Friendly denotes goodwill positive in quality though perhaps limited in degree; we may be friendly to friends, enemies, or strangers.

Standing on the threshold of a peace restored, we must pray that out of the epic experience of the great conflict something more than the stern negative of our victory shall be preserved for the time to come, something positive of good, something of that divine light of men's heroic sacrifice which shone out in the darkest hour, something of new strength and understanding of life and of human potentialities.

Both constables gave the same version of the incident, and both were positive as to the time when it occurred.

" "Why are you so positive about that?" "They've much the same as told us.

Whatever there is in you which is better and sweeter than their own ideas and customs will in time be absorbed by the family; for what is good is ever positive to the less good, and has a power of its own to convert; and every human soul, if left free, will eventually choose the good.

The latter, after a short pause, resumed his narrative, though, either from weariness or some other cause, it was observed that his voice was far less positive than before, and that his tale was cut prematurely short.

She was vastly superior to the men who surrounded her, most of whom were pedants, or sophists, or bigots; dignitaries indeed, but men who exalted the accidental and the external over the real and the permanent; men who were fond of quibbles and sophistries, jealous of each other and of their own reputation, dogmatic and positive as priests are apt to be, and most positive on points which either are of no consequence or cannot be solved.

The finding of the box with his name on it seemed to be proof positive against him.

'In this performance Mr. Sprat has given an undeniable proof, that the strength and solidity of an English pen, is infinitely superior to the gallant air of a French author, who is sprightly without propriety, and positive without truth.

The common usage is, to construe the positive with as, the comparative with than, and the superlative with of.

Life and activity mean the triumph of the positive over the negative, a triumph which results from absorbing and assimilating it.

I could not be sure, any more than I could be positive from the half glimpse I got of these lines, which portion had been burned off,the top in which the word train occurred, or the final words, emphasising a time of meeting and my determination to marry no one but the person addressed.

It is the positive by which a man shall live.

That boy shows a[n] for horses, and a positive for dogs.

Only where conflicts are adjusted, oppositions overcome, negations removed, is there advance, in Hegel's sense; and only where there is a passage from the positive through its challenging negative to a higher form inclusive of both is there a case of real development.