"Arbitrary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon power as belonging of right to the strongest; the weak, or those who differ from him in opinion, he will treat with contempt and cruelty, and will think they have no rights he is bound to respect. In power, such a man will be arbitrary and cruel; out of power, he will be faithless, hypocritical and subservient. Trust him with authority, he will abuse it; trust him with money, he will steal it; trust him with your confidence, and he will betray it. Such ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... classics, and breathe a spirit of freedom and independence; they are full of irony on petty sovereigns and on their vices; they establish moral goodness above social position, and the will of the people above the arbitrary power of their rulers. He was much revered, and considered bolder and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... persons acted in this way when they gave their property to the Church. Church goods being unseizable, and exempt from taxation, this was a roundabout way of getting the better of fiscal extortion, whether in the shape of arbitrary confiscations, or eviction by force of arms. In any case, such souls as were tired of the world and longing for repose, found in these bequests an heroic method of saving themselves the trouble of looking after a fortune or a landed estate. When ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... he was now certain of the change which time, circumstance, and environment had wrought in himself; he was curiously conscious of the silent growth of a germ which, one day, must become a dictatorial and arbitrary habit—the habit of right thinking. The habit of duty, independent of circumstances, had slowly grown with his military training; mind and body had learned automatically to obey; mind and body now definitely ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... but less arbitrary player than the bellringer, and the chimes await their appointed time to fly—wild prisoners—by twos or threes, or in greater companies. Fugitives—one or twelve taking wing—they are sudden, they are brief, they are gone; they are delivered from the close hands of ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... for, says he, it is not every one who can be weary of the most exquisite enjoyments of society, and to be thus sated a man must have been greatly prized by beauty and wealth. These reflections and explanations are arbitrary, and not impartial. But even if Lord Byron, at twenty-one years of age, did borrow ideas and sentiments not really his, by way of producing poetic effect, we must nevertheless acknowledge that, even in this order of sentiments, part still were genuine and real. Like all young men, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... is an arbitrary cuss," said the old woman. "They say he was one of Teddy's Rough-riders in the war. He sure can ride and handle a gun. 'Pears like he thinks he's runnin' the whole range," she continued, after a pause. "Cain't nobody so much as shoot a grouse since he came on, and the Supervisor upholds ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... forcibly detain me by seizing hold of the bicycle, at the same time making no pretence of concealing their eager curiosity concerning the probable contents of my luggage. Naturally disapproving of this arbitrary conduct, I push them roughly away. With a growl more like the voice of a wild animal than of human beings, one draws his sword and the other picks up a thick knobbed stick that he had dropped in order to the better pinch and sound my packages. Without giving ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... ever to carry with it? that you are obeyed solely from respect to the bayonet? and that this House, the ground and pillar of freedom, is itself held up only by the treacherous underpinning and clumsy buttresses of arbitrary power? ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... which I am sure is, that the distinction between the organic and inorganic is arbitrary; that it is more coherent with our other ideas, and therefore more acceptable, to start with every molecule as a living thing, and then deduce death as the breaking up of an association or corporation, than to start with inanimate molecules and ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... to the progress of this country, and to the peace of the world. Having referred briefly to one cause of disturbance to the progress of mechanical engineering, he named another, which at the present moment is occupying thoughtful men to a considerable extent, namely, the arbitrary imposition of duties and bounties for the professed object of protecting manufactures, while in fact they constitute taxes on a nation for the benefit of a few individuals. In some countries excessive duties have been imposed, as against ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... noises to express his amazement at this astounding phenomenon, Dick waved her theme by him as though he were an arbitrary traffic policeman, and, so to speak, beckoned forward his ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and love. It brings a joy to the parents' hearts to behold their child obeying willingly. By the help of God such obedience can be obtained. Some one may ask, "Would you never punish a child?" Yes; it is sometimes necessary, but not so often as many have supposed. Training, and not arbitrary government is ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... no!" exclaimed the superintendent. "It is evident, Mr. West, as indeed the histories say, that governmental action carried with it in your day an arbitrary implication which it does not now. The Government is actually now what it nominally was in the America of your day—the servant, tool, and instrument by which the people give effect to their will, itself being without will. The popular will is expressed ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... much attention to the rather arbitrary rules on painting laid down by the Painters' Union. Life is too short. For instance, I don't put my brushes in turpentine when I have finished for the day; and if I do I put the green brush and the light-blue ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... have been subjected to trials of temper so severe as vexed Mr. Adams during his Presidential term. To play an intensely exciting game strictly in accordance with rigid moral rules of the player's own arbitrary enforcement, and which are utterly repudiated by a less scrupulous antagonist, can hardly tend to promote contentment and amiability. Neither are slanders and falsehoods mollifying applications to a statesman inspired with an upright and noble ambition. Mr. Adams bore such assaults, ranging ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... also because it requires a very small degree of previous instruction. It seems, in fact, to be merely the exertion of a man's physical force; and its value above that of a machine of equal power arises from its portability, and from the facility of directing its efforts to arbitrary and continually fluctuating purposes. It may perhaps be worthy of enquiry, whether a more constant average might not be deduced from combining with this species of labour those trades which require but a moderate exertion of skill and which likewise ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... far more philosophical language than that which is frequently substituted for it by Poets, who think that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their art in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression in order to furnish food for fickle tastes and fickle appetites ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... nature. He had hated Aunt Jane, and regarded her as cruel and selfish—a fair estimate of her character—until Aunt Jane's nieces taught him to be more considerate and forgiving. Patricia, especially, had exercised a gentler influence upon the arbitrary youth, and as a consequence they had become ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... difficult. The Senate desires impartiality, equable temper, and knowledge of parliamentary law from its presiding officer. But it will not submit to any attempt on the part of the presiding officer to direct or advise it, and will instantly resent any arbitrary ruling. Of course, Mr. Roosevelt presided only at a few meetings before the final adjournment. When Congress met again he was President of ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... a member of the legislature, a petition was presented to the house for an act of amnesty of all those arbitrary measures which the American officers had been obliged to adopt during the war, in order to get horses, provisions, &c. for the army. The petition was signed by the names of all the favorite officers of the state, and among ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... Thus the arbitrary hand of power, in one night, smote and swept away the sciences: to which succeeded the low vulgar buffoonery of a showman. Virgil and Cicero made way for a wild beast from Angola! and now a guard is on duty at the very ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... differences between the races and their number must have been small; consequently as far as their distinguishing characters are concerned, they then had less claim to rank as distinct species than the existing so-called races. Nevertheless, so arbitrary is the term of species, that such early races would perhaps have been ranked by some naturalists as distinct species, if their differences, although extremely slight, had been more constant than they are at present, and had not graduated ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... and the head men at once assembled and seated themselves in the council circle as a matter of course and of right.[3] The chief, unquestionably a man of courage and physical power, was an executive officer who rarely asserted arbitrary rule, particularly in civil affairs, for the Sioux were too high spirited a people to tolerate anything savoring of despotism. Usually he was suave, diplomatic and tolerant, and enjoyed the affection and veneration of his people. ...
— Sioux Indian Courts • Doane Robinson
... Russian vessel laden with Chinese goods, an accessory circumstance which deserves to be mentioned for the light which it throws on the character of this Pizarro of Kamchatka. He was not set free until the year 1706, and then recovered his command in Kamchatka, with strict orders to desist from all arbitrary proceedings and acts of violence, and to do his best for the discovery of new lands. The first part of this order he however complied with only to a limited extent, which gave occasion to repeated complaints[309] and revolts among the already unbridled Cossacks. Finally, in 1711, Atlassov and several ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Creator, but the expression for the time being of a mechanical process of development of matter, the expression of a necessarily active cause, that is, of a mechanical cause (causa efficiens). Where teleological Dualism seeks the arbitrary thoughts of a capricious Creator in miracles of creation, causal Monism finds in the process of development the necessary effects of eternal immutable laws of nature." Haeckel's "Anthropogeny" also is replete with attacks upon a teleological {162} view ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... to put the question. If a member is aggrieved by the conduct or decisions of the Master, he has his redress by an appeal to the Grrand Lodge, which will, of course, see that the Master does not rule his lodge "in an unjust or arbitrary manner." But such a thing as an appeal from the Master of the lodge to its members is unknown ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... this time, probably, that the custom of inventing an arbitrary private vocabulary of words and phrases for the purpose of disguising references to functions and parts of the body regarded as immodest and indecent, first began to become common. Such private slang, growing ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... for several months, when Madame Augereau, his wife, a woman of courage, saw come into the harbour a ship flying the tricolour. She went on board to give the captain a letter, informing the French government of the arbitrary arrest of her husband. The captain, although not a naval officer, went boldly to the Portuguese ministry and demanded the release of his compatriot; failing which, he said that he would declare war in the name of France. ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... nothing but the welfare and deliverance of the people; when a king listens to such excellent men; and when a parliament, from the basest, most interested motives, interposes to intercept the blessing, must I not change my opinions, and admire arbitrary power? or can I retain my sentiments, without ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... be ruled by the personal, arbitrary whims of supremely wise men, or by laws formulated by ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... of rhetoric:—"He did not think it possible that such a case of abuse could pass unnoticed as that he had just heard. The general conduct of the police was, he believed, good; but the instances of arbitrary conduct and overbearing demeanour set to flight all the ancient examples brought forward to enrich by contrast the serious parts of the glorious genius of Shakspeare." We never understood or imagined there was an Anacreon among the aldermen, a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... a mass of trivial and arbitrary conventions, "extremely troublesome to those who practise them and insupportable to everybody else," seem to forget the long, slow progress of social intercourse in the upward climb of man from the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... material existence. In the first place, the existence of a material celestial sphere would require that all the myriad stars should be at exactly the same distances from the earth. Of course, no one will say that this or any other arbitrary disposition of the stars is actually impossible, but as there was no conceivable physical reason why the distances of all the stars from the earth should be identical, it seemed in the very highest degree improbable that the stars ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... now refer was long before the church, in its wisdom, enacted a law for regulating chapels of ease; and not only the amount of stipend, but the continuance of clergymen who officiated in such chapels, depended on the arbitrary and sovereign will of their pious founders. Bellerstown, though a step in William Douglas' professional progress, yielded too scanty a revenue to admit of matrimony; but the talents, respectability, and prepossessing manners ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... from the brief Morgan control under Spencer to the receivership contained the same kind of irregularities and errors of policy that had prevailed under the earlier Garrett management. Statements of profits had been swelled by arbitrary entries in the books and nearly six million dollars which had not been earned had been paid out in dividends. Furthermore the company had endorsed the notes of certain subsidiary roads to the extent of over five million ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... loyal, without making such public revelations in the interest of patriotism, that any pretended private revelation must necessarily have become a farce. No one, especially, would have held any such secret for months, and then divulged it in the ambiguous mode of a romance, while arbitrary arrests and unexplained imprisonments were making the once free States of the Old Union a second Venice. Suspicious circumstances have been observed, and suspicious persons put under watch; but if anything more than mere suspicion has been reached, the disloyal persons ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... memory, "I would rather," said he, "that you would teach me that of forgetfulness; for I even now recollect what I would rather not; but I cannot forget what I should like to." This was a very sensible answer. But still the fact is that it is the act of a very arbitrary philosopher to forbid a man to recollect. It seems to me a command very much in the spirit of your ancestor, Manlius, or even worse, to command what it is impossible for me to do. What will you say if the recollection ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... when lovers' sentiments stray away from feeling, they are to be suspected of a disloyalty. Yet he admired the tone she took. He had got an 'ideal' of her which it was pleasanter to magnify than to distort. An 'ideal' is so arbitrary, that if you only doubt of its being perfection, it will vanish and never come again. Sir Purcell refused to doubt. He blamed himself for having thought it possible to doubt, and this, when all ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and for private interests. But the peoples decipher no principles but those that are writ in blood, and the evils of legality will always be pacific; it flattens a nation down, that is all. Jacquet, a man of modern liberty, returned home reflecting on the benefits of arbitrary power. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Islands, (Ellis's Polynesian Researches), that the inhabitants of Tahiti were more simple in their tattooing, and displayed greater taste and elegance than some of the other islanders. "Though some of the figures are arbitrary, such as stars, circles, lozenges, etcetera, the patterns are usually taken from nature, and are often some of the most graceful. A cocoa-nut tree is a favourite object; and I have often admired the taste ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... grant to your people some assurance for the future. You have done neither the one nor the other. Since your Majesty has recovered your authority, nothing has been heard of on your part but arrests and arbitrary edicts. Anxiety, fear, and discontent begin to spread everywhere." Angouleme returned to France thoroughly disenchanted with the cause for which he had ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... arbitrary acts; there were those who curried favor with him, and worked his will, and became his minions. In that school of misery, where bitter minds dreamed only of vengeance, where the sophistries hatched in ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... having contraband goods in his possession, would it have been a good "reason" for such an atrocity, that the collection of duties was "a constitutional obligation"? You are condemned for voting for an arbitrary, detestable, diabolical law,—one that tramples upon the rights of conscience, outrages the feelings of humanity, discards the rules of evidence, levels all the barriers erected by the common law for the protection of personal liberty, and, in defiance of the Constitution, and against its express ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... the Pelasgi, at least, and who the Etruscans, and the as mysterious Iapygians, who seem also to have had an earlier acquaintance with writing—as proved by their inscriptions—than the Phoenicians, then only may he menace the Asiatic into acceptance of his own arbitrary data and dogmas. Then also may he tauntingly ask "how it is that no appreciable trace is left of such high civilizations as are ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... that, of all the men living, the railroad and day laborer of this "free country" is the most ill treated and oppressed. He has to work from dark to dark; he has to take store pay for his wages; and he has to obey the nod, look, and arbitrary commands of the lowest, cruellest, and most brutal class of men on earth. I ask any man, Is not this slavery? Van Stingey was now rich—had horses, wagons, and a splendid mansion. He took another, and a third contract, in which he was ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... well as properly spacing, and in felling and removing, from time to time, the trees which compose it, are too obvious to require to be more than hinted at. In conducting these operations, we must have a diligent eye to the requirements of nature, and must remember that a wood is not an arbitrary assemblage of trees to be selected and disposed according to the caprice of its owner. "A forest," says Clave, "is not, as is often supposed, a simple collection of trees succeeding each other in long perspective, without bond of union, and capable of isolation from each other; it is, on the contrary, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... number of whorls appearing in the odd fingers is ascertained to be 2. Their positions are noted (1 in No. 1 and 1 in No. 7) and the values assigned to whorls appearing in those fingers are added together (16 plus 2 18). To this sum the arbitrary 1 is added, giving us the total of 19, which constitutes the denominator for this set of prints. To get the numerator, it is ascertained that there are 3 whorls appearing in the even fingers (2, 4 and 6), the values of which are added together (16 plus 8 plus 4 28). To this sum the ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... there be two sorts, Arbitrary, and Naturall. Arbitrary, is that which is agreed on by the Competitors; Naturall, is either Primogeniture, (which the Greek calls Kleronomia, which signifies, Given by ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... Cousin Zebedee Allen couldn't wear whiskers? Why," sez he, "his whiskers are his main beauty, and naterally Zeb is more particular about his looks than if he wuz married. Such laws are wicked and arbitrary. Why, when I courted my first wife, Samantha, my whiskers and my dressy looks wuz what won the day. And I d'no," sez he inquiringly, "but ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... in another place, Why do not the rich Catholics endow foundations for the education of the priesthood? Why do you not permit them to do so? Why are all such bequests subject to the interference, the vexatious, arbitrary, peculating interference of the Orange commissioners ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... feeling existing between members of the Cabinet comes out in many entries in Welles's Diary. "Pressing, assuming, violent, impatient, intriguing, harsh, and arbitrary," are examples of the terms in which Stanton is spoken of by Welles His contempt for the Committee on the Conduct of the War is expressed in no less stinging words. The members of this committee "are most of ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... towards depreciation because of their predilection for objective as opposed to subjective criticism. The late P.G. Hamerton, writing upon Rembrandt, says, "The chiaroscuro of Rembrandt is often false and inconsistent, and in fact he relied largely on public ignorance. But though arbitrary, it is always conducive to ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... with equal austerity and resolution, yet in a voice persuasive and conciliatory rather than arbitrary or dictatorial, the mere form and manner of this quixotic undertaking thrilled all my fibres in defiance of its sense. It was like the blare of bugles in a dubious cause; one's blood responded before one's brain; and but for Raffles, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... Chopins? The reason, asserted a middle-aged man, was that women's emotions were too thoroughly instinctive to be projected in the form of first-class music, which was, in fine, emotion analyzed, compressed within the limits of fixed rules, expressed by series of arbitrary signs. In the midst of his conclusion, however, he lost his self-satisfied smile: he had caught sight of Lilla, who was looking at him blankly as though he had slammed a ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... ingenious contrivance, designed in the likeness of gaping jaws which opened and shut in fearful style, emitting volumes of sulphurous smoke, not to mention awesome noises. The 'make-ups' too were far from being the arbitrary fancies of the wearers. True, they possibly bore no great resemblance to the originals. But that was due to an ignorance of history rather than to carelessness about truth. The probability is that in many cases the images and paintings in the churches were imitated, as ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... This is arbitrary, however. On the crested bill of fare we learn that there are other things to be had, but that they must be ordered a la carte. Glancing down the mammoth card we begin reading such items: Saumon Fume, Pigeon Cocotte Bonne Femme, Rognons Sautes, Champignons, Caille ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... stage, and to anticipate therefore that social science will, in its turn, be emancipated from the delusion.... It [the existing social science] represents the social action of Man to be indefinite and arbitrary, as was once thought in regard to biological, chemical, physical, and even astronomical phenomena, in the earlier stages of their respective sciences.... The human race finds itself delivered over, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... made to reduce criticism to an exact science, which, quite disregarding the factor of personal taste, could refer all literature to a more or less fixed and arbitrary set of critical principles. The champions of this objective criticism point to the occasionally ludicrous divergence of the views expressed in criticism of certain poets or novelists, and insist that there is no occasion for such ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... the second class is a blow to public liberty. The magistrate cannot condemn until after the fullest evidence and a succession of facts. This leaves nothing to arbitrary decision. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... who explain this modern religiosity will seem most arbitrary to the inquirer. For they relate of God, as men will relate of a close friend, his dispositions, his apparent intentions, the aims of his kingship. And just as they advance no proof whatever of the existence ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... There, too, I met Orestes Bronson, a remarkably well-read man, who had gone through every phase of religious experience from blank atheism to the bosom of the Catholic Church, where I believe he found repose at the end of his days. He was so arbitrary and dogmatic that most people did not like him; but I appreciated his acquaintance, as he was a liberal thinker and had a world of information which he readily imparted to those of a teachable spirit. As I was then in a hungering, thirsting condition ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Benevento at Messina. His reception was still more cordial and soothing. He embraced me with warmth, and even wept over me. He could not refrain from imprecations upon the memory of my father, and he declared with energy, that the son of Leonora della Colonna should never suffer from the arbitrary and capricious tyranny of a Sicilian count. He assured me in the strongest terms that his whole fortune was at my disposal. Then telling me that his dear and only child had been impatient for my arrival, he took me by the hand, and led me to ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... The belief that arbitrary Government was about to be established throughout the colonies made the people in every direction rise in arms. A rebel force, consisting of several thousand men, began to collect in the neighbourhood of ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... defined as an organism with life and direction within. In the light of these definitions, I close with the conception of Carlyle. The order and energy of the universe I hold to be inherent, and not imposed from without, the expression of fixed law and not of arbitrary will, exercised by what Carlyle would call an Almighty Clockmaker. But the two conceptions are not so much opposed to each other after all. In one fundamental particular they at all events agree. They equally imply the interdependence and harmonious interaction of parts, and ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... was ten feet two inches high, and his shank measured four feet one inch. His nomination as Prince Imperial was an even more arbitrary violation of the right of primogeniture than the case of his predecessor had been, for he was chosen in preference to his elder brother merely because, when the two youths were casually questioned as to what they wished for, the elder said, "a bow and ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... annoying change in the initial meridian, or, what would more probably result, the retention of the first chosen meridian, which would thus lose its dependence upon the original definition, and become as arbitrary as if taken by chance in ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... fancy for allegory, has arisen from the desire to make the one a speaking picture without really knowing what it can and ought to paint, and the other a dumb poem without having considered in how far painting can express universal ideas without abandoning its proper sphere and degenerating into an arbitrary method of writing.... Since the artist can use but a single moment of ever-changing Nature, and the painter must further confine his study of this one moment to a single point of view, while their works are made not simply to be looked at, but to be contemplated long ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... this connection, does the author of Beowulf use "hilt" to designate the whole sword; consequently, to write "gylden hilt" as one word and capitalize it is both arbitrary and illogical. There is, in fact, nothing in the poem to indicate that the sword had ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... malignant was a term of reproach given to those who, in the civil wars, opposed Divine truth, and promoted popery and arbitrary domination. Clarendon calls it 'a term imposed upon those that the puritans wished to render odious to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the bar, you went and gave notice to your agents. They, in their turn, notified Falk that so-and-so was ready to go out. Then Falk (ostensibly when it fitted in with his other work, but, if the truth were known, simply when his arbitrary spirit moved him), after ascertaining carefully in the office that there was enough money to meet his bill, would come along unsympathetically, glaring at you with his yellow eyes from the bridge, and would drag you out dishevelled ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... of Mr. Tyrrel, one Hawkins;—I cannot mention his name without recollecting the painful tragedies that are annexed to it! This Hawkins had originally been taken up by Mr. Tyrrel, with a view of protecting him from the arbitrary proceedings of a neighbouring squire, though he had now in his turn become an object of persecution to Mr. Tyrrel himself. The first ground of their connection was this:—Hawkins, beside a farm which he rented under the above-mentioned ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... take into consideration such factors as physical build and muscular development. We don't train undersized boys to be freight handlers. But in general the division is arbitrary. And you'd be amazed how they respond to it. To keep a check on things, we interview our students twice a year to see how ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... more fanciful. He changed guides at the next native village, fearing that Binhart might have grown too intimate with the old ones. He was swayed by an ever-increasing fear of intrigues. He coerced his flagging will into a feverish watchfulness. He became more arbitrary in his movements and exactions. When the chance came, he purchased a repeating Lee-Enfield rifle, which he packed across his sweating back on the trail and slept with under his arm at night. When a morning came when ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... please. Indeed, the more learning and power we have and the more exalted our rank, the greater knaves we are; perpetrating every wicked deed, stirring up strife, discord, war and murder for the sake of executing our own arbitrary designs, where the question is the surrender of a penny in recognition of the hundreds of thousands of dollars daily received from God notwithstanding ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... not dead but living, rich in company, for the entertainment, the expansion, of the present; and Duke Carl was still without suspicion of the cynic afterthought that such historic soul was but an arbitrary substitution, a generous loan of ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... periods of time. Individual members were exiled for utterances which Von Plehve regarded as dangerous. The power of the zemstvos themselves was lessened by taking from them such important functions as the provisioning of famine-stricken districts and by limiting in the most arbitrary manner the amount of the budget permitted to each zemstvo. Since every decision of the zemstvos was subject to veto by the governors of the respective provinces, the government had at all times a formidable weapon at hand to use in its fight ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... king William, and prior of Winchester; he recovered for his monastery some of the lands which had been given to the Normans during the siege of the fen district. This was the "Camp of Refuge" for all the English who refused submission to the arbitrary rule of the foreigners, and thus it was the last strong hold of the Saxons, and cost the Norman king much loss of time, blood, and treasure, before he obtained possession, which was, however, at last ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... of the great and small that it baffles description, that language fails, and that the tongue must remain mute. Therefore we hold, (and we speak from knowledge gained through years of close study and investigation), that the finer distinctions which we have made, and shall make, are not at all arbitrary, but absolutely necessary as are divisions and distinctions ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... we have stated above, the fact of its official recognition. This placed it in a privileged position among Oriental religions, at least at the beginning of the imperial regime. It enjoyed a toleration that was neither precarious nor limited; it was not subjected to arbitrary police measures nor to coercion on the part of magistrates; its fraternities were not continually threatened with dissolution, nor its priests with expulsion. It was publicly authorized and endowed, its ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... feeling of satisfaction avers that he does not eat and does not feel satisfied?—If the Bauddha should reply that he does not affirm that he is conscious of no object but only that he is conscious of no object apart from the act of consciousness, we answer that he may indeed make any arbitrary statement he likes, but that he has no arguments to prove what he says. That the outward thing exists apart from consciousness, has necessarily to be accepted on the ground of the nature of consciousness itself. Nobody when perceiving ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... throughout the plant is rigid. There are no petty rules, and no rules the justice of which can reasonably be disputed. The injustice of arbitrary discharge is avoided by confining the right of discharge to the employment manager, and he rarely exercises it. The year 1919 is the last on which statistics were kept. In that year 30,155 changes occurred. Of those 10,334 were absent more than ten days without notice ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... choose the least. Sound statesmanship regards any stretch of power better than the overthrow of the nation. Probably there never was a more able and wise body of men assembled, or more jealous of any exercise of arbitrary power, than the First Congress of the United States; and yet, almost in the commencement of our struggle for independence, when events wore such a gloomy aspect that failure seemed inevitable, rising above its fears of despotic measures, in its greater fear of total ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... knowest!" said Dudley but instantly checking himself, he added, "Yet she shall not find in me a safe or easy victim of arbitrary vengeance. I have friends—I have allies—I will not, like Norfolk, be dragged to the block as a victim to sacrifice. Fear not, Amy; thou shalt see Dudley bear himself worthy of his name. I must instantly communicate ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... manned almost exclusively by men who did not voluntarily enter the service, prompted by a feeling of patriotism, a sense of honor, or the expectation of emolument, but were victims to the unjust and arbitrary system of impressment. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... not conceal from myself that there may be much that is arbitrary in my own criterion; but this does not seem to me possible to avoid. We must therefore appeal to psychology, and ask whether it is cognisant of any phenomenon offering a violent, lasting, and ineffaceable contrast with all the ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... Royalist section was ultimately crushed, while the Parliamentary section was gradually absorbed into that first great standing army which this country ever knew, the New Model of 1645. For fifteen years the people groaned under the dominance of this arbitrary, conscientious, and very expensive force. Then, in 1660, came the Restoration, and with it the disbanding of the New Model and the re-establishment of the militia. The country went wild with joy at the recovery ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... her, and allowed himself to be worked up to strong parliamentary anger against the magistrates and police. "When they think that they have public opinion on their side, there is nothing in the way or arbitrary excess which is too great for them." This he said to Barrington Erle, who angered him and increased the warmth of his feeling by declaring that a little close confinement would be good for the Bunces of the day. "If we don't keep the mob down, the mob will keep us down," said the Whig private ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... stronger would succeed and swallow up all the rest. The theory of checks and balances is admirable if the object be to trammel power, and to have as little power in the government as possible; but it is a theory which is born from passions engendered by the struggle against despotism or arbitrary power, not from a calm and philosophical appreciation of government itself. The English have not succeeded in establishing their theory, for, after all, their constitution does not work so well as they pretend. The landed interest controls at one time, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... Arbitrary criticism of the Biblical narratives of the raising of the "dead."—Facts which it ignores.—The subject related to the phenomena of trance, and records of premature burial.—The resuscitation in Elisha's ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... is contended that the national council ought to have no concern with any object of internal administration. An exact equality of suffrage between the members has also been insisted upon as a leading feature of a confederate government. These positions are, in the main, arbitrary; they are supported neither by principle nor precedent. It has indeed happened, that governments of this kind have generally operated in the manner which the distinction taken notice of, supposes ...
— The Federalist Papers
... you may readily perceive how God punishes vice and rewards virtue. He does not do it by any abstract law, or arbitrary mode of procedure, but lie has in infinite wisdom interwoven, the whole in the very constitution of our natures, so that the wicked cannot go unpunished, nor the righteous unrewarded. To teach that man can ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... thought they were worth. Then there were heated altercations, which sometimes ended in blood being spilt, or some of the crew being put in irons and logged for having instigated rebellion on the high seas. "I'll teach you to impeach my authority," the stupid, arbitrary tyrant would say; "you shall be fed on the smell of an oil-rag in future, and have your wages forfeited at the end of the voyage into the bargain." Alas, this wicked threat was too often carried into effect so far as the forfeiture of wages and ill-treatment were concerned. Whereas the ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... and nature, has changed the face of the Nation's River. Nature's rains, snows, ice and floods continually carve the shores. Man, also, changes the Potomac through man-made fills, walls, docks, bridges and piers. The arbitrary changes by man and nature have reached the point where careful planning and consideration must be given to the river's future in order to preserve its majestic beauty ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... Ethelberta, with glad displeasure. 'Did you ever hear such audacity? Fixing a time so soon that I cannot reply, and thus making capital out of a pretended necessity, when it is really an arbitrary arrangement of his own. That's real rebellion—forcing himself into my house when I said strictly he was not to come; and then, that it cannot rationally be objected to—I don't ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... crime. Though he had eluded man's judgment, yet vengeance had not suffered him to live. There was no relenting toward him, as there was in Mr. Clifford's mind. Something like the old heathen conception of a divine righteousness in this arbitrary punishment of the evil-doer gave him a transient content. He did not object therefore to Phebe's hasty visit to Mrs. Sefton at the sea-side, in order to break the news to her. The inward satisfaction he felt sustained him, and he even set about ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... man of small capacity, whimsical, jealous and arbitrary. But if he cuffed his apprentice Benjamin when the compositor blundered, and when he didn't, it was his legal right; and the master who did not occasionally kick his apprentices was considered derelict to duty. The boy ran errands, cleaned the presses, swept the ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... this conventional form. These many books of many ages have been bound up together, with the most imperfect classification either as to period or character. A verse-making machine has been driven through them all alike, chopping them up into short, arbitrary, artificial sentences, formally numbered in the body of the text. The larger divisions into chapters have been made in an equally mechanical manner. By this twofold system an admirable provision has been made for checking the flow of the writer's thought, and for effectually preventing any easy ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... seven hours to stop at Merv. I shall have time to visit this curious town. Its physical and moral transformation has been profound, owing to the somewhat arbitrary proceedings of the Russian administration. It is fortunate that its fortress, five miles round, built by Nour Verdy in 1873, was not strong enough to prevent its capture by the czar, so that the old nest of malefactors ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... regulated by the law, so that the greater part of the bills presented to the chambers "had been already enacted and executed in the shape of ordonnances; and the legislature had no other function except that of giving a legal sanction to the arbitrary ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... sanction of Wordsworth, that harsher opposition of poetry to prose, as savouring in fact of the arbitrary psychology of the last century, and with it the prejudice that there can be but one only beauty of prose style, I propose here to point out certain qualities of all literature as a fine art, which, if they apply to the literature of fact, apply ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... according to Comte, proceeding from the most simple to the most complex—that is, from mathematics to astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology to end at sociology, is generally considered by the learned as interesting but arbitrary. The philosophy of history, according to Comte, is this: humanity passes through three states: theological, metaphysical, positive. The theological state (antiquity) consists in man explaining everything ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... should have a fair trial, and very often something more. Judges of the Jeffreys type had become inconceivable, though impartiality might disappear in cases where the prejudices of juries were actively aroused. Englishmen might fairly boast of their immunity from the arbitrary methods of continental rulers; and their unhesitating confidence in the fairness of the system became so ingrained as to be taken as a matter of course, and scarcely received due credit from ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... captious with his sisters "whiles," she acknowledged in secret; he was arbitrary with his little brothers when they neglected tasks of his giving; and tried his mother and his grandmother, now and then, as young lads always have, and always will try their mothers and grandmothers, until old heads can ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... themselves by forced and rambling verbiage. Fraud, deceit, or malice had then not yet mingled with truth and sincerity. Justice held her ground, undisturbed and unassailed by the efforts of favour and of interest, that now so much impair, pervert, and beset her. Arbitrary law had not yet established itself in the mind of the judge, for then there was no cause to judge and no one to be judged. Maidens and modesty, as I have said, wandered at will alone and unattended, without fear of insult from lawlessness or libertine assault, and if they ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... aired—a performance which always caused my eight little brothers and sisters to place themselves in convenient positions for being stumbled over, to the great annoyance of industrious damsels, who, armed with broom and duster, endeavored to render their reign as arbitrary as it was short. For some time past, the nursery-maids had invariably silenced refractory children with "Fie, Miss Matilda! Your grandmother will make you behave yourself—she won't allow such doings, I'll be bound!" or "Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Master Clarence? What will ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... monstrous case, with which I will not waste your time. Far more numerous are they, who, admitting that the Authors of the Bible were inspired in quite a different sense from Homer and Dante, are yet for modifying and qualifying this admission after so many strange and arbitrary fashions, that the residuum of their belief is really worth very little. One man has a mental reservation of exclusion in favour of the two Books of Chronicles, or the Book of Esther, or of Daniel.—Another, is content to eliminate from the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... were his stringent measures as censor. In vain did he strike senators from the list, and make an onslaught on the abuses of his day. In vain were his eloquence, his simple manners, his rustic garb, and his patriotic warnings. That hard, narrow, self-sufficient, arbitrary, worldly-wise old statesman, whose many virtues redeemed his defects, and whose splendid abilities were the glory of his countrymen, could not restore the simplicities of former times. An age of "progress" had set in, of Grecian arts and culture, of material wealth, of sumptuous ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... according to custom, to curl her hair, perform the other little offices of her toilet, and administer as much flattery as she could get up, for the purpose; for Miss Squeers was quite lazy enough (and sufficiently vain and frivolous withal) to have been a fine lady; and it was only the arbitrary distinctions of rank and station which prevented her ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... are prone to imagine, the human and not unnatural impatience of subject races fretting under an alien rule which, however well intentioned, must often be irksome and must sometimes appear to be harsh and arbitrary; or whether to-day, in its more extreme forms at any rate, it does not represent an irreconcilable reaction against all that not only British rule ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... arbitrary characters in the Chipeway notation is said to be over two hundred, but if the distinction between a figure and a symbol were rigidly applied, it would be much reduced. This kind of writing, if it deserves the name, was common throughout the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... confusion, and uproar had never, I believe, disgraced a county meeting. These ministerial dependants appeared determined to carry every thing with a high hand, now that they found laws were passing to justify and protect arbitrary and corrupt power. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... intercourse in the upper circles of society. He never established intimate relations with the rules of German. He used small initials for substantives, or capitalized verbs and adjectives according as they appeared important to him. His punctuation was arbitrary; generally he drew a perpendicular line between his words, letting it suffice for a comma or period as the case might be (a proceeding which adds not a little to the embarrassments of him who seeks to translate his ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... arms to the Indians, and on regulating with a strong hand all the doings of his small body of subjects. But such a policy costs money, and to obtain it by taxation he found himself compelled in August, 1647, like many another arbitrary ruler, to summon reluctantly the representatives of the people. Carefully as the functions of the Nine Men were limited, they constituted a permanent element in the governmental system, as the Twelve Men and Eight ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... organization was wider and more complex than the simple lodge. Even Boss McGinty was ignorant as to many things; for there was an official named the County Delegate, living at Hobson's Patch farther down the line, who had power over several different lodges which he wielded in a sudden and arbitrary way. Only once did McMurdo see him, a sly, little gray-haired rat of a man, with a slinking gait and a sidelong glance which was charged with malice. Evans Pott was his name, and even the great Boss of ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bit, the Bengalee Press accused the Government of encouraging the revival of sectarian strife, just as it denounced every measure for the maintenance of order which the Government was compelled to take in the discharge of one of its most elementary duties, as brutal repression and arbitrary vindictiveness, and any mistake of procedure made by some subordinate official under the stress of a very critical situation was distorted and magnified into a gross denial of justice. But it was out of the punishments ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... well repaid itself; for from no branch of physical science has more been learnt of the SCIENTIA SCIENTIARUM, the priceless art of learning; no branch of science has more utterly confounded a wisdom of the wise, shattered to pieces systems and theories, and the idolatry of arbitrary names, and taught man to be silent while his Maker speaks, than this apparent pedantry of zoophytology, in which our old distinctions of "animal," "vegetable," and "mineral" are trembling in the balance, seemingly ready to vanish like their fellows - "the four elements" of fire, earth, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... and therefore God's will, yea, God's earnest endeavour, is to raise you out of those sins of yours, which make you miserable now, and which, if you go on in them, must bring of themselves everlasting misery to you.' Of themselves; not by any arbitrary decree of God (whereof the Bible says not one single word from beginning to end), that He will inflict on you so much pain for so much sin: but by the very nature of sin; for to sin is to be parted from God, in whose presence alone is life, and therefore sin is, to be in death. Sin is, to ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... O'Donnells, descendants of Domnall, had been one of the great forces of tribal strife for eighty generations, and they now saw their lands confiscated and given over to strangers. But they were only representatives of a feeling which was universal; an indignant opposition to arbitrary and tyrannous expropriation. ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... dissolution and recombination in nature, on old age; they have ideas in common, obvious ideas, glorified by poetry,—and Shakespeare, we are told, is borrowing from Lucretius or Juvenal; while the critic leaves his reader to find out and study the Latin passages which he does not quote. So arbitrary is taste in these matters that Mr. Collins, like Mr. Grant White, but independently, finds Shakespeare putting a thought from the Alcibiades I of Plato into the mouth of Achilles in Troilus and Cressida, while Mr. J. M. Robertson suggests that the borrowing ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... have I now before me, when you, Sir, came forward to patronize and befriend a distant, obscure stranger, merely because poverty had made him helpless, and his British hardihood of mind had provoked the arbitrary wantonness of power. My much esteemed friend, Mr. Riddel of Glenriddel, has just read me a paragraph of a letter he had from you. Accept, Sir, of the silent throb of gratitude; for words would but mock the emotions ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... competent at once to perform his duties as an officer. He had no vices to be criticized by the men, who respected him not only for his bravery on the battlefield, but for his good moral character; for even the vicious respect the virtues which they practically contemn. Being neither arbitrary nor tyrannical, he was cheerfully obeyed; and his company never appeared better than when, by the temporary absence of his superior, it was under ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... arbitrarily as Louis Napoleon controls France or Maximilian Mexico? Gentlemen ask, What right have they to hold an election and express their sentiments? What right have they to hold such an election? Surely they ought to have the right to petition, for their rulers are generally arbitrary enough. ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... observed, that as the Great Powers of Europe were using their best endeavours to induce the Sultan's Christian subjects to live peaceably under the Ottoman rule, they could not allow of such arbitrary acts of cruelty as that which had been perpetrated, and which was sufficient to rouse the whole of the Christian population against the Government. He understood, he said, that Sir Stratford Canning had asked ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various
... state of Miss Mowbray's mind, a less violent impulse than that which she had received from her brother's arbitrary violence, added to the fatigues, dangers, and terrors of her night-walk, might have exhausted the powers of her body, and alienated those of her mind. We have before said, that the lights in the clergyman's house had probably attracted her attention, and in the temporary ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... exceptions to this law. Bovril is compounded of Lat. bos, ox, and vril,[15] the mysterious power which plays so important a part in Lytton's Coming Race, while Tono-Bungay suggests tonic. The only exception to this is gas, the arbitrary coinage of the Belgian chemist Van Helmont in the 17th century. But even this is hardly a new creation, because we have Van Helmont's own statement that the word chaos was vaguely present to his mind. Chortle has, however, secured ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... that plank, so as to be sure that I get it right. All that it complains of is,—and the complaint is a just one, surely,—that these gentlemen exercise their power in a way that is secret. Therefore, we must have publicity. Sometimes they are arbitrary; therefore they need regulation. Sometimes they do not consult the general interests of the community; therefore they need to be reminded of those general interests by an industrial commission. But at every turn it is the trusts who are to ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... child, 'tis a standing maxim in conjugal discipline, that when a man would enslave his wife, he hurries her into the country; and when a lady would be arbitrary with her husband, she wheedles her booby up to town. A man dare not play the tyrant in London, because there are so many examples to encourage the subject to rebel. O Dorinda! Dorinda! a fine woman may do anything in London: o' my conscience, she may raise an army of forty ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... being thrown upon the head and upper part of the figure (from a high side-light) illumined the face broadly, and, while emphasising the features with definite though narrow shadows, made it dominate the ensemble. Very often this concentration of effect was associated with a forced and arbitrary use of chiaroscuro. In many of his pictures one finds the lower portion of the figure, including the hands, low in tone through the artist having arranged a screen or blind to throw a shadow over the parts he wished subordinated. This device appears in full-lengths as well as in busts and ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... himself, admits no standards of truth superior to the evidence of the senses and the deductions of reason; consequently, that his conclusions on many important topics are at variance with existing practices, whenever it appears they have no better foundation than the continuity of prejudices and the arbitrary laws of custom. He therefore entertains very serious doubts whether his work will be acceptable to those learned Professors in Universities, who teach no doctrines or opinions but those of their predecessors; or whether it will suit Students, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips |
