"Tangible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... excellent example of patience and resignation. He believed as devoutly as ever in his prescriptions; he placed the greatest reliance on time and care. The derangement of the stomach (as he called it) presented something positive and tangible to treat: he had got over the doubts and anxieties that troubled him, when Carmina was first removed to the lodgings. Looking confidently at the surface—without an idea of what was going on below it—he could tell Teresa, with a safe conscience, that he understood the case. He was always ready ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... of Proverbs says: "Where there is no vision, the people perish." Statistics teach that where there is no vision, civilization never gets started! The tangible things which we prize so highly,—buildings, railroads, steamships, factories, power plants, telephones, aeroplanes, etc., are but the result of faith and vision. These things are only symptoms of conditions, ...
— Fundamentals of Prosperity - What They Are and Whence They Come • Roger W. Babson
... proved more intoxicating to Quin than all the more tangible ones he had ever received. It sent him swaggering through the next few months with his head in the air and his heart on fire. Nothing could stop him now, he told himself boastfully. Old Bangs was showing him signal favor, Madam Bartlett was his staunch friend, Mr. Ranny and the aunties ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... upon his prize, he turned the others, along with the effectual menace of his great beak, to the business of battle. The meshes fettered him in a way that drove him frantic with rage, but two of his tentacles managed to find their way through, and writhed madly this way and that in search of some tangible antagonist on which to fasten themselves. While they were yet groping vainly for a grip, he felt himself lifted bodily forth into the strangling air, and crowded—net, prey, and all—into a dark and ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... is a matter of business. Its object is tangible, clear, and evident. There is nothing high, or inflammatory, or exciting; no false magnificence, no visionary elevation, in the affair at all. It is the very antipodes to enthusiasm of any kind. It pre-supposes in its votary a mind essentially mercantile. All the feelings ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... declaring war of itself gave ample authority for the purpose. The majority held otherwise, and Marshall delivered the opinion. Referring to the practice of nations and the writings of publicists, he declared that, according to "the modern rule," "tangible property belonging to an enemy and found in the country at the commencement of war, ought not to be immediately confiscated;" that "this rule" seemed to be "totally incompatible with the idea that war does of itself vest the property in the belligerent government;" and, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... the graded and high schools of a neighborhood that pleases you, the obvious things are the buildings, school bus service, play space, provisions for school lunches and so forth. These are tangible and can be readily observed. Much more important are the intangibles. These include the scholastic standing of the particular school; the pedagogical ability and personality of the individual teachers; and, finally, whether those who manage village, borough, or town governments, ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... conscience; and that they feel the latter to be the safer guide, though the former may be the clearer, nay even though it be the truer. They would rather be in error with the sanction of their conscience, than be right with the mere judgment of their reason. And again here is this more tangible difficulty in the case of exceptions to the rule of Veracity, that so very little external help is given us in drawing the line, as to when untruths are allowable and when not; whereas that sort of killing which is not murder, is most definitely marked off by legal enactments, so that it ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... for a moment a shadow seemed to rest upon her—a something tangible and even fearful, that lent to her mask-like face a ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Duchess of Towers! She had been not only visible and audible like the rest, but tangible as well, to the fullest extent of the sensibility that lay in my nerves of touch; when my hands held hers I felt as though I were drawing all her life ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... tangible excitement, for that morning saw a modified return to ordinary food, and, in place of bottles of milk, Paul's load consisted of such tempting selections from the school meals as were deemed desirable for the invalids. ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... reformers." Boiled down these words amount to something like this: the proposals must not be new or startling; must not involve any radical disturbance of any respectable person's selfishness; must not call forth any great opposition; must look definite and immediate; must be tangible like a raid, or a jail, or the paper of an ordinance, or a policeman's club. Above all a "reasonable and practical" proposal must not require any imaginative patience. The actual proposals have all these qualities: ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... him dubiously as though he detected a false note somewhere. Good looking young fellows with the tangible air of the towns and easy living did not, as a rule, take kindly to living alone on some mountain peak. He stared up into Jack's face unwinkingly, seeking there the real purpose behind such ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... fiercely and particularly for a supernatural freedom to cure concrete maladies by concrete substances. Hence the scattering of relics was everywhere like the scattering of seed. All who took their mission from the divine tragedy bore tangible fragments which became the germs of churches and cities. St. Joseph carried the cup which held the wine of the Last Supper and the blood of the Crucifixion to that shrine in Avalon which we now call Glastonbury; ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... Sully, built many more of these great lines of communication, and thus gave the first real and tangible aid to the commerce and agriculture of the kingdom. He was something of an aesthetic soul too, this Henri of Bearn, for he was the originator of the scheme to make the great roadways of France tree-shaded boulevards, which in truth is what many of them are to-day. ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... hands, and made a gesture with them, which was the signal for the men to cease rowing. The sounds were now more tangible. Occasionally there were a few raps with a hammer, but the most of them were the orders of the person ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... for Philadelphia have been a dream for many years, and spasmodic efforts have been made from time to time to produce the reality, but as yet nothing tangible has resulted. The idea has been too inchoate to develop much enthusiasm, and year after year our citizens have returned from enjoying the delights of foreign gardens, and mildly wondered, in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... proclivity to asceticism and self-torture is endemic, it was only natural that penance should in very truth seem easier and more satisfactory than this spiritual discipline. It won more respect and doubtless seemed more tangible and definite, more like what the world expected from a holy man. Accordingly we find that efforts were made by Devadatta and others to induce the Buddha to increase the severity of his discipline. But he refused[529]. The more ascetic form of life, which he declined to make obligatory, ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... machine-guns, or howitzers, you have to provide the machinery with which the particular form of war material is to be manufactured, and that you probably have to fashion some extensive structure to house that machinery in. It takes months before any tangible result can be obtained, the number of months to elapse varying according to ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... the past by disowning it; but now, she had voluntarily made it hers. She had wilfully entangled herself in its toils; they seemed to trip her steps, and make her stumble on the stairs as if they were tangible things. She had knowingly suffered such a man as that, whose commonness of soul she had always instinctively felt, to come back into her life, and she could never banish him again. She could never ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... miscalled, the natural in truth, is the real. To me everything is supernatural. How strange that condition of mind which cannot accept anything but the earth, the sea, the tangible universe! Without the misnamed supernatural these to me seem incomplete, unfinished. Without soul all these are dead. Except when I walk by the sea, and my soul is by it, the sea is dead. Those seas by which no man has stood— which no soul has been—whether ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... no tangible thing to hoot he feels, perhaps, the desire to confront a personification and indulge in pleas, bowed to one knee, and with hands supplicant, saying: "Yes, but ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... were invoked with mantras, as explained in a previous note. They were forces which created all sorts of tangible weapons that the invoked desired. Here the Brahma weapon took the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... he could see far away in the broadening path of silvery sheen, a small, dark island; that he should feel it held a mystery; and that some occult influence had linked that uncanny place, in some way not as yet understood, with his own past and future; that it was some link, some tangible spot, some queer connection between dreams and hopes that might develop into ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... A more tangible evidence of good intentions would seem to have been furnished by the admission of negro testimony in the courts of justice, which has been conceded in some of the southern States, at least in point of form. This being a matter of vital interest to the colored man, I inquired into the ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... roads exercise the greatest influence on the location of supports, and a support will generally be placed on or near a road. The section which it is to cover should be clearly defined by means of tangible lines on the ground and should be such that the support ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... had no clear evidence that he was the right man. A mere impression—a feeling of physical repulsion unsupported by any tangible fact—was not enough to act on. One moment a savage impatience for retribution urged me to take the chance; to fell him with a blow and fling him down into the cellar. The next, my reason stepped in and bade ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... this line of feeling I grew more and more in sympathy with my father's dimly expressed hopes to achieve something tangible in the way of interstellar or planetary communication. So that gradually he, by reason of a desire that slowly invaded every emotional recess of his being, and I, through the vagaries of an imaginative mind reached successively an intense conviction ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... equivalent of a philosophy through his faithfulness to a single outlook upon human life and destiny. And in this brief and burning play, more than in much of his later writing, I find the reflection of that unique temperament, to which real things are so abstract, and abstract things so coloured and tangible; a temperament in which there is almost too much poetry for a poet—as pure gold, to be worked in, needs to ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... the business transactions of the year, all the moneys, wages, etc., due the various members for labors performed and services rendered. This, of course, is due to the fact that everything is owned in common by the community: Land, food products, wood, in short, practically all tangible property. ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... ideals that exist in the human heart, but they are none the less real. Indeed, they are in a sense more potent, lying thus in immortal embryo, than they could be as tangible institutions. Institutions are brought into being, perfected, kept past their time of highest usefulness and finally discarded. The hopes of men spring eternally, spontaneously. They are the ...
— The American Empire • Scott Nearing
... matter: he has gained something by the communication. He has heard from his own lips the imaginings of his mind shaped into articulate air; they grew more definite and distinct as he uttered them; they came by the very act to have more of reality, to be more tangible. He shakes off the ill-assorted companion that only encumbered him, and springs away in his race, more light of heart, and with a step more ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... as the eye could see on either hand, had completely cut off all retreat. Steve and his men were standing on a belt of ice that was moving. It was slipping away from the parent body, gliding ponderously almost without tangible motion, down the great glacial slope. They were trapped on the bosom of a glacial field in the titanic throes of its death agony; a melting, groaning mass riding monstrously to its own destruction in those far-off, mist-laden depths ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... full-size drawings of architectural detail, in which sculpture plays a large part. Well, we need as many modellers, who, either in architects' offices, or in stone-cutters' yards and terra-cotta works, shall be putting into tangible form the dreams and thoughts of the designer's brain. "As many," do I say? Once it is found that architectural sculpture can be got promptly and cheaply, and conveniently, it is not 200 modellers only that this big community around ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... whoever it is, Bob," I said; for this seemed to be something, if not tangible, at all ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... brief fiction in other years, and in recalling that he alone is represented in the first three volumes of O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories, the Committee intimated the wish to express in some tangible fashion its appreciation of this author's services to American fiction. On the motion of Doctor Wheeler, therefore, the Committee voted to ask an appropriation from the Society of Arts and Sciences as a prize to be awarded ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... was half succeeding in turning Juliette away from the sight of Candeille, she was not the least surprised or startled at seeing Chauvelin standing in the very doorway through which she had hoped to pass. Once glance at his face had made her fears tangible and real: there was a look of satisfaction and triumph in his pale, narrow eyes, a flash in them of approbation directed at the insolent attitude of the French actress: he looked like the stage-manager of a play, content with the effect his ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... insisting that to make any sort of approach to Lord Derby, after joining Palmerston only the previous year, would be unjustifiable; the bare apprehension of a vicious policy would be no intelligible ground for changing sides; more tangible reasons would be needed, and they were only too likely soon to arrive from Palmerston's foreign policy. Then a reasonable chance might come. Herbert, in his turn, told Mr. Gladstone that though he might infuse vigour and respectability into a party that stood much ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... growing multitude of men scattered over the countryside were busy. In the morning he had still been simply a legend, a terror; in the afternoon, by virtue chiefly of Kemp's drily worded proclamation, he was presented as a tangible antagonist, to be wounded, captured, or overcome, and the countryside began organising itself with inconceivable rapidity. By two o'clock even he might still have removed himself out of the district by getting aboard a train, but after two that became ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... may have to return to this point by and by; but having dealt thus far with our logical methods, I must now turn to something which, perhaps, you may consider more interesting, or, at any rate, more tangible. But in reality there are but few things that can be more important for you to understand than the mental processes and the means by which we obtain scientific conclusions and theories. [Footnote: Those ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... offered a sensible resistance. The Negro then attacked him on the other side, and gave his left arm a particularly disagreeable twist, when Baczko pushed him off again. The Negro continued to visit him constantly during four months, preserving the same appearance, and remaining tangible; then he came seldomer; and, after finally appearing as a brown-coloured apparition with an owl's head, he took ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... worth but little more than the printed title or a catalogue announcement. For all $1.50 novels look alike, are printed on pretty much the same kind of paper, and bear covers differing more in degree than kind. Yet the bookseller likes to handle something tangible when he is making up his order, and the salesman, with even a dummy in his hand, finds that there is less wear and tear upon ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... really you? I have dreamed so often that you had come back to me; and then have waked and seen the outer darkness staring in upon an empty place. How can I know I shall not wake again and find it all a dream? Give me something tangible—tell ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... reticent or hesitant manner. They must be given with enthusiasm and anticipation. If you assiduously follow these instructions, you will derive the benefits you seek in the shortest possible time and witness the positive, tangible results of your suggestions and efforts. In the next chapter, you'll learn how to deepen the ...
— A Practical Guide to Self-Hypnosis • Melvin Powers
... heterogeneous collection, as reminiscences of the places visited in imagination by Kafka, and of the acquisition of which the latter was only assured in his sleeping state. They would constitute a tangible proof of the journey's reality in case the suggestion proved less thoroughly successful than was hoped, and Keyork prided himself upon this ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... the end of the century it assumed in France a very tangible form in the series of mysterious dramas known as the "Affaire des Poisons," of which the first act took place in 1666, when the celebrated Marquise de Brinvilliers embarked on her amazing career of crime in collaboration ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... year the fairest maiden of the Tengger was the chosen victim offered to Siva, who, in his attribute of a Consuming Fire, occupied the volcanic abyss. The worship of the Divine Destroyer has ever been a fruitful source of crime and cruelty, and a tangible atmosphere of evil lingers round those hoary temples of India dedicated to the Avenging Deity, whose fanatical followers are reckoned by millions. Through the inversion of creed peculiar to Hindu Pantheism, the propitiation of Divine wrath has become the fundamental principle of ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... of the Rochester convention, the Paris International Congress opened it sessions, sending us a telegram of greeting to which we responded with two hundred and fifty francs as a tangible evidence of our best wishes. The two remarkable features of that congress were the promise of so distinguished a man as Victor Hugo to preside over its deliberations, though at last prevented by illness; and the fact that the Italian government sent Mlle. Mozzoni as an official ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the tangible definite today, calls it nothing, and accepts the intangible unknown eternity ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... person, and lived with them, and took immediate charge of everything. He had promised Moses, their leader, that He would do this. Just how definite or indefinite a thing that meant to Moses' mind we cannot know. But it became very definite and tangible that memorable night of departure from the iron furnace of Egypt. For there was a real physical evidence of His presence. There appeared a column or pillar of fleecy-like cloud which came down close to the ground, and which every one could plainly see. At night time it shone ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... them to be saying, "He has got hold of our language now." Then they told me their name for the thing which I had pointed to. I found that they understood my question, What is this? or, What is that? and that I could now get from them the name of every visible or tangible thing around us! We carefully noted down every name they gave us, spelling all phonetically, and also every strange sound we heard from them; thereafter, by painstaking comparison of different circumstances, we tried to ascertain their meanings, testing our own guess by again cross-questioning ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... offend the susceptibilities of Society; do not offend the susceptibilities of the Church. To avoid offending these is worth the sacrifice of any private feelings. The advantages of the stable home are visible, tangible, so many pieces of property; there is no risk in the statu quo. To break up a home is at the best a dangerous experiment, and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... people. If any link were wanting to connect the two kinds of expulsion, it would be furnished by such a practice as that of sending the evils away in a litter or a boat. For here, on the one hand, the evils are invisible and intangible; and, on the other hand, there is a visible and tangible vehicle to convey them away. And a scapegoat is nothing ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... which causes the difficulty. It is not only a system of Thought based upon a conception of the Unity of Being, but it claims to follow out this conception to its legitimate consequences in the production of visible and tangible external results by the mere exercise of Thought-power. A ridiculous claim, a claim not to be tolerated by common sense, a trespassing upon the Divine prerogative, a claim of unparalleled audacity: thus the casual objector. But this claim is not ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... depend upon their being taken as separate things, is to be expressed. For example, to get the expression of the action of a woman pouring water into a jug, it is necessary that we feel the shape and color of the latter as aspects of a tangible reality having a distinct purpose, that of holding water; and this purposefulness makes of the object a separate, individual thing. Yet a too great distinction of objects and a too great elaboration of detail, as in Meissonier ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... illness. He flung his cloak hastily from his shoulders and shouted to his coachman in an unnatural voice, "Home at full speed!" The coachman, hearing the tone which is generally employed at critical moments and even accompanied by something much more tangible, drew his head down between his shoulders in case of an emergency, flourished his whip, and flew on like an arrow. In a little more than six minutes the prominent personage was at the entrance of his own house. Pale, thoroughly scared, and cloakless, he went home instead ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... some of them, coming from loving relatives of those who have suffered from hysteria, have been couched in such earnest and pathetic words that they could not be left unanswered, and this has caused me great inconvenience. I have therefore determined to give the reader some tangible data upon this subject. The extract from the Daily Telegraph which appears on page 465 is a real extract, and records a real case of transmission of hysteria. Upon the same subject I take the following admirable remarks from an article in the Quarterly Review for July 1890, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... fear which arise spontaneously in presence of the vastness, and grandeur, and magnificence of the universe, and of the power and glory of which the created universe is but the symbol and shadow. There is the felt apprehension that, beyond and back of the visible and the tangible, there is a personal, living Power, which is the foundation of all, and which fashions all, and fills all with its light and life; that "the universe is the living vesture in which the Invisible has robed his mysterious loveliness." There is the feeling of an overshadowing Presence ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... to undertake future actions, particularly in the areas of improving victim protection and assistance; while the government elevated anti-trafficking responsibilities to the ministerial level, adopted a new National Action Plan, and drafted a National Referral Mechanism, it has yet to show tangible progress in identifying and protecting victims or in tackling trafficking complicity of government officials; the Armenian Government made some notable improvements in its anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts, but it failed to demonstrate evidence of ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... to discard a rich lover in the abstract. But presented in this concrete and individual way the case was different. She was a little dazzled at the brightness of Phillida's worldly prospects, now that they were no longer merely rhetorical, but real, tangible, and, in ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... moment seemed to have come to Hazel Rath as she stood looking at Merrington, who sat in an easy chair on the other side of the table confronting her with the tangible perception of his massive presence, reinforced by the weight of an authority which, if not so perceptible, was sufficiently apparent in the stolid blue back of a policeman on duty outside the glass door, and in the barred windows of the little room to which she ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... lack of food, but that he should be destroyed violently before starvation had exhausted the last particle of the endeavor in him that made toward surviving. There were the wolves. Back and forth across the desolation drifted their howls, weaving the very air into a fabric of menace that was so tangible that he found himself, arms in the air, pressing it back from him as it might be the ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... matters of sensation and volition. If it is to play upon our emotions, it must revive sensations and volitions, make us in some degree part of the action. Experience is at once its warp and woof, but while it gives us new experiences, it must, in connection with them, revive old ones and so become tangible and real ...
— The Writing of the Short Story • Lewis Worthington Smith
... is a certain light within the consciousness, to everyone of us. The Greeks added something to the wealth of the human spirit, which we all may share in, and do. An atmosphere is left, which surrounds and adheres to the many tangible memorials; just as an atmosphere is left by the glories of the Cinquecento in Italy, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... it falls! Gentle is too rough a word for the motion. It floats, a crystal cob-web shot with the glint of sun-jewels; tangible but melting to your touch, evanescent and translucent as light; conceived of the wind that bloweth where it listeth and the gossamer clouds of a ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... Tim must have labored to sew that red circle, how John Jacob toiled over that weaving-mat, and Elsa carefully folded the drove of little pigs. Everybody thought of her, and all the "chilluns" helped, and how dear is the tangible outcome of the thoughts ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... of duty. And blessed as he was with a lively nature, he proceeded happily upon his path in life, notwithstanding a certain ticklish sense of being shot at undesirably. This had befallen him now so often, without producing any tangible effect, that a great many people, and especially the shooters (convinced of the accuracy of their aim), went far to believe that he possessed some charm against wholesome bullet and gunpowder. And lately even a crooked sixpence dipped in holy water (which ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... advocates, whether subsidised or not. "War is Bloodier than Peace." This would doubtless be conceded without argument, but also without prejudice. Hitherto the pacifists' quest of a basis for enduring peace, it must be admitted, has brought home nothing tangible—with the qualification, of course, that the subsidised pacifists have come in for the subsidy. So that, after searching the recesses of their imagination, able-bodied pacifists whose loquacity has never been at ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... have a History, no History seems to be discoverable; or only such as men give of mountain rocks and antediluvian ruins: That they may have been created by unknown agencies, are in a state of gradual decay, and for the present reflect light and resist pressure; that is, are visible and tangible objects in this phantasm world, where so much ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... past they turn to the future. Ah! at the close of the last century, the future seemed a thing tangible,—it was woven up in all men's fears ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... seek to enter the so-called open doors, but we never find they are so very wide open when it is known that we bring nothing tangible with us. Spiritual things are not considered anything by most. Still, work among such is infinitely easier, and many, ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... those delicate weights and measures that go to estimating the least tangible things in personality, to note how his action seemed not only to dim her vividness but actually to efface the girl. In the first moments she herself accepted it at that. Her looks said: He is not aware of me ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... words heard with seen, tangible objects on the one hand, and, on the other hand, with definite co-ordinated muscular movements, have become considerably more numerous. Thus the following are already correctly distinguished, being very rarely confounded: Uhr (clock), Ohr (ear); Schuh (shoe), Stuhl (chair), ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... of the term "substance" itself. We must not regard it as a quality, but as a sentiment:—it is the perception, in thinking beings, of the adaptation of matter to their organization. There are many things on the Earth, which would be nihility to the inhabitants of Venus—many things visible and tangible in Venus, which we could not be brought to appreciate as existing at all. But to the inorganic beings—to the angels—the whole of the unparticled matter is substance—that is to say, the whole of what we term "space" is to them the truest substantiality;—the stars, meantime, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... "interference with what exclusively belonged to the States;" that perhaps it was unconstitutional; that it would involve an "immense outlay," beyond what the finances could bear; that it was "the annunciation of a sentiment" rather than a "tangible proposition;" they added that the sole purpose of the war must be "restoring the Constitution to its legitimate authority." Seven others of the President's auditors said politely, but very vaguely, that they would "ask the people of the Border States calmly, deliberately, and fairly to ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... together. A common interest, consciously cast into oblivion, but perfectly tangible and not to be denied, was the unspoken passport in ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... did not arise. It is true, the enemy were driven from their strongly fortified position, and for more than a mile to the rear, still the fruits of the victory were swallowed up in the loss of so many good men, with no tangible or lasting results. From all the facts known at the time, and those developed since, it is the opinion that upon G.W. Smith rested the blame for the loss of the day. Had he been as active or energetic as the other Major ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... knowledge of the world unseen, but often felt and recognized, spiritual life, filling all the spaces which seem to the earth-dimmed senses dull and void. There is no death, no vacancy in this realm of nature, any more than in that other, more tangible one, the outgrowth and the necessity of this great storm-tossed planet. But all the expressions of life in this sphere are different from those to which our material senses are accustomed, and require the action of another, ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... Him when the sun is shining. But let some things arise which irritate and rasp and fret us, and we soon find whether we have real trust or not. And so the things of everyday life are tests of our real faith in God, and He often puts us where we have to trust for tangible matters—for money and rent, and food and clothes. If you are not trusting here wholly, when you are placed in such tests you will break down. Are you trusting God for everything through the six ordinary ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... and address the graduating class in the high school—the high school I attended as a boy. And I am "Exhibit A"—the tangible personification of all that the fathers and mothers hope their children will become. It is the same way with the Faculty of my college. They have given me an honorary degree and I have given them a drinking fountain for the campus. We are ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... toward evening the great range, which had been visible for hours in the westward vista, began to define itself in peaks and high, bald shoulderings of wind-swept mesas. Here was something definite and tangible for the stirring underman to lay hold upon. Blount, the sober-minded, the self-contained, found a curious transformation working itself out in quickened pulses and exhilarating nerve-tinglings. Boston, the Law School, the East of the narrow walk-ways and the still narrower rut of custom and ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... which plainly showed the results of having lived a life of hardship, and almost unrecognizable as my own face. My heavy black mustache was gone, and in its place nothing but white stubble remained. The more I endeavored to reach some tangible solution of the mystery, the more confused I became. According to the girl, Arletta's story, I had been introduced to her at a reception in Paris three years previously, had apparently fallen desperately in love with her, and made myself obnoxious by following ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... despair flashed into rage; I leapt erect, and cried: "Could I but grasp my life as sculptors grasp the clay And knead and thrust it into shape again!— If all the scorn of Heaven were but thrown Into the focus of some creature I could clutch!— If something tangible were but vouchsafed me By the cold, far gods!— If they but sent a Reason for the failure of my life I'd answer it; If they but sent ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... and before us. The President has clone many, very many, censurable acts: but I could not, on my conscience. say that he should be holden to answer upon a charge of "high crimes and misdemeanors" until something could be made tangible whereby ha had brought himself in open conflict with the Constitution and ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... of the very fitness that was in this youth to enjoy this world, so much the less chance was thereof his being fit for any other world. What could it do for him there,—this beautiful grace and elegance of feature,—where there was no form, nothing tangible nor visible? what good that readiness and aptness for associating with all created things, doing his part, acting, enjoying, when, under the changed conditions of another state of being, all this adaptedness would fail? ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lilt, a go, a flourish. To employ a vulgarism of the hour, it had the punch. It landed you and between the eyes. It required neither commentaries nor explanation. It was all there. It was tangible as a ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... That was something tangible; and gradually feeling his way along this he came to an angle in the wall, starting off in ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... in art the principles of representation of the beautiful and of imitation. Karl Groos, of Giessen, refutes Darwin's hypothesis, and upholds the principle of the representation of self by sensations which relate to the subject, thus giving a tangible object to corresponding internal emotions (among animals, for example, the pleasure of hearing ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... All things material and tangible have their bases and starting points, so too, had the Southern Rebellion its foundation stone laid deep and solid in the minds of the people by John C. Calhoun, the first great Supreme Commander of the germ from whence sprung the various elements of treason, which have entered into the composition ...
— The Great North-Western Conspiracy In All Its Startling Details • I. Windslow Ayer
... what the stockman had in mind. These things mentioned by Bluff could never have happened without leaving some tangible traces behind. Where a big elk had been slain there must be signs of the blood ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... He arose and stretched his short huge bulk. "This is something like it. We now have something tangible, something definite. It was the damnable inaction that was beginning to get on my nerves. I'm going to use your ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... gem which the saint had carried in his ear an actual and tangible proof of the treasure he was seeking? Had the saint actually seen and touched the wealth of gold and the jewels which Akhnaton's hands had hidden in the hills near his tomb? Others besides Michael, students of Egyptology, had treasured ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... a very disobliging old Echo who refuses to repeat anything more than twice. What a magic there is in hands—in some hands! Lynde could have held Mrs. Denham's hand a fortnight without getting anything so tangible as that ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Kelley was zealous and untiring in its behalf. That the founders did not deny their parenthood was enough for him; he returned to his home with high hopes for the future. With the aid of his niece he carried on an indefatigable correspondence which soon brought tangible returns. In October, 1870, Kelley moved his headquarters to Washington. By the end of the year the Order had penetrated nine States of the Union, and correspondence looking to its establishment in seven more States was well under way. Though Granges had been planted ...
— The Agrarian Crusade - A Chronicle of the Farmer in Politics • Solon J. Buck
... fell upon our ears like a thunderbolt. A dozen different ideas coursed through my brain, yet I was too much bowed down with grief to attempt to form them into tangible shapes. And even while I was thinking what would become of the store and contents during our imprisonment, Mr. Brown broke the ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... to give great reason to fear that I had been suddenly deprived of all godliness and grace; who had caused the brethren great pain; and whom recent circumstances had especially rendered an object of suspicion and alarm. There was much more to the same effect. There was no distinct charge—nothing tangible, or of which I could defy them to the proof. All was dark doubt and murderous innuendo. There was nothing for which I could claim relief from the laws of my country—more than enough to complete my ruin. I burned with anger and indignation; forgot every ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... himself on guard in a way that gained him an advantage. Experts in the art of killing, know that, of two antagonists, the ablest takes the "inside of the pavement,"—to use an expression which gives the reader a tangible idea of the effect of a good guard. That pose, which is in some degree observant, marks so plainly a duellist of the first rank that a feeling of inferiority came into Max's soul, and produced the same disarray of powers which demoralizes a gambler ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... a prime minister could do all things, sent an actual offer of L2000 to him for a place in the Customs, on which he happened to set his heart. Unluckily for the applicant, he was a century too late. However those matters might have been managed a hundred years ago, less tangible means than money now rule the world. Besides, no man who knew any thing of Addington, ever attached a suspicion of the kind to him. Erskine made a speech in the defence, the best that could be made on such a subject, but not the most ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Washington Hawkins, Squire Clemens the judge, while Mark Twain's own personality, in a greater or lesser degree, is reflected in most of his creations. As for the Tennessee land, so long a will-o'the-wisp and a bugbear, it became tangible property at last. Only a year or two before Clemens had written ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... experience—were Democratic axioms. Thus the fathers of Democracy, while fully conceiving the imperfections of government and meeting as events required the need alike of movement and reform, put the visionary and experimental behind them to aim at things visible, attainable, tangible, the written Constitution the one safe precedent, the morning star and the evening star ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... last I fairly got started at my building I was in a still more cheerful mood—there being such a sense of definite accomplishment as I set each piece in its place, and such a comfort in the tangible advance that I was making, that half the time I was singing as I made my bolts and rivets fast. But for all my cheerfulness I had a plenty of trouble over what I was doing; and I was sorry enough that I had not somebody ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... philosophy a little further, and say to ourselves, it were well in such quarrels if Fate were something tangible, to be despatched with a look or a blow, or a speaking personage with whom high words were possible; then the unhappy mortal would not always end the affair ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... easily. Let me tell you one of the hard thoughts I have in my mind—one of the things that has tortured me. I have fancied—I may be wrong—but I have fancied that during the last few months you have been slipping away from me. I have felt it, somehow. There has been nothing tangible, and yet I have felt it. Answer me, honestly. Is this true? Is what I have told you, after all, ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... support, and because an open break with Wilson would weaken their own position with liberals in France and England. But now it became apparent to them that Wilson's position at home was so unstable that they might be justified in adopting a stronger tone. Each of them could point to the tangible evidence of victorious elections and votes of confidence. President Wilson could not. The party in the Senate which, after the 4th of March, would hold the majority, expressly repudiated Wilson's policy. When the President ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... like that of most of our North American tribes, is zootheism or animal worship, with the survival of that earlier stage designated by Powell as hecastotheism, or the worship of all things tangible, and the beginnings of a higher system in which the elements and the great powers of nature are deified. Their pantheon includes gods in the heaven above, on the earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth, but of these ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... observed the pilgrims by themselves, in loneliness, in obscurity, in the hidden life and experience of the people of God. The allegory thus far has been that of the soul, amidst its spiritual enemies, toiling towards Heaven; now there comes a scene more open, tangible, external; the allurements of the world are to be presented, with the manner in which the true pilgrim conducts himself amidst them. It was necessary that Bunyan should show his pilgrimage in its ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... portentous Shape the sight amazed; Each object plain, and tangible, and valid; But from their tarnish'd frames dark Figures gazed, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... the new age was, therefore, one of reform, not of revolution. It called for no evolutionary or utopian experiments, but for the steady and progressive enactment of measures aimed at admitted abuses and designed to accomplish tangible results in ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... worthless. The mighty power plants on Venus and Mercury were idle. The only remaining tangible asset were the fleets of spaceships used less than a month before to ship the accumulators to the outer worlds, to bring them Sunward ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak
... the politics of vastly the greater number of Americans are so. Nothing else would account for the fact that during the last ten or fifteen years men have remained Republicans and remained Democrats upon no tangible issues except of office, which could practically concern only a few hundreds or thousands out of every million voters. Party fealty is praised as a virtue, and disloyalty to party is treated as a species of incivism ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... bequeath their spirit, notably those who have loved delightful themes and easy melodies. The poets are read for ever; but those who resemble her do more, for they grow out upon the centuries—they themselves and not their arts continue. There is stuff in their legend. They are a tangible inheritance for the hurrying ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... it had not been for the very tangible loss of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, the little community at Bright's Cove might almost have come to doubt the evidence of their senses and the accuracy of their memories, so fantastic on ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... intercourse, we formed a strong contrast to each other. I always required the stimulants of companionship and applause. Perdita was all-sufficient to herself. Notwithstanding my lawless habits, my disposition was sociable, hers recluse. My life was spent among tangible realities, hers was a dream. I might be said even to love my enemies, since by exciting me they in a sort bestowed happiness upon me; Perdita almost disliked her friends, for they interfered with her visionary moods. All my feelings, even of exultation and ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... the, to it, obnoxious incidents of freedom. Southern men seem never to have thought of this. Doubtless, as emancipation in any style would have afflicted it, the South could not but account all incitements thereto as hardships; but the North must have suffered hardships, if less gross and tangible, yet more real and galling, had it acceded to southern wishes touching liberty of person, speech, and the press. That at the North which offended the South was of the very soul and essence of free government; that at the South which aggrieved ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... coffee we sat down to watch the amusing by-play and repartee going on around us. Those who by virtue of their friendship with the khanji were admitted to the room with us began a tirade against the boyish curiosity of their less fortunate brethren on the outside. Their own curiosity assumed tangible shape. Our clothing, and even our hair and faces, were critically examined. When we attempted to jot down the day's events in our note-books they crowded closer than ever. Our fountain-pen was an additional puzzle to them. It was passed around, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... with remarkable rapidity. During one of those friendly talks over the Mount Music library fire, that had latterly been recurring with increasing frequency, an opportunity had risen for the Doctor—"a warm man," as has been said—to offer to the Major a tangible proof ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... But if you have ever in your life had one opportunity with your eyes and heart open, of seeing the dew rise from a hill-pasture, or the storm gather on a sea-cliff, and if you have yet no feeling for the glorious passages of mingled earth and heaven which Turner calls up before you into breathing, tangible being, there is indeed no hope for your apathy—art will never touch you, ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... I said firmly, "so please don't try to dissuade me. I have been feeling quite uncomfortable at the thought that, all the time I have been in your employ, I seem to have done nothing but idle about and amuse myself. The opportunity of doing something tangible for my wage is too precious to be allowed ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... talk together seriously," said Bonaparte. "You have spoken of conspiracies; you assert that they exist, but do not forget that you have promised me tangible proofs—understand me well, tangible proofs; that is, it is not enough for me to see the papers and the lists of conspirators who have escaped into foreign lands—I want persons, men of flesh and blood—traitors whom I may ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... ideal, Something is left of you, Present, perceptible, real, Palpable, tangible, true; One shred of your broken necklace, One tress of your pale, gold hair, And a heart so utterly reckless, That the worst ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... his chief characteristics. Moreover, he could tell a good story, and sing a good song in a fine bass voice. Still further, although these gallant cow-boys felt intensely jealous of this newcomer, they could not but admit that they had nothing tangible to go upon, for the sailor did not apparently pay any pointed attention to Mary, and she certainly gave ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... wrought by the peaceful under-current of science; why is it that those who occupy the highest place as permanent benefactors of mankind, are, during their lifetime, neglected and comparatively unknown;—that they obtain neither the tangible advantages of pecuniary emolument, nor the more suitable, but less lucrative, honours of grateful homage? It is the common cry to exclaim against the neglect of science in the present day. Alas! history does not show us that our predecessors ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... vague uneasiness in my mind which causes a cold shiver to run all over me. I look round, and of course nothing is to be seen, and I wish there were something there, no matter what, as long as it were something tangible: I am frightened, merely because I cannot understand ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... knowing how to grasp my own meaning, and give it a tangible shape in words; and yet it is concerning this very expression of our thoughts in words that I wish to speak. As I muse things fall more into their proper places, and, little fit for the task as my ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... tangible evidence of intimacy on the part of the United States with the Hawaiian Islands, Webster in 1842 brought them within the scope of the Monroe Doctrine by declaring that European powers must not interfere with their government. Marcy, Secretary of State, framed a treaty of annexation in ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... to interest, directly or indirectly, several thousand electors in his success. Moreover, political parties in the United States, as well as elsewhere, are led to rally around an individual, in order to acquire a more tangible shape in the eyes of the crowd, and the name of the candidate for the presidency is put forth as the symbol and personification of their theories. For these reasons parties are strongly interested in gaining the election, not so much ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... was something tangible in the way of escape, and he eagerly began to tear away the decayed wood, laying the pieces gently on the flooring, until there was an aperture sufficiently large to admit ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... angry and walked up and down, and clenched my hands and babbled helplessly. The boats on the river were yellow, horizontal streaks through my tears, and an early searchlight sent its shaft like a tangible thing in the darkness, just over my head. Then, finally, I curled down in a corner with my arms on the parapet, and the lights became more and more prismatic and finally formed themselves into a circle that was Bella's bracelet, and that kept whirling ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... gave the development of our ideas concerning the ether quite a peculiar and unexpected turn. For Maxwell himself the ether indeed still had properties which were purely mechanical, although of a much more complicated kind than the mechanical properties of tangible solid bodies. But neither Maxwell nor his followers succeeded in elaborating a mechanical model for the ether which might furnish a satisfactory mechanical interpretation of Maxwell's laws of the electro-magnetic field. The laws were clear and simple, the ...
— Sidelights on Relativity • Albert Einstein
... it put a thrill of exultation in work, of delight in victory, or of grief at loss by death, into some rhythmic form tangible to the senses. There grew up thereafter a body of rhythmic forms—lines, stanzas, accents, rhythms, verbal harmonies. These forms are the outward dress of poetry, and may rightly be the first subject of the student's study. We properly give ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... to be silenced, however, in this fashion. I had yet something to say, and I would say it. It was to this effect: that dreams were not usually productive of tangible results, and that I requested to know in what way the chairman conceived I had evolved from my dream so substantial and well-made a delusion as the cigar-case which I had had the honour to place before him at ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... and announced that he was under the impression that, when chilled, she would do nothing of the sort! He had his own ideas regarding the treatment of chills of small, brown women. What would really occur, what the solid, tangible fact of the occasion would be, required no effort to describe. He should merely draw a great easy-chair before the grate. Then some one would be picked up and turned about before the fire until thoroughly warmed and with full circulation of the blood again. She should be simply, ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... barbarian. It looked with contempt on none. Its great organisation was spread by purely voluntary means, till it gained a firm footing throughout the Empire and beyond it. To a large extent it was an association for mutual aid. Wherever anyone was in need, help was at hand. The tangible advantages of belonging to such a guild were so great that the Church had to enforce labour on all who could work, as a condition of sharing in the benefits of membership. Social distinctions, such as those of rich and poor, ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge |
