"Inconsistent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and experienced in Chinese intrigue, but calculated to deter others from entering a field of commerce so hazardous and uncertain. With this British merchant-clique the Manchester party in England sympathized. This at first seemed inconsistent with the principles of that party, which involved free trade with all nations. The system adopted in China, however, was believed by many of the party to work well enough for the trade of Manchester. Many of that school, who did not think so, believed that a Chinese war would ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... United States is disputed. Offenses that may be committed by individuals should not work a forfeiture of the rights of whole communities. The country has returned, or is returning, to a state of peace and industry, and the rebellion is in fact at an end. The measure, therefore, seems to be as inconsistent with the actual condition of the country as it is at variance with the Constitution of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... prejudice and passion, they supplied a pretense for his conduct, but believed that your more unbiased judgment would estimate them at their just value. Perhaps his tale has been different from what I suspect it to be. Listen, then, to my narrative. If there be anything in his story inconsistent with mine, ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... uniform in their character, and from the cradle to the grave prefer the same objects that first awakened their partialities. Other men are inconsistent and given to change, are "every thing by starts, and nothing long." Still it is probable that, in most cases, he who performs an act of benevolence, feels for the time that he has a peculiar delight in contemplating the ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... made to submit the contents of the pamphlet subsequently published by him in the form of a letter to the judge before whom the case was tried.[4] In that pamphlet he argued that Watt's specification had no definite meaning; that it was inconsistent and absurd, and could not possibly be understood; that the proposal to work steam-engines on the principle of condensation was entirely fallacious; that Watt's method of packing the piston was "monstrous stupidity;" that the engines ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... cautious as this was too strikingly inconsistent with Allan's character not to surprise any one who knew him. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... form his will to be a very good and loyal subject to his prince, very affectionate to his person, and very stout in his quarrel; but withal he will cool in him the desire of having any other tie to his service than public duty. Besides several other inconveniences that are inconsistent with the liberty every honest man ought to have, a man's judgment, being bribed and prepossessed by these particular obligations, is either blinded and less free to exercise its function, or is blemished with ingratitude ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... present," interposed Pym, "is not, even if veracious, inconsistent with the lunatico-criminal view of I. Smith, which we have nailed to the mast. Science has long anticipated such a complication. An incurable attraction to a particular type of physical woman is one of the commonest of criminal per-versities, and when not considered narrowly, ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... strangely inconsistent worldly thoughts began to crawl in upon him. He felt he must thrust the unburned pieces of pine-wood closer together, so that they might catch fire and burn and radiate some more heat. It was so dark, too, that he shuddered, and then lay staring at the perpendicular wall beyond the fire—the ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... "Pray cease this trifling; and, if it is not inconsistent with your duty, let me know where I am ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... the lowest of the mammalian tribes seems inconsistent with the place usually accorded to these animals at the head of the entire mammalian series, and opens up the question whether this is a real superiority or whether it depends merely on the obvious relationship to ourselves. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... the common custom for families to absent themselves from public worship in the afternoon, and to stroll about the fields, or ride, or sail, how many parents, do you suppose, would have the dexterity and talent to check all that was inconsistent with the duties of the day? Is it not your ready command of language, your uncommon tact in simplifying and illustrating, your knowledge of natural history and of biblical literature, that enable you to accomplish the results that you do? And is there one parent in a hundred that could do the ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... a strong idea that the coffin he had seen was running after him; and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt upright, upon its narrow end, always on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his side—perhaps taking his arm—it was a pursuer to shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it was making the whole night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them like a dropsical boy's-Kite ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... of religion and the uniting force of the civil law, was suspected to have designed the overthrow of both. This latter would not regulate himself by the public ordinances, because, he said, all civil obedience was inconsistent with his conscience. Thus three of us, namely, a project-maker, a metaphysician, and a fanatic, were, on the first day of the Birch month, ...
— Niels Klim's journey under the ground • Baron Ludvig Holberg
... have been corrected without note. Superscript text is preceded by the ^ character. Variant spellings, including the inconsistent spelling of proper nouns, remain as printed. Spelling errors in quotations have been retained, despite the generally poor ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... where the manners and customs are widely different from our own. It is necessary to explain this at the beginning, because the reader will meet with incidents in the narrative which would otherwise seem strange and inconsistent. Two lessons which the story teaches, however, may be learned in all countries. The first is that the human heart has from the beginning been full of sin, producing, for the most part, evil fruit, which results in misery; and in the second place, that there is only one remedy ...
— The Basket of Flowers • Christoph von Schmid
... acquainted him with his statement. Clearchus, on his side, was much disturbed, and indeed alarmed at the news. But a young fellow who was present (1), struck with an idea, suggested that the two statements were inconsistent; as to the contemplated attack and the proposed destruction of the bridge. Clearly, the attacking party must either conquer or be worsted: if they conquer, what need of their breaking down the bridge? "Why! if there were half a dozen bridges," said he, ...
— Anabasis • Xenophon
... him as its agent to repair to London in support of its petition against the Proprietors of the Province, who were charged with having "obstinately persisted in manacling their deputies [the Governors of Pennsylvania] with instructions inconsistent not only with the privileges of the people, but with the service of the Crown." We may, therefore, if we choose, imagine the philosopher on that day, being then in his fifty-first year, walking through the streets of this metropolis of America (a town of something ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... at the boundary of the rotational fluid core as that of the irrotationally circulating liquid in contact with it, because, as I have proved, frictional slip between two portions of liquid in contact is inconsistent with stability. There is a further condition, upon which I cannot enter into detail just now, but which may be understood in a general way when I say that it is a condition of either uniform or of increasing molecular rotation from the surface inward, analogous to the condition that the density ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 460, October 25, 1884 • Various
... too, had been maintained exclusively for boys. Girls had been excluded as "Improper & inconsistent w'th such a Grammar Schoole as ye law injoines, and is ye Designe of this Settlem't." The new academies soon reversed this situation. Almost from the first they began to be established for girls as well as boys, and in time ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... believe it likewise to be a torch which gleams with the fire caught from France and which was passed back to France in turn when her own great bonfire was ready for lighting. The facts, however, are inconsistent with this picturesque theory of contemporary reactionists. It is true that the word "liberty" has been full of temptation for generations of American orators, that it has become an idol of the forum, and often a source of heat rather than of light. But to treat ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... capricious &c. adj.; have a maggot in the brain; take it into one's head, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; blow hot and cold; play fast and loose, play fantastic tricks; tourner casaque[Fr]. Adj. capricious; erratic, eccentric, fitful, hysterical; full of whims &c. n.; maggoty; inconsistent, fanciful, fantastic, whimsical, crotchety, kinky [U. S.], particular, humorsome[obs3], freakish, skittish, wanton, wayward; contrary; captious; arbitrary; unconformable &c. 83; penny wise and pound foolish; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... against the king's sheriff. His excuse was that his baronial rights had been encroached upon; but as he had once risked forfeiture by preferring a forcible entry to the execution of the king's writ which had been granted him, we may probably assume that he claimed powers inconsistent with English sovereignty. After foiling the Earl of Cornwall in a costly campaign, Rees, finding himself outlawed, fled, by the Earl of Gloucester's complicity, into Ireland. Some years later he returned to resume his war with Robert de Tiptoft, but this time was taken prisoner ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... happen. The existence of the testimony is a phenomenon; the truth of the fact solves the phenomenon. If we reject this solution, we ought to have some other to rest in; and none, even by our adversaries, can be admired, which is not inconsistent with the principles that regulate human affairs and human conduct at present, or which makes men then to have been a different kind of beings from what they ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... could not forbid him; between excitement and sorrow and happiness and shame, I could do nothing. The best I could do was to hide my face; but the breast of that grey coat was a strange hiding-place for it. With that inconsistent mingling of small things with great in one's perceptions, which everybody knows, I remember the soft feel of the fine grey cloth along with the clasp of Thorold's arms and the touch of his cheek resting upon my hair. And we stood ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Note: | | | | This document is volume three of the series "The Navy in | | the Civil War". For more information on the series see | | the advertisement following the index. | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this | | text. For a complete list, please see the end of this | | ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... I was in the monastery of Toledo, and some people were advising me not to allow any but noble persons to be buried there, [1] our Lord said to me: "Thou wilt be very inconsistent, My daughter, if thou regardest the laws of the world. Look at Me, poor and despised of men: are the great people of the world likely to be great in My eyes? or is it descent or virtue that is to ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... Massacres, surprises, and butcheries, in which the white man had slaked, only to renew it, his notorious thirst for Indian blood, followed each other across the pages of the paper, leaving each a darkening trail behind. The government of these United States, which, in the inconsistent, uncontinuous, and often bungling way of all governments, has probably tried to do its duty by the Indian—often succeeding only in making its benevolence a source of pauperism, and often betrayed by unfaithful officials and corrupt citizens into ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... interests of his art or of justice seemed to demand it, yet there was a tender-heartedness in him which made it distressing to him to inflict pain on any one. The conflict of these elements in his nature sometimes made his actions seem inconsistent and indecipherable even to those who knew him. He would be long-suffering, compromising, disinclined to strike; but when he was at last roused the blow would be as staggering as it was unexpected. It was as if he struck ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... can more fitly conclude these reminiscences of Concord and Hawthorne, whose own stories have always a saddening close, than by relating an occurrence which blighted to many hearts the beauty of the quiet Concord river, and seemed not inconsistent with its lonely landscape. It has the further fitness of typifying the operation of our author's imagination: a tranquil stream, clear and bright with sunny gleams, crowned with lilies and graceful with swaying grass, yet doing terrible deeds inexorably, and therefore ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... Archbishop of Canterbury the right to grant licences previously granted by the pope. A third act, for the subjection of the clergy, put convocation under the royal power and forbade all privileges inconsistent with this. The new pope, Paul III, struck back, though {293} with hesitation, excommunicating the king, [Sidenote: 1535-8] declaring all his children by Anne Boleyn illegitimate, and absolving his subjects ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... examination of the manuscript leads him to conclude that Shelley's final choice was:—'Strophe 1, Strophe 2, Antistrophe 1, Antistrophe 2, Antistrophe 1 alpha, Antistrophe 2 alpha.' This in itself would be perfectly appropriate, but it would be inconsistent with the method employed in designating the "Epodes". I have therefore adopted in preference a scheme which, if it lacks manuscript authority in some particulars, has at least the merit of being absolutely logical ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to Lord Castlewood in England, but to his Majesty himself at St. James's, and was only prevented by my assurance that Mr. Will's lies were notorious amongst all his acquaintance, and that we could not expect, in our own case, that he should be so inconsistent as to tell the truth. We heard of him presently as one of the loudest amongst the Loyalists in New York, as Captain, and presently Major of a corps of volunteers who were sending their addresses to the well-disposed in all the other colonies, and announcing their perfect readiness to ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not return to them. But his position was one of unexampled difficulty; and by the work which he accomplished, and the conditions, internal and external, under which his task was allotted to him, he, like every other man, ought to be judged. He was inconsistent: he can bear the reproach of it. He ended by accepting and approving what he had commenced with persecuting; yet it was with the honest inconsistency which distinguishes the conduct of most men of practical ability in times of change, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... "was it like that? But a heady rhetoric is not inconsistent with sobriety of thought, as many a Victorian page we have read together testifies. The style tames with the spirit; and wild blood is not the worst of faults in poets or boys. But I will change old coin for the new mintage with you, if you like, and it is not so ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... presented to Ehrenreich. Ehrenhold recounts his triumphs, and accuses the three captains. One is hung, another beheaded, the third thrown headlong from a tower, and a guardian angel then summons Theurdank to his union with his Queen. No doubt this reunion was the life-dream of the harassed, busy, inconsistent man, who flashed through the turmoils of the early ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... words was inconsistent: zigzag and zig-zag, semicircular and semi-circular, staircase and stair-case. The plural of "portico" is regularly "porticos", rarely "porticoes". Both occurrences of "mantelpiece" are at line-break; the hyphen was omitted based on usage in ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... Centinel.—The townsman probably was one Greenwood a Servant to the Commissioners whose deposition Number 96.5 is inserted among others in the Narrative of the Town and of whom it is observed in a Marginal Note, that: "Through the whole of his examination he was so inconsistent, and so frequently contradicted himself, that all present were convinced that no credit ought to be given to his deposition, for which reason it would not have been inserted had it not been known that a deposition was taken relating to this ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... from all eternity, still it might be possible for him to commit acts that would exclude him from the limits of the covenant. The other argued, with mighty fluency, that the thing was utterly impossible, and altogether inconsistent with eternal predestination. The arguments of the latter prevailed, and the laird was driven to sullen silence. But, to the women's utter surprise, as the conquering disputant passed, he made a signal of recognizance through the brambles to them, as formerly, ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... entered into the un-neutral combination of declining to furnish the Sumter with coal on any terms. Under these circumstances, I trust the Government of her Majesty will find no difficulty in supplying me. By the recent letter of Earl Russell (31st January, 1862), it is not inconsistent with neutrality for a belligerent to supply himself with coal in a British port. In other words, this article has been pronounced, like provisions, innoxious; and this being the case, it can make no difference whether it be supplied by the Government or an individual ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... would reveal anomalies inconsistent with the theory of use-inheritance. Thus according to Darwin's tables of comparative weights and measurements[23] the leg-bones of the Penguin duck have slightly diminished in length, although they have increased 39 per cent. in weight. ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... objects in the next world, how can Emancipation, which involves an incorporeal existence transcending the very Karana (form) be possible? The very declarations of the Vedas in favour of acts are inconsistent with incorporeal existence or with the negation of existence with dual ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... said Peterkin, "it might be all very well for a stupid fellow like me to remain here and leave the penguins alone, but it would be quite inconsistent with your characters as philosophers to remain any longer in ignorance of the habits and customs of these birds; so the sooner ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... insects was pleasantly conceived, and might have been carried out with harmonious precision, but, after the manner of these remote tribes, the original project had been overshadowed and the purity of the imagination lost beneath a mass of inconsistent detail. To this imperfection must it be laid that when at length this person was recalled from the obscurity of the pagoda and the alluring society of a maiden of the village, to whom he was endeavouring to expound the strategy of the game, and called upon to engage actively in ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... laudanum, and under whose assistance, should he be the worse for it, he may be relieved. As he is desirous of retirement, and a garden, I could think of no one so readily as yourself. Be so good as to inform me, whether such a proposal is absolutely inconsistent with your family arrangements. I should not have proposed it, but on account of the great importance of the character, as a literary man. His communicative temper will make his society very interesting, as well as useful. Have the goodness to favour me with an immediate ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... in this work, either on | | one page or across two pages. These have been broken | | apart to fit within a 75 character width; they can all | | be put back together, with some minor adjustments for | | those sections that have information across multiple | | columns. | | | | Inconsistent spelling is maintained in this document. | ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... he advances further, and adds that even when the sage "denies the existence of God, still his words imply the idea of God, and that belief in God remains unconsciously at the bottom of his heart." Surely the denial or the doubt of God's existence amounts to Atheism, however inconsistent that Atheism may be with the natural laws of thought, or the legitimate exercise ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... individual offender, either on our late or our former address; but modes of public coercion have been adopted, and such as have much more resemblance to a sort of qualified hostility towards an independent power than the punishment of rebellious subjects. All this seems rather inconsistent; but it shows how difficult it is to apply these juridical ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... said I, "is rather inconsistent with the office of spy. If I were a spy, I should hold my head down, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... mystics such as Orsola Benincasa are supposed to have another side to their character, an eminently practical side. It is perfectly true—and we need not go out of England to learn it—that piety is not necessarily inconsistent with nimbleness in worldly affairs. But the mundane achievements, the monasteries and churches, of nine-tenths of these southern ecstatics are the work of the confessor and not of the saint. Trainers of performing animals are aware how these differ in ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... good man. And that he had held a true course had gradually become a very vital thing to her, perhaps the most vital thing; and she could have imagined no greater personal calamity now than to have seen him inconsistent. For there are such men, and most people have known them. They are the men who, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... place—'dibbling' it in, as we should say. But seedtime too, passes, and then he cuts down what he had so carefully sown, and pulls up what he had so sedulously planted, and, in different ways, breaks and bruises the grain. Is he inconsistent because he ploughs in winter and reaps in harvest? Does his carrying the seed-basket at one time make it impossible that he shall come with flail and threshing-oxen at another? Are not all the various operations co-operant to one end? Does not the end need them all? Is not one ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | ...
— Christianity As A Mystical Fact - And The Mysteries of Antiquity • Rudolf Steiner
... no answer and showed no sign of interest, much less jealousy, and yet, though he was thinking of the Pendleton girl and wanted to ask some question about her, a little inconsistent rankling started deep within him at the news of Mavis's disloyalty to him. They were approaching the lane that led to Steve's house now, and beyond the big twin ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... In Congress it requires but a one-fifth vote, and in some bodies a single member can require a vote to be taken by yeas and nays. Any society adopting this Manual, should make its rules govern them in all cases to which they are applicable, and in which they are not inconsistent with the By-Laws and Rules of Order of the society. Their own rules should include all of the cases where it is desirable to vary from the rules in the Manual, and especially should provide for a Quorum [Sec. 43], ...
— Robert's Rules of Order - Pocket Manual of Rules Of Order For Deliberative Assemblies • Henry M. Robert
... this book were written by different people, accent, spelling and hyphen usage is inconsistent. These inconsistencies have been preserved except ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... sighed Aunt Pen; "I wish I were. I should have some hope of myself then," said the poor inconsistent innocent. "Oh no, no; I feel it only too well; I am going fast. You will all regret your disbelief when I am gone;" and she lay back among her pillows. "That reminds me," she murmured, presently. ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... world, I wonder at the superstition that dares to arraign him. A sound philosopher once said: "He that thinks any innocent pastime foolish has either to grow wiser, or is past the ability to do so"; and I have always counted it an impudent fiction that playfulness is inconsistent with greatness. Many men and women have died of Dignity, but the disease which sent them to the tomb was not contracted from Charles Dickens. Not long ago, I met in the street a bleak old character, full of dogmatism, egotism, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... 1618, he was by Sir Nicholas Sanderson, Lord Viscount Castleton, presented to the Rectory of Wibberton, not far from Boston, in the County of Lincoln, a living of very good value; but it lay in so low and wet a part of that country as was inconsistent with his health. And health being—next to a good conscience—the greatest of God's blessings in this life, and requiring therefore of every man a care and diligence to preserve it, he, apprehending a danger of losing it, if he ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton
... cropping up and bewildering one who is trying to understand the Hindu trend of thought. So, though those men all affirmed that there is only one God, they admitted that they each worshipped several. They saw nothing inconsistent in this. Just as the air is in everything, so God is in everything, therefore in the various symbols. And as our King has divers representative Viceroys and Governors to rule over his dominions in his name, so the Supreme ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... in truth, does not need the assistance of owl-winged cherubs, brawny Fames, and blubbering Cupids, those frequent appendages of departed vanity and selfishness; which would have been probably as repugnant to the wishes of the good marchioness, as inconsistent with ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... shall not stop to discuss, that it is impossible for Christianity at that early date to have found its way to this distant island, beyond the boundary of the world. An argument on a different plane is (I.), the undoubtedly contradictory and inconsistent character of the Life. It is easy however to exaggerate the importance of this point. Modern critical methods were undreamed of in the days of our hagiographer, who wrote, moreover, for edification only in a credulous age. Most of the historical documents ...
— The Life of St. Declan of Ardmore • Anonymous
... and Corser, and perhaps we may add of George Smith the distiller. But there was scarcely any sale here or on the Continent from which Mr. Huth was not enabled to add to his stores. He was a very rich man; but he was not a book-hunter, and he was both inconsistent and capricious. He had, in fact, no definite plan, and took each purchase on its own merits. His Catalogue, which he did not live to see completed, is unusually free from errors, but not quite so much so as he anticipated and desired. Nevertheless, ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... railway-director who lived in literature, a libre-penseur who championed the Tractarians, a sentimentalist who talked like a cynic, and a philosopher who had elevated conviviality to the dignity of an exact science. Here, indeed, was a "living oxymoron"—a combination of inconsistent and incongruous qualities which to the typical John Bull—Lord Palmerston's "Fat man with a white hat in the twopenny omnibus"—was ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... of old pieces or are disliked and distrusted because they do not. After a certain age, varying with the individual, all, or almost all, of us gradually move towards a condition of repugnance to new ideas—a repugnance that becomes hatred when they are inconsistent with the old theories that have grown to be part of ourselves as well as of our stock-in-trade; and when this movement has gone far we are "jaded," are unfit to estimate the value of new ideas; we are still competent to apply the old theories to plays and acting based on them, but of course cumber ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... interprets historical facts, and also to obviate some objections to it, grounded on an imperfect comprehension, or rather on a mere first glance. Some, for example, think the doctrine of the three successive stages of speculation and belief, inconsistent with the fact that they all three existed contemporaneously; much as if the natural succession of the hunting, the nomad, and the agricultural state could be refuted by the fact that there are still hunters and nomads. That the three states were ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... far in our criticism of the Church tradition and of the Holy Scriptures. We have to learn to abstain from calling the Eastern Church idolatrous and the Roman Church tyrannical, and the Episcopal Church inconsistent. We have our own idolatries (our idols are: individualism, human reason, and the human word); and we have our own tyranny (the tyranny of criticism and pride); and we have—thank ...
— The Agony of the Church (1917) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... to reproach, and so is forced to bear what otherwise he would not, he would never suffer every thing to be done in the Navy, and he never be consulted; and it seems, in the naming of all these commanders for this fleete, he hath never been asked one question. But we concluded it wholly inconsistent with his honour not to go with this fleete, nor with the reputation which the world hath of his interest at Court; and so he did give me commission to tell Mr. Coventry that he is most willing to receive any commands from the Duke in this fleete, were ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... be added that we may find a curiously inconsistent proof of the excessive importance attached to sexual function by a society which systematically tries to depreciate sex, in the disgrace which is attributed to the lack of "virile" potency. Although civilized life offers immense scope for the activities of sexually impotent ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... were inconsistent with a true earnestness of purpose," said Mr. Brown. "And, after all, the girl we both love is no such weakling as to accept a man simply because he asks her. She will decide between us ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... to her, softened by the kindly haze of time, with the strangest sense of restfulness and security, utterly at variance, one would say, with the restless longing with which she looked out on the world of action—and yet not wholly inconsistent with it perhaps, after all. Did she indeed know when and where she ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... such a traveller in his father's ghost. Certainly there were then, even as there are now, besides the logical thinkers, also a considerable number of inconsistent persons who believed in supernaturally revealed messages, and who, nevertheless, now and then, felt contradictory thoughts rising within themselves. Why should the great master, who exhausted in his dramatic personages almost all types of human nature, not have put such ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... Forgiveness is not inconsistent with justice. It does not do away with punishment. It spiritualizes punishment; substituting mental for bodily pains.—The sense of the evil and shame of wrongdoing, which is the essence and end of punishment, forgiveness, when it is appreciated, ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... have been left as in the original text. The same is true for inconsistent abbreviations for U. S. states and ...
— The Social Work of the Salvation Army • Edwin Gifford Lamb
... admitted to having taken part in five wars should be mixing in a by-election in the cause of Peace, was not so inconsistent as might be supposed; for he had always fought on the losing side, and there seemed to him at the moment no side so losing as that of Peace. No great politician, he was not an orator, nor even a glib talker; yet a quiet ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... apology could he offer for this late transaction, this conspiracy at once so evident and palpable? As far as the question of his guilt was concerned there would be little conjecture about that. Ten or twenty accounts of the venture, inconsistent with one another and with themselves, would be circulated simultaneously. Of that he had no doubt. People would neither know nor care about the evidence. It was enough that he had ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... races, for reasons no doubt known to himself but hidden from the rest of the world, the vicar masqueraded in the character of a patriarch. His characters were frequently inconsistent with his circumstances; often his boyishness would obtrude itself quite unexpectedly at board meetings or on the parish council, while at other times the mantle of the seer or prophet descended upon him on the most inauspicious occasions. Had Mrs. Wrottesley ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... Manners: For being unable, that is, having a moral Impotence of Will to restrain his evil Propensions and govern his vicious Appetites, and finding his guilty Enjoyments, attended with inward Uneasiness and unavoidable Remorse, and being conscious that his irregular Life is inconsistent with Safety and Happiness in a Future State; to remove the troublesome Misgivings of his Mind from the Apprehensions of Guilt here, and rid himself of the Fears of Suffering hereafter, he at length disclaims the Belief ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... been wrong in all this, but as I once said to my fellow-prisoners when appealed to on the subject of religion, "There are only three cardinal points in my religious belief, and these are simple and easily remembered—believe in Christ, love God, and love my neighbour; what I do inconsistent with the last I know to be wrong. It is inconsistent, I think, with the latter, for Protestants to revile and speak evil of Roman Catholics, and vice versa, therefore I disapprove of discussions and arguments on religious belief among prisoners, as they usually ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... purely conservative and, not to say it disrespectfully, politic. The end sought in every modification of the existing music has been that of affording the congregation a musical setting for certain hymns—a setting not inconsistent with the spirit of the hymns themselves, but in melody agreeable to the congregation. The question which John Wesley is reported to have asked, "Why the devil should have all the good tunes," has been a favorite conundrum with the fathers ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... follower of the self-denying Jesus? Can you, "bought with blood divine," when looking around on the possessions God has bestowed, have a heart to deny that aid which undying millions demand? Is it not beyond expression inconsistent to profess to give yourself to Christ, and then withhold your property from him?—But what are your relations to him as implied in this profession? and what are his claims upon you, as growing out of it? With the last tribunal and ...
— The Faithful Steward - Or, Systematic Beneficence an Essential of Christian Character • Sereno D. Clark
... the enormous, grotesque shadows of them, executing wild dances on a screen. An instance of this process is described by himself in his Vision of Sudden Death. But his unworldliness and faculty of vision-seeing were not inconsistent with the keenness of judgment and the justness and delicacy of perception displayed in his Biographical Sketches of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and other contemporaries: in his critical papers on Pope, Milton, Lessing, Homer and the Homeridae: his essay on Style; ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... yet I had been ready an hour ago to have accepted him as my husband! Why, then, this revolt at the idea of receiving a fair substitute in gold? Really, one is a goose, and I had time to realize, even in this tumult of emotion, that there can be nothing so inconsistent as the feelings of ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... inconsistent girl hotly refused to go up to the castle and help to make pastry for her mother's bitter and malicious foe, and Sir Richard shook his head and said she was in the right on't, and should not be compelled. So Susan found herself making ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of abstraction. It is not strange that it finds the way to the principles more rapidly than the way back to phenomena. A free road, a fresh start, a straight course—such is the motto of French thinking. Whatever is inconsistent with rectilinearity is ignored, or opposed as unfitting. The line drawn by Descartes through the world between matter and spirit, and that by Rousseau between nature and culture, are distinctive of the philosophical character of their countrymen. Dualism is to them entirely congenial; it satisfies ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... the heathen Mythology, but the interpretation of a heathen— as Milton's Paradise Lost is the interpretation of a Christian religion of the Bible. The interpretation of the mythology of Vergil & the interpretation of the Bible by Milton compared—whether one is more inconsistent than the other—In what they are contradictory. Prometheus desmotes quoted by Paul [Footnote: Shelley may refer to the proverbial phrase 'to kick against the pricks' (Acts xxvi. 14), which, however, is found in Pindar and Euripides as well as in Aeschylus (Prom. 323).] [—] all religion ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... sweeping," said the groom gruffly; and then, in the most inconsistent way, he changed his tone, for he had a weakness for the rod and line himself. ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... be quite illogical, and inconsistent with physiological facts, to aver that, were the poor less given to indulge the pleasures of sense, their fecundity would be modified in ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... great nation to be perused under the impression that they occurred in a period of one hundred instead of two thousand years. Such a portion of history would immediately assume the air of a romance; the events would seem devoid of credibility, and inconsistent with the present course of human affairs. A crowd of incidents would follow each other in thick succession. Armies and fleets would appear to be assembled only to be destroyed, and cities built merely to fall in ruins. There would be the most violent transitions from foreign ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... pantomime, so praised by the doctor himself, but an incoherent piece of stuff, the figure of a woman with a fish's tail, without plot, incident, or intrigue? We are made to laugh at stale, dull jokes, wherein we mistake pleasantry for wit, and grimace for humor; wherein every scene is unnatural and inconsistent with the rules, the laws of nature and of the drama; viz., two gentlemen come to a man of fortune's house, eat, drink, etc., and take it for an inn. The one is intended as a lover for the daughter; he talks with her for some hours; and, when he sees her again in a different dress, he treats ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... the functions of the spiritual rulers has been supposed by some to be inconsistent with several statements in the apostolic epistles. It has been alleged that, according to these letters, the administration of discipline was vested in the whole body of the people; and that originally the members ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... personal gossip with which they were mingled. That judgment should follow the exhibition of "tarjetted tails," i.e. embroidered or highly decorated trains, and loom black over a Court ball; and that Scotland should be punished because the Queen and her Maries loved dancing, were threats in no way inconsistent with the temper of the time; but they must have filled the minds of reasonable men with many revoltings of impatience and disgust. It says much for the real soundness of purpose and truth of intention among the exclusive Church party ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... then, you inconsistent creature," he cried with a laugh: "after all you DO believe me! You recognise how benighted it would be for your daughter not to ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... ruthless an egotism. Constance must have known that Sophia would not leave her, and that the habitation of the Square was a continual irk to Sophia. Constance had never been able to advance a single argument for remaining in the Square. And yet she would not budge. It was so inconsistent with the rest of Constance's behaviour. See Sophia sitting primly there by the table, a woman approaching sixty, with immense experience written on the fine hardness of her worn and distinguished face! Though ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... sir,' answered Mrs Maynard, 'I look on it as the most dangerous of vices, it destroys truth, honour, humanity, it is directly contrary to the laws of God, is the destruction of society, and almost as inconsistent with morality as ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... silently corrected. For clarity, have added new paragraphs with respect to dialogue within paragraphs. The name Hillard and Hilliard have been uniformly changed to Hillard. Corrected incorrect usages of 'its' and 'it's.' All other inconsistencies (i.e. The inconsistent spellings—sombre/somber, gray/grey, hyphen/no hyphen) have been left as they were ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... your politics lately," Rowdy retorted. "A while back you was cussing the whole business; and now you're worse than an old maid aunt. Pink, you may not be wise to the fact, but you sure are an inconsistent little devil." ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... inconsistent," his pursuer continued. "The Bible says men lived anywhere from a hundred to nine hundred years, and he thinks it quite possible. The Bible says that men live after death, and ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... stands in his way, as in the case of the peasant, of whom, after his departure to summon the old keeper, we have no farther account. Partly for the sake of appearing original, and partly from an idea that to make Orestes kill the king and queen in the middle of their capital would be inconsistent with probability, Euripides has involved himself in still greater improbabilities. Whatever there is of the tragical in his drama is not his own, but belongs either to the fable, to his predecessors, or to tradition. In his hands, at least, it has ceased to ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... young lady declared that it was ridiculous for persons to interfere in business which did not concern them. Now here you are knocking yourself up and going through horrible work for people who are nothing to you. That is a little inconsistent." ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... not that," said Mr. Stackpole; "but it all goes to fill them with absurd notions about their place in society, inconsistent with ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... 's a queer little maiden named Polly, Who always knows when to be jolly. When ruined by fire Her spirits rise higher. This most inconsistent Miss Polly." ...
— Polly Oliver's Problem • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... Jos's arrival he joined the fashionable Guardia de Corps or royal guard regiment. This step, apparently so inconsistent with his revolutionary activities, has puzzled all his biographers. But Espronceda was only following the family tradition. His elder brother had done the same. Doubtless he believed, in his first enthusiasm, that Spain was now completely liberalized. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... have a curious interest, but it looks a trifle inconsistent, does it not, to lament the unjustness of connecting puppet entertainments and the like with the stage, and then deliberately devote space to the mysteries of Bartholomew Fair? It is more to the purpose to speak of the ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... more absurd than to suppose a collection of shells and corals, amassed about the primitive mountains of the earth, to become mountains equally solid with the others, upon the removal of the sea; it would be inconsistent with every principle of sound reasoning to suppose those masses of loose materials to oppose equal resistance to the wasting and destroying operations of the surface of the earth, as do those pretended primitive masses, which might be supposed endued with natural hardness and solidity; ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... repaired, but inconsistent spelling and hyphenation have been left as printed in light of the author's extensive use of dialect ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... of collateral test of poetical excellence may be found by extracting the philosophy from the poetry. The test is, of course, inadequate. A good philosopher may be an execrable poet. Even stupidity is happily not inconsistent with sound doctrine, though inconsistent with a firm grasp of ultimate principles. But the vigour with which a man grasps and assimilates a deep moral doctrine is a test of the degree in which he possesses one essential ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... not wrangle here simply because we associate the name of woman with human justice and human rights. Although I always like to see opposition on any subject, for it elicits truth much better than any speech, still I think it will be exceedingly inconsistent if, because some women out in the West are opposed to the Woman's Rights movement—though at the same time they take advantage of it—that therefore we shall throw it out ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... appears now as a third, now as a fifth or seventh. This picture of the world is certainly not attractive; in it all change and becoming, all life and all activity is offered up on the altar of monotonous being. Happily Herbart is inconsistent enough to enliven this comfortless waste of changeless being by the relatively real or ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... buff epaulets and facings to show his captain's rank in the Continental army. Yet there was something in his facial expression that contradicted the manliness of his presence,—an irritation and querulousness that were inconsistent with his size and strength. This fretfulness increased as the moments went by without sign or motion in the faintly lit field beyond, until, in peevish exasperation, he began to kick the nearer ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... determined, from the beginning, to give no hint of the land in which all these events happened; neither is that of the slightest consequence. Guilty she was pronounced: but sentence at that time was deferred. Ask me not, I beseech you, about the muff or other circumstances inconsistent with the hostile evidence. These circumstances had the testimony, you will observe, of my own servants only; nay, as it turned out, of one servant exclusively: that naturally diminished their value. And, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... in these "Confessions" claimed to myself the privilege, not inconsistent with a full disclosure of the memorabilia of my life, to pass slightly over those passages, the burden of which was unhappy, and whose memory is painful. I must now, therefore, claim the "benefit of this act," and beg of the reader to ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... story in after years, he was wont to say, "I am aware that some will disapprove of the part I acted in that case; because they will regard it as inconsistent with the candor which men ought always to practice toward each other. I can only say that my own conscience has never condemned me for it. I could devise no other means to save the ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... here remarked that this was inconsistent with the old assertion that opposites generated opposites. But that, replies Socrates, was affirmed, not of opposite ideas either in us or in nature, but of opposition in the concrete—not of life and death, but of individuals living and dying. When this objection has been removed, Socrates proceeds: ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato
... elder's hinted pity, his breathed charity, of the latent liberality that was really what he had built on. The dear old governor, goodness knew, had prejudices and superstitions, but if they were numerous, and some of them very curious, they were not rigid. He had also such nice inconsistent feelings, such irrepressible indulgences, such humorous deviations, and they would ease everything off. He was in short an old darling, and with an old darling in the long run one was always safe. When they reached the house in the Cours la Reine Mr. Probert said: "I think ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... agreed in this practical subordination of revelation to philosophy. Sabellius, for example, had reduced the Trinity to three successive manifestations of the one God in the Law, the Gospel, and the Church; yet even he agreed with Arius in a philosophical doctrine of the unity of God which was inconsistent with a real incarnation. Even the noble work of Origen had helped to strengthen the philosophical influences which were threatening to overwhelm the definite historic revelation. Tertullian had long since warned the churches of the danger; but a greater than Tertullian was needed ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... is the laxity with which men in these days suffer the most inconsistent opinions to lie jumbled lazily together in their minds,—holding the antimoralism of Paley and the hypophysics of Locke, and yet gravely, and with a mock faith, talking of God as a pure spirit, of passing out of time into ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Inconsistent hyphenation matches the original document. | | | | Typographical errors have been corrected in this text. | | For a complete list, please see the bottom of this document. ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... If a landlord without good cause, and for reasons inconsistent with good estate management, terminates a tenancy by notice to quit; or refuses to grant a renewal of the tenancy if so requested at least one year before the expiration thereof; or if a tenant quits ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... simplicity and brevity of the scriptural account and of its paucity of incidental details, is the mass of circumstance supplied by the imagination of men, much of which is wholly unsupported by authoritative record and in many respects is plainly inconsistent and untrue. It is the part of prudence and wisdom to segregate and keep distinctly separate the authenticated statements of fact, in so momentous a matter, from the fanciful commentaries of historians, ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... of the Second Book by an inferior poet, who took thence fragments of sentences and of ideas and stitched them together. In the Invocation Kirchhoff cuts out the allusion to the oxen of the Sun (lines 6-9) as being inconsistent with ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... Oct. 24], it appears that he made this frank confession:—'Nobody at times, talks more laxly than I do;' and, ib. p. 231 [Sept. 19, 1773], 'He fairly owned he could not explain the rationality of duelling.' We may, therefore, infer, that he could not think that justifiable, which seems so inconsistent with the spirit of the Gospel. At the same time it must be confessed, that from the prevalent notions of honour, a gentleman who receives a challenge is reduced to a dreadful alternative. A remarkable instance of ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... having thrown him by accident, the young demon took a knife from his pocket, and deliberately stabbed him three several times. Such was a peasant boy, now seemingly enveloped in the interesting simplicity of Marmontel. How inconsistent is ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... allow of any of those unjust reflections the wholesale merchants of credulity, as well as their unthinking retailers, make against him. It is true, in the seventh chapter he seems to prove that many parts of the Mosaic history of the creation appear inconsistent with reason, and in the eighth chapter the same appears no less inconsistent with philosophy; wherefore he concludes (as many fathers of the Church have done before him) that the whole rather seems to have been but a pious allegory." Dr. Burnet took the meaning ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... paragraph 3. The reader might be confused to learn that the "Hadley doctor" is now from Barnet: George stood with his back to the empty dining-room fireplace: on one side stood Mr. Pritchett, and on the other the BARNET doctor. Trollope was often inconsistent with names ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... constantly be flying in the face of my own theories. Barring the aforesaid weakness for whiskey and water, it is fair to assume that the average real philosopher lives up to his own lights and by them; whereas I, at least according to Josephine, am liable to be frightfully inconsistent. She has never forgotten my profanity on the occasion when we discovered after dinner that the soot had come down in the drawing-room and was over everything in spite of the fact that the chimney had been swept three weeks before. Now, if there is one thing which I abhor and am perpetually inveighing ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... return to Whitehall on such conditions as might fully secure the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm. [633] It is evident that this plan, though strenuously supported by the clergy, was altogether inconsistent with the doctrines which the clergy had been teaching during many years. It was, in truth, an attempt to make a middle way where there was no room for a middle way, to effect a compromise between two things which do not admit of compromise, resistance and nonresistance. The Tories had formerly ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... only I am refused Admission to the college. Sapient says The Council have considered my request, And find it inconsistent with the rules Of discipline and order to ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... Old and New Testament inform us. Nay, by the way, this posture seemed to have continued in the Christian church, till the clergy, instead of learning their prayers by heart, read them out of a book, which is in a great measure inconsistent with such an elevated posture, and which seems to me to have been only a later practice, introduced under the corrupt state of the church; though the constant use of divine forms of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus |
