that, encouraged by the probability of succeeding in a few years to an independent property, and ambitious, moreover, of making such an appearance in society as will afford ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various

... find a more profitable way of spending your earthly existence," said Cousin Giles; "yet I fear many people come in and go out of the world, and yet are of very little more use than you would thus be ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston

... sea about a week, I was landed on this rock. I had no means of judging whereabouts it was. I was put on shore at night, and the brig made sail again at night. They left me neither arms, ammunition, nor food. At first I thought I should die; but I found ample means of existence, and I resolved to live to be revenged on those who had thus ill-used me. I felt all the time like a caged hyena, and used to walk about the island, thinking how I could escape. With some spars washed on shore I made the flag-staff you saw; but ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston

... from the Hospital of St. Cross, near Winchester. I have invented a few external and all the internal ones. My "College of Noble Poverty" harbours abuses from which, I dare to say, that nobler institution is entirely free. St Hospital has no existence at ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... distressed; mercies to the godly; judgments to the wicked; and more glorious fulfilments of either the promises or the threatenings, in the Scriptures of truth; with apparitions, possessions, inchantments, and all extraordinary things wherein the existence and agency of the invisible world is more sensibly demonstrated."—Magnalia Christi Americana. Edit. London, ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... since he led her to the altar, and which make her so much more than he ever bargained for! Is it not a sounder view of the case that the matrimonial bond cannot be held to include the three-fourths of the wife that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? And ought not an English married pair to insist upon the celebration of a silver wedding at the end of twenty-five years to legalize all that corporeal growth of which both parties have ...
— Masterpieces Of American Wit And Humor • Thomas L. Masson (Editor)

... it jest th' same if I didn't," declared Lot, yet with perfect good-nature, as though the Widow Breckenridge's vigorous applications of the beech wand was a part of existence not to be escaped. "Gran'pap says I might's well be hung for an ole sheep as a lamb, so in course I ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster

... religious and respectable and so contented to be robbed on a large scale, yet in small matters, in the commonplace and petty affairs of their everyday existence, most of these men were acutely alive to what their enfeebled minds conceived to be their own selfish interests, and they possessed a large share of that singular cunning which ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... sober, and who meant to be faithful according to his gifts. He was scarcely blameworthy for not knowing of the existence of a small back room in the rear of the gambling-den; or for the further unknowledge of the fact that the man in search of diversion had passed on into this back room after placing a few bets at the silent game, appearing no more until ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... complete, that, for many months, they did not know of any other than themselves being in arms for the delivery of their country. It was only by their coming into accidental contact that they discovered that there was more than one patriot guerilla in existence.[3] Bolivar supplied some of them with arms, and at the same time augmented his own force to a thousand men. The Spaniards assembled in superior numbers to destroy them; but Bolivar embarked, and relanded at Ocumare, with an intention of taking Caracas: great part, however, of the Spanish ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various

... long-lived family may be defined by the patent facts of ages at death, and number and ages of living relatives, within the degrees mentioned above, all of which can be verified and attested. A knowledge of the existence of longevity in the family would testify to the stamina of the candidate, and be an important addition to the knowledge of his present health in forecasting the probability of his performing a large ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton

... 52 deg. and 55 deg. of latitude, in the space between Kamtschatka and America, deserve some notice. According to Mr Ismyloff's account, neither the number nor the situation of these islands is well ascertained. He struck out about one-third of them, assuring me they had no existence, and he altered the situation of others considerably, which, he said, was necessary, from his own observations. And there was no reason to doubt about this. As these islands lie all nearly under the same parallel, different navigators, being misled by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... measures, to cause him to be remembered,—and no leading thoughts or acts, to awaken a high and general feeling of admiration on the part of his countrymen. He was never such a senator as Webster was, nor such a secretary as Clay, nor such a diplomatist as Marey. Throughout his protracted official existence, he followed in the wake of his party submissively, doing its appointed work with patience, and vindicating its declared policy with skill, but never emerging as a distinct and prominent figure. He never exhibited any peculiar largeness of mind or loftiness of character; and though ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various

... as ethicists. The well-being of the commonwealth based upon the well-being of every member—spiritually, intellectually, and materially—is their threefold aim. They feel and express profound admiration for every form of religious life, utterly indifferent as to the existence or non-existence of any dogma accompanying it, since they freely realize how strong a motive religion is to ethics; they admit Roman Catholics, Orthodox or Modern Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, Mohammedans, Atheists and ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough

... surplus profit should be forfeited either indirectly by the taking off of the tariff, or by way of a franchise tax, that is, of a United States tax upon its franchises, which could be increased in such a way as to tax it out of existence if it persisted. The latter remedy is at the root of President Taft's new corporation tax, but Congress has not yet applied the former, although it was very seriously advocated that there should be statutes which should indirectly forfeit the profits of the trust that had ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... of Gessler ever ruled there. The chroniclers of the fifteenth century, Faber and Hammerlin, who minutely describe the tyrannical acts by which the Duke of Austria goaded the Swiss to rebellion, do not once mention Tell's name, or betray the slightest acquaintance with his exploits or with his existence. In the Zurich chronicle of 1479 he is not alluded to. But we have still better negative evidence. John of Winterthur, one of the best chroniclers of the Middle Ages, was living at the time of the battle of Morgarten (1315), ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske

... definition of the 'specific excellence' or virtue of man, which is to be the standard by which we decide how far he has fully and perfectly realised the possibilities of his being. To this end he distinguishes in man's nature three modes of existence: first, feelings such as joy, pain, anger; second, potentialities or capacities for such feelings; third, habits which are built upon these potentialities, but with an element of reason or deliberation superadded. ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... acquired were freely used by him in the construction of a new building upon the site of Vine Cottage, and adapted with considerable skill; but when neither the vine nor the cottage were in existence, it appeared to Mr. Baylis ridiculous to allow a misnomer to attach itself to the spot. After due deliberation, therefore, respecting the situation upon a delightful bank of gravel, and the association which an assemblage ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... living for the glory of that Being who made and preserves you, and before whom you must stand to be judged. Made in His image, with an immortal soul, you might dwell forever with the Redeemer, in the mansions he has gone to prepare. But, like the butterfly, you fritter away your earthly existence, and, by so doing, throw away the only cup of real, unadulterated pleasure of this present life; and, when Time, with all its fleeting joys, has passed away forever, where, oh, where! do you ...
— A Biographical Sketch of the Life and Character of Joseph Charless - In a Series of Letters to his Grandchildren • Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless

... light, it seemed impossible that I could have sat right through dinner without noticing it. But then, at meals, my attention is pretty well riveted on the foodstuffs. Anyway, it was not till Elizabeth showed it to me that I was aware of its existence. ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse

... rest after fatigue, I half resolved to devote my whole life to a sport which was capable of affording such thrilling excitement as that which I had so recently enjoyed. I had never been so happy, I thought, in my existence as whilst I was leading the field on my dear Brilliant. It was a pure, wholesome, legitimate excitement; there were no harassing doubts and fears, no wounded feelings and bitter thoughts, no hours and days of suspense and misery ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... to certain condescensions towards individuals, which have been denied to the entreaties of a nation. For the meanest and most dependent instrument of this system knows, that there are hours when its existence may depend upon his adherence to it; and he takes his advantage accordingly. Indeed it is a law of nature, that whoever is necessary to what we have made our object, is sure, in some way, or in some time or other, to become our master. All this however is ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke

... the only legal title on which his existence depended.... He has deprived himself of the protection of the law, and has manifested to the Universe that there can be neither peace nor truce with him. The Powers consequently declare that Napoleon Bonaparte has placed himself without the pale of civil and social relations, and that ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... not dead, then resort to force? Go to Selamlik Pasha the malignant, and demand the young officer? How easy for Selamlik Pasha to deny all knowledge of his existence! Threaten Selamlik—and raise a Mahommedan crusade? ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... retaining in her feebleness all the traditions of her majesty. But this epoch of her revived grandeur was set in painful contrast to poor Lenox's misery. He was commissioned to sell the scrip, which, for him, had no existence, and thus raise money to deck the family in transient brightness. I fancy that at such times, without any waste of rhetoric or balancing of expediencies, he was more in love with suicide than Hamlet or Cato, and that if it had not been for the sympathy and aid of a golden-haired ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... its present practical importance lies in the application of the haemolytic system (that is haemolysin, corresponding erythrocyte solution and complement) to certain laboratory methods having for their object either the identification of the infective entity or the diagnosis of the existence of infection. ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... my tripod and leaned against the trench side to rest. His laughter suddenly developed into a coughing and spluttering, spitting and swearing, which in itself was strong enough to drive all the flies in existence away. ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins

... glass; for methought their poor souls needed such fiery stimulant to lift them a little way out of the smothering squalor of both their outward and interior life, giving them glimpses and suggestions, even if bewildering ones, of a spiritual existence that limited their present misery. The temperance-reformers unquestionably derive their commission from the Divine Beneficence, but have never been taken fully into its counsels. All may not be lost, though those ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... They fail to see that redemption from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13), redemption from all iniquity (Titus 2:14), redemption from under the law (Rom. 6:14), means to be placed in a higher, more sacred relationship to God. Even in nature God has two grades of existence, a lower and a higher, for some insects, even; the mosquito, first in the water; then by a simple process it rises into the higher kingdom; the caterpillar, a creeping worm, then the butterfly. But were there no analogies in nature, God has clearly ...
— God's Plan with Men • T. T. (Thomas Theodore) Martin

... upstairs I had come to the conclusion that I must in some way acknowledge the existence of my travelling companion. After our friendly intercourse yesterday it would be snobbish to pretend I had never seen him before. And yet I was in agony to know how to do it. Young, shy, staying for the first time in a large country house, among people higher ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various

... its backbitings are a common topic of conversation. However, I have never experienced anything of the kind in literature. The trouble with literature is that there is very little money in it, which renders the writer's existence both mean ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... proportionalists (as they like to call themselves) say that it means representing men and the opinions they hold in proportion to their numbers. The fundamental error is that they neglect the all-important factor of human nature. They look on public opinion as something having an independent existence apart from the questions about which it is expressed and from the means of expressing it; and they fail to recognize that the character of public opinion depends on the manner in which it is expressed ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth

... himself used to say, "with no false bottom, nothing in my hands, nothing up my sleeves;" just a few moral ideas to guide his course through life, ideas as old and simple as could be. And those few ideas themselves were subject to a principle that governed his whole existence and ruled all his actions, the love of his country, which, in Morestal, stood for regret for the past, hatred of the present and, especially, the bitter ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc

... relation to that immortal past. One could hardly bring heroism into the potato-field and the cow-house; but after this lapse of time, it began to dawn upon her that the man who had fought at Gettysburg and the man who marked out for her the narrow rut of an unchanging existence were one and the same. And as if the moment had come for an expected event, she heard again the jangling of bells without, and the old vivid color rushed into her cheeks, reddened before by the fire-shine. It was as though the other night ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... backward and forward among trifles, with no regular employment to steady it at any given hour of the day. On the other hand, it was just as probable that these comings and goings, these lockings and unlockings, might be attributable to the existence of some private responsibility which had unexpectedly intruded itself into the old man's easy existence, and which tormented him with a sense of oppression new to the experience of his later years. Either one of these interpretations might explain his conduct as reasonably and as probably ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... accompanied by some deficiency in the senses of smell, hearing, and vision, the white could never compete with the darker races, so long as man was in a very low and savage condition, and wholly dependent for existence on the acuteness of his senses. But as the mental faculties become more fully developed and more important to his welfare than mere sense acuteness, the lighter tints of skin, and hair, and eyes, would cease to be disadvantageous whenever they were accompanied ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... was that women had never done him any good and he was not accustomed to associate them with any pleasure; if there was a part of Hamlet in connection with them it had been so completely cut out in the edition of the play in which he was required to act that he had come to disbelieve in its existence. As for kissing, he had never kissed a woman in his life except his sister—and my own sisters when we were all small children together. Over and above these kisses, he had until quite lately been required to imprint a solemn flabby kiss night and morning upon his father's cheek, and this, to ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... and the net, one is able for the first time to believe solidly in the existence of Russian children. In town, in the winter, one has doubted it, despite occasional coveys of boys in military greatcoats, book-knapsacks of sealskin strapped to their shoulders to keep their backs straight, and officer-like caps. The summer garb of the lads from the gymnasia and other institutes ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... deafened by the noise of great cities, it is beyond measure refreshing. Then, again, among the mountains history finds no place. The Alps have no past nor present nor future. The human beings who live upon their sides are at odds with nature, clinging on for bare existence to the soil, sheltering themselves beneath protecting rocks from avalanches, damming up destructive streams, all but annihilated every spring. Man, who is paramount in the plain, is nothing here. His arts and sciences, and dynasties, and modes of life, and mighty works, and conquests ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... of which was: "Therefore by exterminating intuitive wisdom, and by discarding knowledge, highway robbers will cease to exist, and by taking off the jade and by putting away the pearls, pilferers will not spring to existence; by burning the slips and by breaking up the seals, by smashing the measures, and snapping the scales, the result will be that the people will not wrangle; by abrogating, to the utmost degree, wise rules under the heavens, the people will, at length, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... and Towns. It was a Conference more thoroughly representative of Russia than any that had ever been held. There were, indeed, no representatives of the old regime, and there were few representatives of the Bolsheviki. The former had no place in the new Russia that was struggling for its existence; the repressive measures that had been found necessary accounted for the scant representation of ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... led him to believe in the sphericity of the earth and the probability of land in the far West. "Adams and Leverrier discovered Neptune simultaneously and independently, simply because certain observations had revealed perturbations that could be most naturally accounted for by the existence of an unknown planet." After Professor Helmholtz and others had made known the subtle laws of the transmission of sound, there was only a step to its practical application in the ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker

... these papers are to be depended upon) to have originated with the Ranee and certain of the sirdars, who felt the pressure of the demands of the army to be so urgent, and its present attitude and temper so perilous to their existence, that they desired to turn the thoughts of the troops to objects which might divert their attention from making extortionate demands for higher pay, by employing their energies in hostile operations against the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... highest. This of itself will make you of great service to mankind, but without this you never can be. Naught is the difference how hard you may try; and know, even so far as your own highest interests are concerned, that the true joy of existence comes ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine

... by tradition or written record. It belongs to the class of legal instruments, called in Spanish law Titulos, family titles. A number of such, setting forth the descent and rights of the native princes in Central America, are in existence, as the ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton

... to go on living through continual scenes like this,' she whined,'I am sure it would be much better for me to think of some means of putting an end to my existence. Oh! The idea of your being my daughter, Edith, and addressing me ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... possibly make use of. This niece, the eldest of Uncle John's trio, was vastly more experienced in the ways of the world than the others, although as a traveller she had no advantage of them. Urged thereto by her worldly mother, she led a sort of trivial, butterfly existence, and her character was decidedly superficial to any close observer. Indeed, her very suavity and sweetness of manner was assumed, because it was so much more comfortable and effective to be agreeable than ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... auspices the French missionaries had been sent out, very soon came to the conclusion that it was important to enlarge and strengthen French influence in this great new country, particularly after he had ascertained the existence of the 'Great River,' which Father Marquette had undertaken to explore, and by means of which he expected to open trade with China! But the minister of finance required rather more worldly agents than the single-hearted and devoted ministers of religion, and he found a fitting instrument ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... cut in swiftly—that same Mary who was once conspicuous in her family for pious orthodoxy. "No more experiments in human existence for me! A few years of peace and cleanness, as I am—as I now am—I hope for that, and for nothing more; I don't want anything more—I'd rather not. To be let alone for the rest of the time, and then to be done with it—that sums up all the hope ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge



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