"Justifiable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shall write that a thing is of the first and the other of the last importance, though each means the greatest or utmost. How is this? To me first appears preferable, though last may be justifiable. Being on the subject of words, I am reminded of obnoxious, which is applied in the strangest ways by different authors. It is true that the Roman writers used obnoxius in various senses; but it does not seem so pliable or smooth in English. Generally it is held to indicate ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 210, November 5, 1853 • Various
... that the actual value of the copper coinage was not a matter of profound importance may be taken for granted, and so far his conduct is certainly not justifiable on any very strict rule of ethics. If the pennies were of small importance, however, there were other things that were of more. Little of a patriot as he was, little as he was supposed, or supposed himself, to care for Ireland or Irishmen, his wrath burnt fiercely at what he saw around him. He ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... himself not to allow such excessive audacity to go unpunished. At the same time the affairs of Spain were then in such a state of confusion, the danger of exasperating the young Queen appeared so great, that it was necessary to defer severe measures, however justifiable they might be. It was only some months afterwards, when Philip V. had quitted Madrid for the frontiers of Portugal, to take command of his army, reinforced by a French corps under the command of the Duke of Berwick, that Louis thought ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... legislator who enacts a purely positive law, or of a judge who imposes and inflicts a punishment by an order of his will, without any connexion between the evil of guilt and the evil of punishment. And it is not necessary to suppose that God in justifiable annoyance deliberately put a corruption in the soul and the body of man, by an extraordinary action, in order to punish him: much as the Athenians gave hemlock-juice to their criminals. M. Bayle takes the matter thus: he speaks as if the original corruption ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... somewhere. As a rule, it is not difficult to obtain the conviction and capital punishment of any native, or his substitute, who has murdered a foreigner, and we might succeed equally well in many instances of justifiable homicide or manslaughter: it is when the case is reversed that we call down upon our devoted heads all the indignation of the Celestial Empire. Of course any European who could be proved to have murdered a native would be hanged for it; but he may kill him in self-defence ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... annoyed him—most of all that the lady of his thoughts should have addressed herself to such an assembly. Why did she not leave it to him or her father! If it was not degrading enough to appear before such a canaille, surely to sing to them was! How could a woman of refinement, justifiable as was her desire for appreciation, seek it from such a repulsive assemblage! But Vavasor would have been better able to understand Hester, and would have met the distastes of the evening with far less discomposure, if he had never been in worse company. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... Bernard enjoyed no small fame as a worker of miracles, but when Otto unfolded his case to him the Abbot declared straightway that no miracle would be justifiable in the present instance, and that only by repentance and by complete renunciation of the world might the Count be released from his nightly menace. Otto hung his head on hearing this verdict, and as he stood hesitating, pondering whether it were possible for him to ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... the treasure for the King of Spain, without any consideration of the murder of the three Englishmen; who, in his letter, are treated as robbers and thieves, though England was then at war with Spain, and they were consequently justifiable in taking the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... dimensions of such a powerful engine of research as the Hooker telescope are not in themselves a source of satisfaction to the astronomer, for they involve a decided increase in the labor of observation and entail very heavy expense, justifiable only in case important results, beyond the reach of other instruments, can be secured. The construction of a telescope of these dimensions was necessarily an experiment, for it was by no means certain, after the optical and mechanical difficulties had been overcome, that even the favorable ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... a few sentences, in a tongue unknown to the officers, to the swarthy and anxious crowd in front. These were answered by a low, sullen, yet assentient grunt, from the united band, who now turned, though with justifiable caution and distrust, and recrossed the drawbridge without hinderance from the troops. Ponteac waited until the last Indian had departed, and then making a movement to the governor, which, with all its haughtiness, was meant to mark his sense of the forbearance ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... for marrying Grandcourt? His possible judgment of her actions was telling on her as importunately as Klesmer's judgment of her powers; but she found larger room for resistance to a disapproval of her marriage, because it is easier to make our conduct seem justifiable to ourselves than to make our ability strike others. "How can I help it?" is not our favorite apology for incompetency. But Gwendolen felt some strength ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... might then very well take without exciting any very strong suspicion on board the barque as to our ulterior intentions, since the sea was by this time getting up to an extent which made the exhibition of a small amount of canvas on board the schooner not only justifiable but absolutely necessary. The sail was accordingly set, and all risk of being pooped was, for the time at least, done away with, and what was almost of equal importance in our eyes, we now appeared to be holding our own with ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... wise as she was just, truthful, tactful, and generous. She might have been a great influence, as indeed she was always a great pleasure, but she was both physically and mentally badly equipped for coping with life and spent and wasted more time than was justifiable on plans which could have been done by any good servant. It would not have mattered the endless discussion whether the brougham fetching one part of the family from one station and a bus fetching another part of it from another interfered with a guest catching a five or a five-to-five ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... knowledge Contemporary play instead of character we have "characters," Disposition to make the best of whatever comes to us Do not habitually postpone that season of happiness Dwelling here. And here content to dwell Explainable, if not justifiable Eye demands simple lines, proportion, harmony in mass, dignity Happiness is an inner condition, not to be raced after Instead of simply being happy in the condition where we are Lawyers will divide the oyster between them Make a newspaper to suit the public Making the journey of this life ...
— Widger's Quotations of Charles D. Warner • David Widger
... rectory was severed from the office of Head Master and the Trustees of the school were charged with a payment of L200 per annum towards the stipend of the Rector. In 1874 the advowson was sold to a private person. A great deal of restoration, justifiable and otherwise, has taken place, the decay of the local sandstone having made large repairs necessary. In 1861 much renewal of the external stone work was carried out. Unfortunately shortsighted ideas of economy led to the use of the same poor stone and much has recently had ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Churches of Coventry - A Short History of the City and Its Medieval Remains • Frederic W. Woodhouse
... him displays energy and justifiable self-consciousness. He energetically shook my hand. With the ability of the man of the world he drew the conversation to that which was nearest to his heart. And what his eyes can no longer exactly observe ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... pay for the new land and buildings, I slightly raised the prices. This is perfectly justifiable and results in a benefit, not an injury, to the purchaser. I did exactly the same thing a few years ago—or rather, in that case I did not lower the price as is my annual custom, in order to build the River Rouge plant. The extra money might ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... 1865. Economically, socially, and from the point of view of abstract political justice, I hold that the institution of slavery, as it existed in this country prior to the year 1865, was in no respect either desirable or justifiable. That it had its good and even its elevating side, so far at least as the African is concerned, I am not here to deny. On the contrary, I see and recognize those features of the institution far more ...
— 'Tis Sixty Years Since • Charles Francis Adams
... the souls of the faithful would undergo some more perfect purification after death than is attainable in this world; while the elaborate system of invocations of, and devotions to, the Blessed {119} Virgin Mary and the saints, were built up out of a not only harmless but justifiable faith in the intercessions of the Saints for the Church on earth, and the wish to obtain a share in their prayers. So again, the denial of the cup to the laity, which was justly felt by many to be such a grievous privation, was the natural consequence ...
— A Key to the Knowledge of Church History (Ancient) • John Henry Blunt
... made his acquaintance; I took him on his own explicit terms; and when I learned details of his life, they were, by the nature of the case and my own PARTI-PRIS, read even with a certain violence in terms of his writings. There could scarce be a perversion more justifiable than that; yet it was still a perversion. The study indeed, raised so much ire in the breast of Dr. Japp (H. A. Page), Thoreau's sincere and learned disciple, that had either of us been men, I please myself ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a double-barreled shotgun, foretells that you will meet such exasperating and unfeeling attention in your private and public life that suave manners giving way under the strain and your righteous wrath will be justifiable. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... not so much with a view to increase the revenue as with the object of distributing the burthen of taxation equally amongst the different classes of society. Much of this legislation has been perfectly justifiable and even beneficial. Nevertheless, it should never be forgotten that it is generally based on the purely Western principle that abstract justice is in itself a desirable thing to attain, and that a fiscal or administrative system stands condemned if it is wanting in symmetry. It was against any ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... another sacrifice of the just to the expedient, which none but a profligate politician will venture to defend; and let the efforts of Mary to procure her own liberty, though with the destruction of her enemy and at the cost of a civil war to England, be held, if religion will permit, justifiable or venial;—but let not our resentment of the wrongs, or compassion for the long misfortunes, of this unhappy woman betray us into a blind concurrence in eulogiums lavished, by prejudice or weakness, on a character blemished by many foibles, stained by some enormous crimes, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... present owners. I mean that even as the big Trusts and companies are crushing—by competition—the individual workers and small traders, so the State should crush the trusts by competition. It is surely justifiable for the State to do for the benefit of the whole people that which the capitalists are already doing for the profit of a few shareholders. The first step in this direction will be the establishment of Retail Stores for the purpose of supplying all ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... the other civil institutions of the country. There would be great propriety in celebrating a reign which has been productive of so much moral benefit by the abolition of an anomaly which is so entirely without any justifiable foundation." ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... science by the practice of dissection of animals, and discovered the optic nerves and the Eustachian tubes. He even extended his researches to Embryology, describing the head of the foetus as the first part to be developed—a justifiable deduction from appearances. Alcmaeon introduced also the doctrine that health depends on harmony, disease on discord of the elements within the body. Curiosity as to the distribution of the vessels was excited by Empedocles and Alcmaeon and led to further dissection, and Alcmaeon's pupils Acron ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Byron, whether there is one single principle in Schlegel's work (which is not an admitted drawback from its merits), that was not established and applied in detail by me. Plutarch tells us, that egotism is a venial fault in the unfortunate, and justifiable in the ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... him no harm. He had suffered no hardship at his hands. All his misery was in the future; and if he had stayed, perhaps his master might have done well by him, though it is not probable. Still, I think Harry was in some sense justifiable. To remain in such a place was to cramp his soul, as well as pinch his body—to be unhappy, if not positively miserable. He might have tried the place, and when he found it could not be endured, ...
— Try Again - or, the Trials and Triumphs of Harry West. A Story for Young Folks • Oliver Optic
... truth innocent suffering of that sort is merely pathetic, not tragic; inasmuch as it is not within the sphere of reason. Now suffering—misfortune—comes within the sphere of reason, only if it is brought about by the free- will of the subject, who must be entirely moral and justifiable; as must be also the power against which that subject proceeds. This power must be no merely natural one, nor the mere will of a tyrant; because it is only in such case that the man is himself, so to speak, guilty of his misfortune. ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... companions could blame him. Suffering, as he was, from the ceaseless agony of hunger and thirst, any indiscretion, or even crime, seemed justifiable, for ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... justifiable indignation, Mrs. Darling at once sought Mrs. Stone and Mrs. Flight. "They had an awful scene, I'm sure," said she, "for his face was as black as a storm, and I knew how it would be. Some one's been blabbing and making matters infinitely worse than they really were. What do you suppose will happen ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... sake of decency, breaches of the truce, and his detested meanness, the man behind the mask; and glimpses of herself too, the half-known, half-suspected, developing creature claiming to be Diana, and unlike her dreamed Diana, deformed by marriage, irritable, acerb, rebellious, constantly justifiable against him, but not in her own mind, and therefore accusing him of the double crime of provoking her and perverting her—these were the troops defiling through her head while she did battle ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... an advanced appreciation of the act and its bearings. The penalty is either drowning or burning alive: except in the case of a chief or a very rich man, little or no difference is made between wilful murder, justifiable homicide, and accidental manslaughter- -the reason of this, say their jurists, is to make people more careful. Here, again, we find a sense of the sanctity of life the reverse of barbarous. Cutting and maiming are punished by the fine of ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... above passages are daring, but greatly daring. So great is the subtlety, the variety, the art, that they never fail of their intended effect. They are justifiable because they justify themselves—partly by their lofty and dignified content, partly of course by their sheer artistry. But when the same thing is attempted by unskilful hands it fails ingloriously. We say it has ...
— The Principles of English Versification • Paull Franklin Baum
... these things is acquired, not natural, though the acquisition may be through hereditary influence. An idea is held by a majority of even fairly intelligent individuals that there is a justifiable, harmless, and even beneficial use of these substances by the general public, though acknowledging that beyond a certain indefinite line this use ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... banish those who are disaffected to their cause. They have a right to do so, provided their rebellion itself be justifiable; although they have made themselves objects of just execration and abhorrence by the abominable atrocities of cruelty and murder they have in thousands of instances perpetrated upon those whom they knew or suspected to be faithful to the Union. Your sensibilities, however, are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... (1,300,000 acres) of forest-clad hills, valleys and mountains, adorned by countless lakes and streams. By some persons it has been believed that in the State's forests the cutting and sale of large trees would be justifiable business, and agreeable to the public; but it has been demonstrated that this is not the case. The people of the state firmly object to the havoc that is unavoidably wrought by logging operations in beautiful forests. ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... poison. Too long we had waited and allowed the enemy to use this fearful weapon against us, thinking the neutral nations might intervene; but their interest in the cause of humanity was largely a financial one, and we determined to adopt a broader view, perhaps, of what justifiable weapons are, and make use of the advances of science. France was already using the gas, but Britain hesitated at setting her hall-mark on such a usage, necessary ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... humour? The side a man would take, struck, as your Sandro was, by a nympholepsy, or, as Lorenzo was, by the rhymer's appetite for wherewithal to sonnetteer? If I understand you, it was never pique or a young girl's petulance drove you to Phryne's one justifiable act of self-assertion. It was honesty. Madonna, or I have read your grey eyes in vain; it was enthusiasm—that flame of our fire so sacred that though it play the incendiary there shall be no crime—or ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... however, a real contributory factor, and one frequently met with. The experience of social workers leads them to believe that alcohol is more devastating in its effects on character with women than with men, and that there is less hope of a cure. The great majority of so-called "justifiable deserters" are ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... I confided to the men-folk that I was feeling a little nervous. "Supposing that telegraphing bush-whacker decides to shoot me off-hand on my arrival," I said; and the Man-in-Charge said amiably: "It'll be brought in as justifiable homicide; that's all." Then reconnoitring the enemy from the platform, he "feared" we were "about to ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... grinning in at the windows. Edwards and the other gentlemen stood at bay at the back end of the store, in front of the liquor hogsheads. Their bearing was that of men who expected personal violence, but in a justifiable agitation did not forget their personal dignity. But the expression on the face of Abner, who was the leader of the gang, was less one of exasperation than of ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... had been looking over the wreck. When Malone had finished his story, Lieutenant Adams flipped his notebook shut and looked over toward them. "I guess it's O.K., sir," he said. "As far as I'm concerned, it's justifiable homicide. Self-defense. Any reason why they'd ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... altar at the moment of the wedding, and in the presence of her family and many witnesses, is put to shame by a most degrading charge, false indeed, yet clothed with every appearance of truth, is a grand piece of theatrical effect in the true and justifiable sense. The impression would have been too tragical had not Shakspeare carefully softened it in order to prepare for a fortunate catastrophe. The discovery of the plot against Hero has been already partly made, though not by the persons interested; ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... of the crime imputed to them; and it being affirmed that poison had in fact been found in a well at Zoffingen, this was deemed a sufficient proof to convince the world; and the persecution of the abhorred culprits thus appeared justifiable. Now, though we can take as little exception at these proceedings as at the multifarious confessions of witches, because the interrogatories of the fanatical and sanguinary tribunals were so complicated, that by means of the rack the required answer must inevitably be obtained; and it is, ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... the appetite is definite. The effects on absorption and assimilation are presumptive; but when we couple the absence of any corresponding difficulty in digesting the increased supply of food, with the increase before alluded to in the weight of the body, their assumption becomes fully justifiable. It is these combined influences that make the electric bath so valuable a remedy in ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... correspondence; whereas, if our epistolary accounts were fairly liquidated, I believe you would be brought in considerably debtor. I do not see how any of my letters to you can miscarry, unless your office-packet miscarries too, for I always send them to the office. Moreover, I might have a justifiable excuse for writing to you seldomer than usual, for to be sure there never was a period of time, in the middle of a winter, and the parliament sitting, that supplied so little matter for a letter. Near twelve millions have been granted this year, not ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... said he, smiling, that if I were to pursue a vengeance so justifiable in my own opinion, I must be in apprehension of falling by Mr. Lovelace's hand?—I will assure you, that I have no fears of that sort—but I know this is an ungrateful subject to you. Mr. Lovelace is your friend; and I will allow, that a good man may have ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... thought, but even of understanding the fresh human thought of others, which lies beyond the bounds of their Talmud. But the principal thing is, that they pass their best years in getting disused to life; they grow accustomed to consider their position as justifiable; and they convert themselves physically into utterly useless parasites, and mentally they dislocate their brains and become mental eunuchs. And in precisely the same manner, according to the measure of their folly, do they acquire self-conceit, which deprives ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... child is a child in rebellion. Rebellion is sometimes justifiable. Anger may be a virtue. You would not take this force out of your child any more than you would take the temper out of a knife or a spring. Anger manifested vocally or muscularly is the child's form of protest. But, established as a habit of the ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... silence, reasons which we thought quite justifiable. But they don't hold good if we are to be brought into conflict with the police. Mr. Duclos told me this morning that if we were driven to speak we must do so with complete honesty and without quibble. What do you ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... in 1793, two years after Ames had written so encouragingly to Hamilton, and yet warning him to prepare for the inevitable Nemesis, that "envy of the gods," which, according to the Hellenic superstition, but fairly justifiable by innumerable historical facts, waits on all prosperity and rebukes human wisdom. To us it seems that the most that can be said of the effect of the wide-spread and long-continued European quarrel on our business was this,—that it gave to it much of its peculiar character, but did ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... such encroachments. When such a resolution is presented for its consideration, the question is, whether it be true; not whether the body has authority to pass it, admitting it to be true. The Senate, like other public bodies, is perfectly justifiable in defending, in this mode, either its legislative or executive authority. The usages of Parliament, the practice in our State legislatures and assemblies, both before and since the Revolution, and precedents in the Senate itself, fully maintain this right. The case of the Panama ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... in a virgin is the great obstacle to be overcome. He is apt to conclude that this is all, that some force will be needed to break it down, and that therefore an amount of urgency even to the degree of inflicting considerable pain is justifiable. This is usually wrong. It rarely constitutes any obstruction, and, even when its rupturing may be necessary, it alone seldom ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... health, it was so very inferior, and that he had come to the conclusion that nothing in moderation made him either better or worse; "and an occasional cigarette," he said, "adds so much to my general serenity, that I feel sure it is perfectly justifiable." ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... as in war it is allowable and common to make use of wiles and stratagems to overcome the enemy, so in the contests and rivalries of love the tricks and devices employed to attain the desired end are justifiable, provided they be not to the discredit or dishonour of the loved object. Quiteria belonged to Basilio and Basilio to Quiteria by the just and beneficent disposal of heaven. Camacho is rich, and can purchase his ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of Japan, they are harmonious decorations, and a dozen or so of such engaging sketches placed in the upper panels of a lofty apartment would afford a justifiable and welcome alternative even to noble tapestries or Morris wallpapers."—F. Wedmore, "Four ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... evolution is contradicted as we believe by the data of experimental science, by the history of civilization, by the facts especially of religion, more especially of Christianity, then the question is justifiable: Why do scientists uphold the evolutionary theory in some form or other, in spite of such absence of proof and ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... rarely a virtue. But it was not hard to put oneself in the place of these wretches and catch their point of view that made such thievery justifiable. As they saw it, these foreigners had made them go down into their own earth and dig out its treasures, paid them little for their labors, and searched them whenever they left that they should not keep even a little bit of it for themselves. Now they ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Prime Minister, did not think that the conquest of the Transvaal, supposing it to be justifiable, would pay for its cost, and he accordingly made a treaty with the people of that country (1881). Lord Beaconsfield thought this policy a serious mistake, and that it would lead to trouble later on. He said, "We have failed to whip the boy, and we shall have to fight the man." The Gladstone ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... after other means of reformation have been tried, and have failed, that punishment is justifiable for error, transgression, or vice. When our simple prohibition (Sec. 36), the statement of our reason for the prohibiting (Sec. 36), and threat of punishment (Sec. 37) have all failed, then punishment comes and intentionally inflicts pain on the youth in order to force him by this ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... who rallied about his standard. In any other age or setting his devotion would have seemed but fanaticism. The situation, however, was extremely critical. Disloyalty to the law and the distinctive rites of Judaism was treason. If ever in the world's history it was justifiable to meet force by force and to unshield the sword in behalf of religion, this certainly was the occasion. In his military tactics Judas revealed the cunning that characterizes the hunted. He developed great skill in choosing a strategic ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... life out of a dangerous brawler; that perhaps thereby he sought to advertise his satisfaction at the outcome of that day's affair. But this latter theory was not to be credited. For so sensitive and so well-disposed a man as Dudley Stackpole to joy in his own deadly act, however justifiable in the sight of law and man that act might have been—why, the bare notion of it was preposterous! The repute and the prior conduct of the man robbed the suggestion of all plausibility. And then soon, when night after night the lights still flared in his house, and when on top of this evidence accumulated ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... the writer of Darton's "Peter Parley series." George Mogridge wrote several tales under the name of Peter Parley. How far such "false pretences" are justifiable, public opinion, must decide. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... appealed to the Archbishop of Magdeburg to prohibit it. Failing to obtain any satisfaction, he followed the old university custom, made out ninety- five theses, or reasons, why he did not believe the practice justifiable, detailed the abuses, set forth what he conceived to be the true Christian doctrine in the matter, and challenged all comers to a debate on the theses (R. 151). Following true university custom, also, these theses were made out in Latin, and in October, 1517, Luther followed still another university ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... of the said memorials also petitions that in order that this increase of tributes may be more justifiable, the encomenderos be ordered to pay the tithes, according to the use and custom in Mexico; for, inasmuch as the commonwealth previously had neither church, bishop, curates, nor settled rule, the tithes have not been paid. This is a just order, and as such you shall enforce it, providing ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... to work well. That justifies it, so far as the exclusion of the immense majority from the administration of their own affairs can be justified by anything; though I hold that the worst form of graft in office is hardly less justifiable: that is, at least, one of the people picking their pockets. But it is the universal make-believe behind all the practical virtue of the state that constitutes the English monarchy a realm of faery. The whole ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... if he couched his utterances in courtly or diplomatic phrases, they would pass unchallenged, instead of being cited to ridicule him. His mistakes have largely resulted from his impulsive nature coupled with chauvinism, which is, perhaps, justifiable, or, at least, excusable, in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... mammals like the seals. Almost all the great groups of animals have apparently served an apprenticeship in the shore-haunt, and since lessons learned for millions of years sink in and become organically enregistered, it is justifiable to look to the shore as a great school in which were gained racial qualities of endurance, patience, ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... leader destroyed, the rest of the colonists were to be gradually exhausted by starving, until they should fall an easy prey to the savages. But this well-concerted plan was betrayed to the English—a rencontre occurred, and several Indians were slain. The settlers considered themselves justifiable in meeting the treachery of the foe by a stratagem, which drew Pemissapan and eight of his principal men within their reach, and they were all shot down in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... utterly without information as to how Alfonso of Aragon died. If we accept all, then we find that it was as a measure of retaliation that Cesare compassed the death of his brother-in-law, which made it not a murder, but a private execution—justifiable under the circumstances of the provocation received and as the adjustment of these affairs was understood ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... will had the change been wrought? Barbara was now the cherished wife, East Lynne's mistress. And what was she? Not even the courted, welcomed guest of an hour, as Barbara had been; but an interloper; a criminal woman who had thrust herself into the house; her act, in doing so, not justifiable, her position a most false one. Was it right, even if she did succeed in remaining undiscovered, that she and Barbara should dwell in the same habitation, Mr. Carlyle being in it? Did she deem it to be right? No, she did not; but one act of ill-doing entails more. These thoughts ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... obvious facts, and also of the great discrepancies of such organic bodies as are here spoken of in their total mass as the Church, and of their emphasis upon such particularities, is not an attitude of reserve justifiable in a young and conscientious heart? It may seem to be partial scepticism, especially as the necessity for rejection of some portion of this embodied past becomes clearer in the growth of the mind's information ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... secure an imagined orthodoxy by the most rigorous executions: Calvin has burned Servetus at Geneva; Cranmer brought Arians and Anabaptists to the stake; and if persecution of any kind be admitted, the most bloody and violent will surely be allowed the most justifiable, as the most effectual. Imprisonments, fines, confiscations, whippings, serve only to irritate the sects, without disabling them from resistance: but the stake, the wheel, and the gibbet, must soon terminate in the extirpation or banishment of all the heretics inclined ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... account of the evil associations created in the name of Greifenstein by the triple tragedy. He would have said to himself that he was not obliged to speak, since the money, the only thing which could be contested would, after all, go to the Sigmundskrons; and in that case he would have considered it justifiable to take his secret with him to ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... groped for his tobacco. A precious lot of good that would do him! It would have been a pity, too, because murder, even such justifiable murder, had not yet received the sanction of society as represented in the New York Department of Police. He paced the floor restlessly and brought up before his desk, where the janitor of the building had a ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... covetousness of money, in most men, and even in the best, an emulous desire of high offices and glory, in consequence of which the most bitter enmities have often arisen between the dearest friends. For great dissensions, and those in most instances justifiable, arise when some request is made of friends which is improper, as, for instance, that they should become either the ministers of their lust or their supporters in the perpetration of wrong; and they who refuse to do so, it matters not however virtuously, yet are accused of discarding ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... the hardest chap to do anything for I ever saw," I groaned, with the justifiable annoyance of a martyr who has failed to convert a pagan hero. "As if you hadn't made things difficult enough already by 'Mistering' yourself. At any moment you may be found out—though, on second thoughts, it won't matter a rap if you are. If ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... conduct of the Rev. Dr. Parkhurst, of New York, justifiable, and do you think that it had ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... a very helpful conclusion that an increase in the habit of saving among weekly wage-earners might, without appreciably affecting the distribution between Capital and Labor, greatly modify the resulting distribution between social classes. But questions as to how far it might be possible or justifiable to achieve a similar result by the use of the weapon of taxation, by changes in inheritance laws, or by the public ownership of industry take us into a far more uncertain and controversial sphere. The difficulties and objections ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... Church of England, has a feeble grip on the masses. They hold it in no familiar embrace. And if reasons are sought, they are partly found in the want of cutting edge to her sober comprehensive teaching, partly in the characteristics often theoretically so justifiable but practically so awkward, of the Prayer Book. There is little in our Church which corresponds to that elemental regimen or discipline which possesses simple-minded Roman Catholics. The power of cultus, of institutional and family religion, is ...
— Thoughts on religion at the front • Neville Stuart Talbot
... Canova modeled Venus. Her skin was of the rich gold hue that marks the blood unmuddied by Spanish strain; to see her, poised on a rich hip by the river's brink, wringing her tresses after the morning bath, it were justifiable to mistake her for some beautiful bronze. Moreover, it were easy to see her, for, in Tehuantepec, innocence is thoughtless as in old Eden. When Paul Steiner passed her one morning, she gave him the curious open-eyed stare of a deer, bade him a pleasant "Buenos dias, Senor!" ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... A perfectly justifiable response to this unauthorized query would have been that it was no concern of his. But there was that in Martin Dyke's face which ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... reached Reigate. The inquest did not last many minutes, and the jury without hesitation returned a verdict of justifiable homicide. ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... I have not thought it necessary to advert to the romance of JAMBULUS, the scene of which has been conjectured, but without any justifiable grounds, to be laid in Ceylon; and which is strangely incorporated with the authentic work of DIODORUS SICULUS, written in the age of Augustus. DIODORUS professes to give it as an account of the recent ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... any other way—as by the consent of a majority only of the several States—would be a revolutionary act. Doubtless revolutionary acts become a justifiable remedy on rare and great occasions, as in 1776; but they are usually replete with danger. They are never more dangerous than when employed by one section of a confederacy against another, weaker section of the same. To the stability of government, it is necessary that the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... fees of the clergy of the province of Canterbury. In the spring of the following year he proceeded to seize all the wool of the country, paying for it by tallies, and to levy a supply of provisions on the counties. The act was only justifiable on the plea of necessity, and led to measures being ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Hutchinson was a member, was appointed to consider of some other method of punishing offenders. Although they did not altogether abolish mulets, yet "they proposed that, in lieu of an increase of mulcts, absences without justifiable cause from any exercise of the College should subject the delinquent to warning, private admonition, exhortation to duty, and public admonition, with a notification to parents; when recitations had been omitted, performance of them should be exacted at ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... etc. Finished Blair's Dissertation on Ossian. Finished Trachiniae. Did 3 props. of Euclid. Question: Was deposition of Richard II. justifiable? Voted no. Good debate. Finished ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... should, that you have to say "Yes" or "No" to a challenge to fight, say "No" if you can—only take care you make it clear to yourselves why you say "No." It's a proof of the highest courage, if done from true Christian motives. It's quite right and justifiable, if done from a simple aversion to physical pain and danger. But don't say "No" because you fear a licking, and say or think it's because you fear God, for that's neither Christian nor honest. And if you do fight, fight it out; and don't ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... daresay, that I have been putting the case one-sidedly. Possibly that is so; but I am putting the side that wants putting. I am constantly seeing it stated that any measures are justifiable so long as they are likely to end the war. "Well, but we must end it somehow," is a common phrase. That is all rubbish. We must fight fairly, that's the first rule of all. I daresay there may have been individual acts of cruelty ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... crude, impetuous, merciless youth. I had once felt as she did, but now I could see the cruel train of conditions behind certain characters forcing them into different positions, and in place of Dawn's wholesome, justifiable, hot-headed rage against the likes of Rooney-hyphen, I felt for him a contempt so immeasurable that it almost toppled over and ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... espoused wife belonged. But when we are called upon to surrender our belief to the legends invented by men whose ignorance is the best apology we can urge for their superstition, a certain degree of disgust and indignation is perfectly justifiable. ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... to him at that moment that the story his visitor had to tell in any way concerned himself, or would deepen the even melancholy of his present days. He settled himself comfortably, with a sense of justifiable relaxation from toil. The troubles of another might arouse his intellectual sympathy, but they could add no burden to his heart. He even experienced a pleasurable curiosity. Emmet was to some degree a mysterious character to him, though he no longer thought of him in connection ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... this period is marked by exertions of the people, through their representatives in the House of Commons, not only justifiable in their principle, but directed to the properest objects, and in a manner the most judicious. Many of their leaders were greatly versed in ancient as well as modern learning, and were even enthusiastically attached to the great names of antiquity; but they never conceived the wild project of ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... of the National Gallery, and that they proposed to give the academy L. 40,000 to provide themselves with a building elsewhere. The matter slumbered, however, till 1858, when the question was raised in the house of Commons as to whether it would not be justifiable to turn the Academy out of the National Gallery without making any provision for it elsewhere. Much discussion followed, and a royal commission was appointed in 1863 "to inquire into the present position of the Royal Academy in relation to the fine arts, and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... as controllers of nerve function in health and disease, a valid criticism can be made. Firstly, the Freudian jargon, its technicalities and explanations, are metaphors. Some may regard them as justifiable descriptions of mental processes. But it certainly can be urged against them that they provide us with no idea concerning what is happening in the cells of the body and brain as explanation for the event, normal or abnormal, supposedly explained. Words like sublimation or transference ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... their position as drones in the world's hive. They seem rather to apologise for their degradation as a thing inevitable, for which they are not accountable— and sometimes, in the case of the rich, as a thing justifiable. ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... afterwards ceased publication. Employed on it as a writer was James Nesbitt, an Englishman, of superior journalistic ability. King employed Nesbitt to assist him on the Bulletin. It was made the medium of attack and animadversion upon State and county and city officials, and some of its attacks were as justifiable as are the attacks of the STAR upon rascals in high places now, while others ...
— The Vigilance Committee of '56 • James O'Meara
... disturbed. His pulses were throbbing; scarcely could he steady his voice. He dreaded a disclosure of what might well be regarded as throwing doubt upon his sincerity, the more so that he understood in this moment how justifiable such a doubt would be. After the merriment of a few minutes ago, this sudden shaking of his nerves was the harder to endure. It revived with painful intensity the first great agitations of his life. His way of speaking could not ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... Frederic in the hands of Christian Scientists (a sort of sealing with his blood of the contemptuous disbelief in and dislike of doctors he had bitterly expressed in his books), the scathing and quite justifiable exposure of medical practice in the novel by Mr. Maarten Maartens entitled The New Religion: all these trouble the doctor very little, and are in any case well set off by the popularity of Sir Luke Fildes' famous picture, and by the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... time. "Sometimes, however," said Peter to himself, "these, trusteeships have very handsome picking's, aside from the half per cent." Peter did not say that the "pickings," as they framed themselves in his mind, were sundry calls on him at his office, and a justifiable reason at all times for calling on Leonore; to say nothing of letters and other unearned increment. So Peter was not obstinate this time. "It's such a simple matter that I can have the papers drawn while you wait, if you've half an hour to spare." Peter did this, thinking it would keep ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... national charity. That the Church should be administrator was not the difficulty. Whether, indeed, the selection of one religion, to be by ordinance of Parliament the religion of the subjects of the State, was justifiable, will always be gravely questioned. But, rightly or wrongly, that had already been done; and it was clearly fitting that the body which was thus in a sense made co-extensive with the nation, should undertake national duties, of a kind cognate ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... present occasion. Then a man never does wrong, even in defence of that which is inherently his due, without the secret consciousness that "evil may not be done, that good may come of it"; and Ithuel had a certain inward monitor to remind him that, much as he had in the way of justifiable complaint, he had carried the war ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the excellent training she received from her mother, she seldom lost control of herself. When she did, she was cross clear through, and it took her a long time to get over it. Dexie thought that this was a time when a burst of temper might be justifiable; so she determined to pick a quarrel with her, and hoped the ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... him to be backward with a debt of honour (though I write it, how foolish the expression: as if all debts were not equally incumbent), but any tradesman may wait for years. He does not lie, except to save a woman's reputation (query—Is it then justifiable? I really don't know), but he exaggerates fearfully. Animal courage he has, but nothing of the moral attribute. Except as regards his egotism, personal and national, he is not offensive in manner or language. To ladies he is courteous, but his opinion ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... steal it. The most agreeable way of winning a father-in-law is not by force of threatening to hale him to a police court, but it is better to win him that way than not to win him at all, Hans thought; and he thought also that this was one of the occasions when it was quite justifiable to fight the devil with fire. So his spirits rose, and now he longed for, as eagerly as in the first moments of his loss he had dreaded, the production of such lebkuchen at the Cafe Nuernberg as would prove the proprietor of that highly respectable establishment to be neither ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... not; I was forgetting. I should say that the good young man will be acquitted because it was justifiable homicide or that he will return after a short term of imprisonment; in any case I think he will marry Rosina ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... who bestowed a name which is more apt than designations usually are. The word detective, taken by itself, implies one who must descend to questionable shifts to attain justifiable ends; but with the prefix of private, it means one using a machine permitted to the exigencies of justice for the purpose of surreptitious personal gain. Thus used, this agency, which even in honest hands and for lawful ends is one of doubtful propriety, becomes essentially ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe |
