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Literary notes about Condense (AI summary)

The term "condense" is employed in literature with a rich diversity of meanings, ranging from physical transformation to intellectual compression. In some texts, it signifies a unification or grouping, as when Burgess and Park describe a group collecting itself into unity [1] or when Homer portrays warriors as condensing their powers in anticipation of war [2, 3]. In classical works such as Plato’s Timaeus, condensation plays a role in explaining natural processes—the transformation of elements like fire into air [4]—while Jules Verne and Poe evoke physical change by describing mist condensing into snow [5] or the labor of compressing air to sustain life [6, 7]. Beyond these physical or natural phenomena, authors like Dale Carnegie and Plutarch use the term metaphorically to denote the process of abridging or summarizing ideas [8, 9, 10, 11]. This versatile use underscores how "condense" bridges the tangible and the abstract, serving as a metaphor for both the merging of forces in nature and the distillation of thought in literary expression.
  1. Moreover the opposition to this unified controlling power compels the group to collect itself, to condense itself into unity.
    — from Introduction to the Science of Sociology by E. W. Burgess and Robert Ezra Park
  2. They stand to arms: the Greeks their onset dare, Condense their powers, and wait the coming war.
    — from The Iliad by Homer
  3. They turn, they stand; the Greeks their fury dare, Condense their powers, and wait the growing war.
    — from The Iliad by Homer
  4. On the other hand, when condensed, two volumes of fire make a volume of air; and two and a half parts of air condense into one of water.
    — from Timaeus by Plato
  5. And soon this mist began to condense into snow.
    — from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas: An Underwater Tour of the World by Jules Verne
  6. It now required long and excessive labor to condense within the chamber sufficient atmospheric air for the sustenance of life.
    — from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 1 by Edgar Allan Poe
  7. It now required long and excessive labor to condense within the chamber sufficient atmospheric air for the sustenance of life.
    — from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe
  8. Make your notes as full as you please in preparation, but by all means condense them for platform use.
    — from The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie and J. Berg Esenwein
  9. 53 All that is said here about the milk, the menses, and the blood, I have been obliged somewhat to condense and paraphrase.
    — from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch
  10. 131 Like Reiske we condense here a little.
    — from Plutarch's Morals by Plutarch
  11. But I am compelled, by the fixed period of adjournment (10 a.m. ), to [Pg 252] cut short my argument, as I have been already compelled to condense it.
    — from History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I

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