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  • The famous blink ascribed to Kennedy's steady nerves was, as in many such events throughout history, facilitated by his ability to see the other man's cards.†   (source)
  • Until that day they had never given a name to the eccentricities of their youngest daughter, nor had it ever crossed their minds to ascribe them to satanic influence.†   (source)
  • Does not the great and holy Rabbi Yochanan son of Zakkai teach us, 'If thou hast learnt much Torah, ascribe not any merit to thyself, for thereunto wast thou created'?†   (source)
  • …read in the Evening Post of March 30: To the wisdom, firmness, intrepidity, and military abilities of our admirable and beloved general, his Excellency George Washington, Esq.; to the assiduity, skill, and bravery of our other worthy generals and officers of the army; and to the hardiness and gallantry of the soldiery, is to be ascribed, under God, the glory and success of our arms, in driving from one of the strongest holds in America, so considerable a part of the British army.†   (source)
  • I ascribed it to your annoyance with other people's points of view that interfered with your conclusions.†   (source)
  • To him ascribe all sin.†   (source)
  • I've heard many characteristics ascribed to him, but 'pliable' has never been one of them.†   (source)
  • Certainly those cultures still ascribe to the practice of slaveholding.†   (source)
  • I think of them most warmly, as I do my natural parents, but to neither would I ascribe the business of having reared me, for it seems clear that it was the purposeful society that did so, and really nothing and no one else.†   (source)
  • Specific provisions, although not useless, have less virtue than commonly ascribed to them.†   (source)
  • The rest I ascribe to chaos theory.†   (source)
  • No real revelation in all this: in modern times most of the mischief ascribed to the military has been wrought with the advice and consent of civil authority.†   (source)
  • The pain in his stomach he ascribed to a halibut chowder his wife had given him for supper the night before.†   (source)
  • They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the "blaze of passion" often falsely ascribed to love.†   (source)
  • He then takes from his pocket a pair o f spectacles and from the basket a book) COMMON MAN (Reading) "Whether we follow tradition in ascribing Wolsey's death to a broken heart, or accept Professor Larcomb's less feeling diagnosis of pulmonary pneumonia, its effective cause was the King's displeasure.†   (source)
  • The Greeks also believed that sickness could be ascribed to divine intervention.†   (source)
  • The editorial and the subsequent weekly essays that Owen published in The Grave were ascribed not to Owen Meany by name, but to "The Voice"; and the text was printed in uniform upper-case letters.†   (source)
  • "O.C. Bible: "Any sin can be ascribed, at least in part, to a natural bad tendency that is an extenuating circumstance acceptable to God."†   (source)
  • The return of House Harkonnen to power generally is ascribed to adroit manipulation of the whale fur market and later consolidation with melange wealth from Arrakis.†   (source)
  • Even the roaches in the kitchen were not there out of any dirtiness that could be ascribed to Hester; and although she appeared to know a lot of guys, not one of them ever returned to the apartment and spent the night with her.†   (source)
  • We cannot be certain that the "historical" Jesus actually spoke the words that Matthew or Luke ascribed to him.†   (source)
  • But in several other versions of the totem ascribed to Watahantowet, the figure has a tomahawk in its mouth and looks completely crazy—or else, he is making a gesture toward peace: no arms, tomahawk in mouth; together, perhaps, they are meant to signify that Watahantowet does not fight.†   (source)
  • 'He's ascribed that failure to the Russian penchant for corruption and mindless conformity in the higher ranks, and alcohol in the lower ones.†   (source)
  • Yet, as his departure will mark the moment when the difficulties begin to work, you will see, that they will be ascribed to the new administration.†   (source)
  • Multiple killings are ascribed to him, if Only to distance the real killers from the scenes — conspirators from the politically fanatic right and left using Bourne's lethal image as their own.†   (source)
  • A year ago, he would have told himself that this was her way of making amends; he would have choked his revulsion against her words, words which conveyed nothing to him but the fog of the meaningless; he would have violated his mind to give them meaning, even if he did not understand; he would have ascribed to her the virtue of sincerity in her own terms, even if they were not his.†   (source)
  • My wife could never understand these gloomy moods of mine and ascribed them to some annoyance connected with my work.†   (source)
  • He was mystery to the boys, and his word, his law, was carried down by Lee, who naturally made it up himself and ascribed it to Adam.†   (source)
  • When her husband's disposition began to disintegrate, causing him to be restless and snappish, to sit staring and then to rush out of the house in a nervous rage, she ascribed it first to his stomach and then to business reverses.†   (source)
  • Why is it every time there's a killing of consequence, we ascribe it to Cain?†   (source)
  • I did not ascribe any intentions to these men.†   (source)
  • He said something happily, again in sounds she could not ascribe meanings to.†   (source)
  • Look at you—you never even believed in G-G-G-God; you've said so, and here you are ascribing to the h-h-h-hand of God everything that happened to Owen M-M-M-Meany!"†   (source)
  • 11 — ASCRIBE ALL SIN.†   (source)
  • He seemed to want her to consider him great, but never dare ascribe any specific content to his greatness.†   (source)
  • In your words, Mr Undersecretary, the People's Republic is a suspicious turbulent nation — and if I may add a few of my own from those accomplishments you ascribe to me — a government quick to become paranoid, obsessed with betrayal both from within and without.†   (source)
  • The newspapers, like puppets on tangled strings, were shouting with the same belligerence and on the same dates: "It is social treason to ascribe too much importance to Hank Rearden's desertion and to undermine public morale by the old-fashioned belief that an individual can be of any significance to society.†   (source)
  • In frustration the organizer roared a series of profanities, ascribing incredible stupidity to everyone but himself.†   (source)
  • No matter what unintelligible causes he ascribes to his incommunicable feelings, whoever rejects reality rejects existence-and the feelings that move him from then on are hatred for all the values of man's life, and lust for all the evils that destroy it, A mystic relishes the spectacle of suffering, of poverty, subservience and terror; these give him a feeling of triumph, a proof of the defeat of rational reality.†   (source)
  • Anything large and impressive, if it was reasonably new in appearance, was automatically claimed as having been built since the Revolution, while anything that was obviously of earlier date was ascribed to some dim period called the Middle Ages.†   (source)
  • He deprecated polygamy, but he saw no reason to inveigh against the prevalent fondness for the tangatse berry, to which were ascribed medicinal properties, but which was chiefly popular because its effects were those of a mild narcotic.†   (source)
  • He knew she would not understand how many truly fine things he ascribed to her when he thought of her as gallant.†   (source)
  • The New Frontiers said something about regrettable excesses, but ascribed them to "spontaneous outbursts of justifiable popular anger."†   (source)
  • Mr. Keating, will you state under oath whether you designed the project ascribed to you, known as Cortlandt Homes?†   (source)
  • It was to both their interests, but they ascribed it to a common love for their Redeemer.†   (source)
  • The personal appearance of Eliza, the character ascribed to her, are sketches drawn from life.†   (source)
  • The young man often recalled this impression afterwards, and even ascribed it to presentiment.†   (source)
  • He ascribed his brother's indifference at first to the disparity of their age and education.†   (source)
  • The report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewise popularly ascribed to a kindred cause.†   (source)
  • Not unto me the strength be ascribed; not unto me the wringing of the expiation!'†   (source)
  • They altered the idiom, but they could say whatever they wanted to say quickly; there were none of the babuisms ascribed to them up at the club.†   (source)
  • A stirring noise within its cylinder he ascribed to the unequal cooling of its surface; for at that time it had not occurred to him that it might be hollow.†   (source)
  • …torrent of fair forms," of the "sterile, splendid torture of understanding and loving," of the "moving effigies which ennoble for all time the charming and venerable fronts of our cathedrals"; that he would express a whole system of philosophy, new to me, by the use of marvellous imagery, to the inspiration of which I would naturally have ascribed that sound of harping which began to chime and echo in my ears, an accompaniment to which that imagery added something ethereal and sublime.†   (source)
  • Space, as it rolls and tumbles away between him and his native soil, proves to have powers normally ascribed only to time; from hour to hour, space brings about changes very like those time produces, yet surpassing them in certain ways.†   (source)
  • Freddy Van Osburgh was not to marry Mrs. Hatch; he had been rescued at the eleventh hour—some said by the efforts of Gus Trenor and Rosedale—and despatched to Europe with old Ned Van Alstyne; but the risk he had run would always be ascribed to Miss Bart's connivance, and would somehow serve as a summing-up and corroboration of the vague general distrust of her.†   (source)
  • I promised the Persian to do so as soon as I had time, and I may as well tell the reader at once that the results of my investigation were perfectly satisfactory; and I hardly believed that I should ever discover so many undeniable proofs of the authenticity of the feats ascribed to the ghost.†   (source)
  • He was surprised at himself because he ceased to believe so easily, and, not knowing that he felt as he did on account of the subtle workings of his inmost nature, he ascribed the certainty he had reached to his own cleverness.†   (source)
  • And Dr. Krokowski had spoken about one fungus, famous since classical antiquity for its form and the powers ascribed to it—a morel, its Latin name ending in the adjective impudicus, its form reminiscent of love, and its odor, of death.†   (source)
  • But although he paid due honor to technology and transportation, Hans Castorp's own field of labor—as he had, for instance, on that first day beside the bench up on the slope—he seemed to do so not for the sake of those forces themselves, but rather for their significance in helping humankind reach moral perfection, for, as he explained, he happily ascribed such significance to them.†   (source)
  • When I began to ransack the archives of the National Academy of Music I was at once struck by the surprising coincidences between the phenomena ascribed to the "ghost" and the most extraordinary and fantastic tragedy that ever excited the Paris upper classes; and I soon conceived the idea that this tragedy might reasonably be explained by the phenomena in question.†   (source)
  • We doubt that we bestow on our hero the virtues in which he shines, and afterward worship the form to which we have ascribed this divine inhabitation.†   (source)
  • The Hours did not go through any of those rosy performances, which foolish poets have ascribed to them at such times; neither did the clocks go any faster, or any slower, than at other seasons.†   (source)
  • I then thought that my father would be unjust if he ascribed my neglect to vice or faultiness on my part, but I am now convinced that he was justified in conceiving that I should not be altogether free from blame.†   (source)
  • It is to be ascribed to moral cau—†   (source)
  • And it is for this state of things that we hold responsible that gratuitous mismanagement-wholly apart from the main substantial rights and merits of the question, to which alone it is to be ascribed; and which had its origin in its earlier stages, before the accession of Mr. Calhoun to the department of State.†   (source)
  • At this very table, among Mr. Poyser's men, there is that big Ben Tholoway, a very powerful thresher, but detected more than once in carrying away his master's corn in his pockets—an action which, as Ben was not a philosopher, could hardly be ascribed to absence of mind.†   (source)
  • Catherine had seasons of gloom and silence now and then: they were respected with sympathising silence by her husband, who ascribed them to an alteration in her constitution, produced by her perilous illness; as she was never subject to depression of spirits before.†   (source)
  • One of the Ooryas half apologized for his rudeness overnight, saying that he had never known his mistress of so bland a temper, and he ascribed it to the presence of the strange priest.†   (source)
  • He remembered, moreover, that he was in the house of a Jew, a people who, besides the other unamiable qualities which popular report ascribed to them, were supposed to be profound necromancers and cabalists.†   (source)
  • "Well, strictly speaking, it did," Porfiry observed with noteworthy gravity; "a crime of that nature may be very well ascribed to the influence of environment."†   (source)
  • A thousand times rather would I have confessed myself guilty of the crime ascribed to Justine, but I was absent when it was committed, and such a declaration would have been considered as the ravings of a madman and would not have exculpated her who suffered through me.†   (source)
  • I know the prisoner: the savage, stony heartlessness ascribed to him by the prosecutor is inconsistent with his character.†   (source)
  • His approaching end was not to be ascribed to any positive disease, but had been a gradual and mild decay of the physical powers.†   (source)
  • The Quartermaster was endeavoring to render himself agreeable to Mabel, while our heroine herself, little affected by his assiduities, which she ascribed partly to the habitual gallantry of a soldier, and partly, perhaps, to her own pretty face, was enjoying the peculiarities of a scene and situation which, to her, were full of the charms of novelty.†   (source)
  • "To thyself, fair maid," answered De Bracy, in his former tone—"to thine own charms be ascribed whate'er I have done which passed the respect due to her, whom I have chosen queen of my heart, and lodestar of my eyes."†   (source)
  • Indolent and childish, unsystematic and improvident, it was not to be expected that servants trained under her care should not be so likewise; and she had very justly described to Miss Ophelia the state of confusion she would find in the family, though she had not ascribed it to the proper cause.†   (source)
  • Conversation turning upon whales, the Commodore was pleased to be sceptical touching the amazing strength ascribed to them by the professional gentlemen present.†   (source)
  • The former's agitation, the young man did not fail to attribute to the interest she felt in Hurry, quite as much as to her filial love, while Hetty's apparent indifference was ascribed to that mental darkness which, in a measure, obscured her intellect, and which possibly prevented her from foreseeing all the consequences.†   (source)
  • In a state between sleeping and waking, you noticed her entrance and her actions; but feverish, almost delirious as you were, you ascribed to her a goblin appearance different from her own: the long dishevelled hair, the swelled black face, the exaggerated stature, were figments of imagination; results of nightmare: the spiteful tearing of the veil was real: and it is like her.†   (source)
  • Here was held another short but earnest consultation, during which the horses, to whose panic their owners ascribed their heaviest misfortune, were led from the cover of the woods, and brought to the sheltered spot.†   (source)
  • She ascribed this hostility to the awkward position in which Anna, who had once patronized her, must feel with her now, and she felt sorry for her.†   (source)
  • "Tell me, you did not know of the countess' death when you decided to remain in Moscow?" asked Princess Mary and immediately blushed, noticing that her question, following his mention of freedom, ascribed to his words a meaning he had perhaps not intended.†   (source)
  • This time, I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, and I heard distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard, also, the fir bough repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to the right cause: but it annoyed me so much, that I resolved to silence it, if possible; and, I thought, I rose and endeavoured to unhasp the casement.†   (source)
  • Thus the Greeks called Jupiter,[112] Supreme Mind; but having traditionally ascribed to him many base actions, they involuntarily made amends to reason, by tying up the hands[113] of so bad a god.†   (source)
  • But as if perceiving this stratagem, Moby Dick, with that malicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly transplanted himself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his pleated head lengthwise beneath the boat.†   (source)
  • In order to punish him for a preference which seemed to interfere with his own suit, Athelstane, confident of his strength, and to whom his flatterers, at least, ascribed great skill in arms, had determined not only to deprive the Disinherited Knight of his powerful succour, but, if an opportunity should occur, to make him feel the weight of his battle-axe.†   (source)
  • Later on, after seeing the police captain and the prosecutor, and hearing the details of the charge and the arrest, he was still more surprised at Alyosha, and ascribed his opinion only to his exaggerated brotherly feeling and sympathy with Mitya, of whom Alyosha, as Ivan knew, was very fond.†   (source)
  • But the "humane" Andrey Semyonovitch ascribed Pyotr Petrovitch's ill-humour to his recent breach with Dounia and he was burning with impatience to discourse on that theme.†   (source)
  • "I'll prove to you that your white eyelashes may very well be ascribed to the Church of Ivan the Great's being two hundred and fifty feet high, and I will prove it clearly, exactly, progressively, and even with a Liberal tendency!†   (source)
  • For though the harpooneers, with the great body of the crew, were a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any of the tame merchant-ship companies which my previous experiences had made me acquainted with, still I ascribed this—and rightly ascribed it—to the fierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild Scandinavian vocation in which I had so abandonedly embarked.†   (source)
  • By that her eye was instantly caught and long retained; and the perusal of the highly strained epitaph, in which every virtue was ascribed to her by the inconsolable husband, who must have been in some way or other her destroyer, affected her even to tears.†   (source)
  • While Shakespeare's writings, in the most pathetic scenes, never act upon us as pathetic beyond the bounds of pleasure an effect which, in a much greater degree than might at first be imagined, is to be ascribed to small, but continual and regular impulses of pleasurable surprise from the metrical arrangement.†   (source)
  • Dr. B. visited me, and gave me an account of the pains he had taken to spread a general good liking to the law, and ascribed much to those endeavors.†   (source)
  • …three weeks, was accordingly considered as an excommunicate, and bad so many little pieces of private mischief done me, by mixing my sorts, transposing my pages, breaking my matter, etc., etc., if I were ever so little out of the room, and all ascribed to the chappel ghost, which they said ever haunted those not regularly admitted, that, notwithstanding the master's protection, I found myself oblig'd to comply and pay the money, convinc'd of the folly of being on ill terms with those…†   (source)
  • When we gaze at the magnificence of an ancient monument and ascribe its achievement to one man, we are guilty of spiritual embezzlement.†   (source)
  • However, it is not the narrator's intention to ascribe to these sanitary groups more importance than their due.†   (source)
  • And we are therefore compelled, in order to preserve our belief that we are Christian, to ascribe to Almighty God, Creator of Heaven and Earth, our own human intentions, and to say that because He created white and black, He gives the Divine Approval to any human action that is designed to keep black men from advancement.†   (source)
  • Too often, isolated manifestations of anomaly can be mistaken for a broad popular movement, and one should be careful not to ascribe to them a significance they do not deserve.†   (source)
  • I would stand and say: I am Gail Wynand, the man who has committed every crime except the foremost one: that of ascribing futility to the wonderful fact of existence and seeking justification beyond myself.†   (source)
  • There is nothing wrong in the thoughts I ascribe to Hippolyte; they are only natural.†   (source)
  • They ascribe the known difficulty one people have to understand another to corruptions and dialects.†   (source)
  • "There, you always ascribe base, vile motives to me," she said with tears of wounded pride and fury.†   (source)
  • It was what might be termed a sinewy, knotty strength, of the kind we ascribe to lean and wiry men, but which, in him, because of his heavy build, partook more of the enlarged gorilla order.†   (source)
  • Yes, despite the Dansker's pithy insistence as to the Master-at-arms being at the bottom of these strange experiences of Billy on board the Indomitable, the young sailor was ready to ascribe them to almost anybody but the man who, to use Billy's own expression, "always had a pleasant word for him."†   (source)
  • She doubted Mrs. Van Osburgh's reluctance, but was aware of Miss Farish's habit of ascribing her own delicacies of feeling to the persons least likely to be encumbered by them.†   (source)
  • But people on the stage are not so modest as all that; and I think that I shall not be far from the truth if I ascribe her action simply to fear.†   (source)
  • "Mercy—" moaned Mrs. Archer, evidently perceiving the uselessness of trying to ascribe the actions of foreigners to a sense of delicacy.†   (source)
  • It overshadowed the report of Mrs. Manson Mingott's stroke, and only the few who had heard of the mysterious connection between the two events thought of ascribing old Catherine's illness to anything but the accumulation of flesh and years.†   (source)
  • You say you are surprised at Pavlicheff's action; you ascribe it to madness, to kindness of heart, and what not, but it is not so.†   (source)
  • You ascribe it to Davoust, do you?†   (source)
  • I refuse to make a hierarchy of human actions and ascribe worthiness to some and ill-repute to others.†   (source)
  • New York took stray noblemen calmly, and even (except in the Struthers set) with a certain distrustful hauteur; but when they presented such credentials as these they were received with an old-fashioned cordiality that they would have been greatly mistaken in ascribing solely to their standing in Debrett.†   (source)
  • The nation-state is the principle that guides this world's affairs— though you wish to ascribe that to the Devil.†   (source)
  • It was ascribing to her a power of thought and a mature wisdom which fitted neither with her age nor with her character.†   (source)
  • However, of course you value the memory of the deceased so very highly; and he certainly was the kindest of men; to which fact, by the way, I ascribe, more than to anything else, the success of the abbot in influencing his religious convictions.†   (source)
  • And he spoke of Joachim's general disgust and plans to depart—and made sure to add that one would doubtless be doing the engineer a disservice if one did not ascribe to him the same impatience to return to his work.†   (source)
  • You rear like a frightened colt, because I use a word to which your Christianity ascribes a deprecatory meaning.†   (source)
  • He repeated to himself over and over again that he loathed Mildred, and, ascribing to Griffiths this new disappointment, he hated him so much that he knew what was the delight of murder: he walked about considering what a joy it would be to come upon him on a dark night and stick a knife into his throat, just about the carotid artery, and leave him to die in the street like a dog.†   (source)
  • And yet it would doubtless be— should I ascribe it to the influence, shall we say, to the pedagogic principles of Signor Settembrini that in regard to your own chivalrous impulses, you have—I beg you, please understand me when I say …†   (source)
  • Asceticism was even his basis for reproaching the humanist whenever he trumpeted peace and happiness; Naphta would belligerently accuse him to his face of love of the flesh (amor carnalis) and love of physical comfort{commodorum corporis), call it utter bourgeois irreligion to ascribe the least value to life and health.†   (source)
  • You have constructed a theological theory that ascribes to man an eminently honorable, if perhaps somewhat one-sided religious function.†   (source)
  • It will be said that the narrator is laying it on too thick, being too romantic in associating stupor with demonic forces, even ascribing to it some sort of mystic horror.†   (source)
  • Pleasantly giddy from the odor of plants and the sultry warmth of the shop, which made his eyes water after the cold outdoors, he completed the transaction with a happy, pounding heart, construing his modest effort as bold, adventurous, and helpful, and secretly ascribing symbolic importance to it.†   (source)
  • Nobility was, rather, a certain lofty abundance, generosita, which revealed itself by ascribing to form a human value quite independent of content; the cultivation of public speaking as an art for art's sake, this legacy of Greco-Roman civilization, which humanists, the uomini letterati, had restored for those who spoke Romance languages, for them at least, was the source of every further meaningful idealism, including political idealism.†   (source)
  • If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?†   (source)
  • At first, he did not know whether to ascribe the course they held to accident or to design; but he now began to suspect the latter.†   (source)
  • I would not ascribe vice to him; I would not say he had betrayed me; but the attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea, and from his presence I must go: THAT I perceived well.†   (source)
  • Vera, judging only by her husband and generalizing from that observation, supposed that all men, though they understand nothing and are conceited and selfish, ascribe common sense to themselves alone.†   (source)
  • Philosophy has not yet determined the nature of the power that so often lays desolate spots of this description; some ascribing it to the whirlwinds which produce waterspouts on the ocean, while others again impute it to sudden and violent passages of streams of the electric fluid; but the effects in the woods are familiar to all.†   (source)
  • Such nations assign a different origin to the supreme power, but they ascribe to that power the same characteristics.†   (source)
  • Now that the first flush of his anger had paled he was disinclined to ascribe to her more than an indiscreet friendship with Wildeve, for there had not appeared in her manner the signs of dishonour.†   (source)
  • The peculiar rule, which was called honor by our forefathers, is so far from being an arbitrary law in my eyes, that I would readily engage to ascribe its most incoherent and fantastical injunctions to a small number of fixed and invariable wants inherent in feudal society.†   (source)
  • The profound stillness troubled him also, for he knew not whether to ascribe it to the increasing space between him and the Indians, or to some new artifice.†   (source)
  • They ascribe the glory of that achievement of genius to different men and dispute as to whom the honor is due.†   (source)
  • We should be ascribing too much simplicity of character to our heroine, if we said that she had felt no distrust of the young man in consequence of his arrest; but we should also be doing injustice to her warmth of feeling and generosity of disposition, if we did not add, that this distrust was insignificant and transient.†   (source)
  • It may probably be supposed that the final consequence and necessary effect of democratic institutions is to confound together all the members of the community in private as well as in public life, and to compel them all to live in common; but this would be to ascribe a very coarse and oppressive form to the equality which originates in democracy.†   (source)
  • Really your organs of wonder and credulity are easily excited: you seem, by the importance of you all — my good mama included — ascribe to this matter, absolutely to believe we have a genuine witch in the house, who is in close alliance with the old gentleman.†   (source)
  • Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato,[150] and Milton[151] is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men, but what they thought.†   (source)
  • In less than half an hour the breathing of Esther became so profound, and, as the Doctor himself might have termed it, so very abstracted, that had he not known how easy it was to ascribe this new instance of somnolency to the powerful dose of opium with which he had garnished the brandy, he might have seen reason to distrust his own prescription.†   (source)
  • The physician was at first inclined to ascribe this sudden and violent emotion to the effects of insanity; and, adhering to his original purpose, began once again to handle his implements.†   (source)
  • When we do not at all understand the cause of an action, whether a crime, a good action, or even one that is simply nonmoral, we ascribe a greater amount of freedom to it.†   (source)
  • If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou Just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread…†   (source)
  • —No! if I have sinned in receiving her here, it was in the erring thought that I might thus break off our brother's besotted devotion to this Jewess, which seemed to me so wild and unnatural, that I could not but ascribe it to some touch of insanity, more to be cured by pity than reproof.†   (source)
  • It would seem that not much consideration was needed to reach this conclusion, nor any particular care or trouble on the part of the Emperor and his marshals, nor was there any need of that special and supreme quality called genius that people are so apt to ascribe to Napoleon; yet the historians who described the event later and the men who then surrounded Napoleon, and he himself, thought otherwise.†   (source)
  • Yet as of late the Sperm Whale fishery had been marked by various and not unfrequent instances of great ferocity, cunning, and malice in the monster attacked; therefore it was, that those who by accident ignorantly gave battle to Moby Dick; such hunters, perhaps, for the most part, were content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred, more, as it were, to the perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large, than to the individual cause.†   (source)
  • The accents of an unknown tongue, however harsh they might have sounded when uttered by another, had, coming from the beautiful Rebecca, the romantic and pleasing effect which fancy ascribes to the charms pronounced by some beneficent fairy, unintelligible, indeed, to the ear, but, from the sweetness of utterance, and benignity of aspect, which accompanied them, touching and affecting to the heart.†   (source)
  • This ideal of glory and grandeur—which consists not merely in considering nothing wrong that one does but in priding oneself on every crime one commits, ascribing to it an incomprehensible supernatural significance—that ideal, destined to guide this man and his associates, had scope for its development in Africa.†   (source)
  • That intangible malignity which has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern Christians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of the east reverenced in their statue devil;—Ahab did not fall down and worship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the abhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it.†   (source)
  • …undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honour and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.†   (source)
  • It was in favor of liberty of conscience, and in behalf of the Baptists, Quakers, and other sectaries that had been under persecution, ascribing the Indian wars, and other distresses that had befallen the country, to that persecution, as so many judgments of God to punish so heinous an offense, and exhorting a repeal of those uncharitable laws.†   (source)
  • I had had the vanity to ascribe all to my Dialogue; however, not knowing but that he might be in the right, I let him enjoy his opinion, which I take to be generally the best way in such cases.†   (source)
  • To Temperance he ascribes his long-continued health, and what is still left to him of a good constitution; to Industry and Frugality, the early easiness of his circumstances and acquisition of his fortune, with all that knowledge that enabled him to be a useful citizen, and obtained for him some degree of reputation among the learned; to Sincerity and Justice, the confidence of his country, and the honorable employs it conferred upon him; and to the joint influence of the whole mass of…†   (source)
  • "The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses seat; All therefore whatsoever they bid you doe, that observe and doe;" hee declareth plainly, that hee ascribeth Kingly Power, for that time, not to himselfe, but to them.†   (source)
    standard suffix: Today, the suffix "-th" is replaced by "-s", so that where they said "She ascribeth" in older English, today we say "She ascribes."
  • The collapse which Bloom ascribed to gastric inanition and certain chemical compounds of varying degrees of adulteration and alcoholic strength, accelerated by mental exertion and the velocity of rapid circular motion in a relaxing atmosphere, Stephen attributed to the reapparition of a matutinal cloud (perceived by both from two different points of observation Sandycove and Dublin) at first no bigger than a woman's hand.†   (source)
  • The second he ascribed somewhat lamely to the fact that the letter /r/ is called /ar/, and proposed to dispose of it by changing the /ar/ to /er/.†   (source)
  • / [64] This use of /tenderloin/ is ascribed to Alexander (alias "Clubber") Williams, a New York police captain.†   (source)
  • The American custom of numbering and lettering streets is almost always ascribed by English writers who discuss it, not to a desire to make finding them easy, but to sheer poverty of invention.†   (source)
  • This uniformity was noted by the earliest observers; Pickering called attention to it in the preface to his Vocabulary and ascribed it, no doubt accurately, to the restlessness of the Americans, their inheritance of the immigrant spirit, "the frequent removals of people from one part of our country to another."†   (source)
  • OEDIPUS But for thy prompting never had the seer Ascribed to me the death of Laius.†   (source)
  • [1] An image of Christ upon the cross, ascribed to Nicodemus, still venerated at Lucca.†   (source)
  • 292) ascribed to him by the ancient poets.†   (source)
  • They differ in this: that one thinks the god whom he worships is this Supreme Being, and another thinks that his idol is that god; but they all agree in one principle, that whoever is this Supreme Being, He is also that great essence to whose glory and majesty all honours are ascribed by the consent of all nations.†   (source)
  • But the night before the unhappy day of my departure she wept, she moaned, she sighed, and she withdrew leaving me filled with perplexity and amazement, overwhelmed at the sight of such strange and affecting signs of grief and sorrow in Luscinda; but not to dash my hopes I ascribed it all to the depth of her love for me and the pain that separation gives those who love tenderly.†   (source)
  • The Alexandrian school ascribed to him the mystic learning which it amplified; and the scholars of the Middle Ages regarded with enthusiasm and reverence the works attributed to him — notably a treatise on the philosopher's stone.†   (source)
  • He ascribed the measures which Mr Blifil was desirous to take to Christian motives; "and though," says he, "the good young gentleman hath mentioned charity last, I am almost convinced it is his first and principal consideration."†   (source)
  • Particular provisions, though not altogether useless, have far less virtue and efficacy than are commonly ascribed to them; and the want of them will never be, with men of sound discernment, a decisive objection to any plan which exhibits the leading characters of a good government.†   (source)
  • …the district as they call them, on their way to Seville with some carriers who had chanced to halt that night at the inn; and as, happen what might to our adventurer, everything he saw or imaged seemed to him to be and to happen after the fashion of what he read of, the moment he saw the inn he pictured it to himself as a castle with its four turrets and pinnacles of shining silver, not forgetting the drawbridge and moat and all the belongings usually ascribed to castles of the sort.†   (source)
  • is he that is Represented, as often as hee is Represented; and therefore God, who has been Represented (that is, Personated) thrice, may properly enough be said to be three Persons; though neither the word Person, nor Trinity be ascribed to him in the Bible.†   (source)
  • My master said, "he could never discover the reason of this unnatural appetite, or how these stones could be of any use to a Yahoo; but now he believed it might proceed from the same principle of avarice which I had ascribed to mankind.†   (source)
  • They have also ascribed Divinity, and built Temples to meer Accidents, and Qualities; such as are Time, Night, Day, Peace, Concord, Love, Contention, Vertue, Honour, Health, Rust, Fever, and the like; which when they prayed for, or against, they prayed to, as if there were Ghosts of those names hanging over their heads, and letting fall, or withholding that Good, or Evill, for, or against which they prayed.†   (source)
  • I am put so far down because I was robber of the sacristy with the fair furnishings, and falsely hitherto has it been ascribed to another.†   (source)
  • The disuse of that power for a considerable time past does not affect the reality of its existence; and is to be ascribed wholly to the crown's having found the means of substituting influence to authority, or the art of gaining a majority in one or the other of the two houses, to the necessity of exerting a prerogative which could seldom be exerted without hazarding some degree of national agitation.†   (source)
  • I could not, I confess, help being pleased with what I ascribed to the motive of friendship, though it was carried to an excess, and all excess is faulty and vicious: but in this I made allowance for youth.†   (source)
  • Without interruptions of this kind, the best narrative of plain matter of fact must overpower every reader; for nothing but the ever lasting watchfulness, which Homer has ascribed only to Jove himself, can be proof against a newspaper of many volumes.†   (source)
  • …they seem to amount to the most convincing evidence, that the powers proposed to be lodged in the federal government are as little formidable to those reserved to the individual States, as they are indispensably necessary to accomplish the purposes of the Union; and that all those alarms which have been sounded, of a meditated and consequential annihilation of the State governments, must, on the most favorable interpretation, be ascribed to the chimerical fears of the authors of them.†   (source)
  • And, perhaps, the great honours which those philosophers have ascribed to an empty pocket may be one of the reasons of that high contempt in which they are held in the aforesaid street and chocolate-house.†   (source)
  • …quietly in their beds; if their property has remained safe against the predatory spirit of licentious adventurers; if their maritime towns have not yet been compelled to ransom themselves from the terrors of a conflagration, by yielding to the exactions of daring and sudden invaders, these instances of good fortune are not to be ascribed to the capacity of the existing government for the protection of those from whom it claims allegiance, but to causes that are fugitive and fallacious.†   (source)
  • There is no express delegation of authority to them to use force against delinquent members; and if such a right should be ascribed to the federal head, as resulting from the nature of the social compact between the States, it must be by inference and construction, in the face of that part of the second article, by which it is declared, "that each State shall retain every power, jurisdiction, and right, not EXPRESSLY delegated to the United States in Congress assembled."†   (source)
  • Should the best parts of the story of M. Antoninus be ascribed to Nero, or should the worst incidents of Nero's life be imputed to Antoninus, what would be more shocking to belief than either instance? whereas both these being related of their proper agent, constitute the truly marvellous.†   (source)
  • In my most serious moments he sung and whistled; and whenever I was thoroughly dejected and miserable he was angry, and abused me: for, though he was never pleased with my good-humour, nor ascribed it to my satisfaction in him, yet my low spirits always offended him, and those he imputed to my repentance of having (as he said) married an Irishman.†   (source)
  • This joyful circumstance she ascribed principally to the friendly behaviour of Jones, her whole soul was fired with gratitude towards him, and all her looks, words, and actions, were so busied in expressing it, that her daughter, and even her new son-in-law, were very little objects of her consideration.†   (source)
  • The interval between the delivery of this message, and the arrival of Mr Squeers, was very short; but, before he came, Ralph had suppressed every sign of emotion, and once more regained the hard, immovable, inflexible manner which was habitual to him, and to which, perhaps, was ascribable no small part of the influence which, over many men of no very strong prejudices on the score of morality, he could exert, almost at will.†   (source)
    standard suffix: The suffix "-able" means able to be. This is the same pattern you see in words like breakable, understandable, and comfortable.
  • …treats us to a very scientific account of his experiments in this crow's-nest, with a small compass he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the errors resulting from what is called the "local attraction" of all binnacle magnets; an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in the ship's planks, and in the Glacier's case, perhaps, to there having been so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew; I say, that though the Captain is very discreet and scientific here,…†   (source)
  • Dr. Pound ascribes the vogue of /super-/ to German influences, and is inclined to think that /-dom/ may be helped by the German /-thum/.†   (source)
  • The /Jimson weed/ itself was anything but a [Pg046] novelty, but the pioneers apparently did not recognize it, and so we find them ascribing all sorts of absurd medicinal powers to it, and even Beverley solemnly reporting that "some Soldiers, eating it in a Salad, turn'd natural Fools upon it for several Days."†   (source)
  • 36:3 I will fetch my knowledge from afar, and will ascribe righteousness to my Maker.†   (source)
  • Which else to several spheres thou must ascribe, Moved contrary with thwart obliquities; Or save the sun his labour, and that swift Nocturnal and diurnal rhomb supposed, Invisible else above all stars, the wheel Of day and night; which needs not thy belief, If earth, industrious of herself, fetch day Travelling east, and with her part averse From the sun's beam meet night, her other part Still luminous by his ray.†   (source)
  • For men contend with the living, not with the dead; to these ascribing more than due, that they may obscure the glory of the other.†   (source)
  • To say the truth, every physician almost hath his favourite disease, to which he ascribes all the victories obtained over human nature.†   (source)
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