"Bias" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... communication, appear to have greatly influenced his election.[13] The unfortunate king, Gustavus Adolphus, after being long kept a close prisoner in the castle of Gripsholm, where his strong religious bias had been strengthened by apparitions,[14] was permitted to retire into Germany; he disdainfully refused to accept of a pension, separated himself from his consort, a princess of Baden, and lived in proud poverty, under the name of Colonel Gustavson, ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... corrigibility of mankind, to realize the difficulties and necessities of government. His ideas about a good administration were extremely primitive, and, as is often the case with scholars of a strong ethical bias, very revolutionary at bottom, though he never dreamed of drawing the practical inferences. His friendship with political and juridical thinkers, as More, Budaeus and Zasius, had not changed him. Questions of forms of government, law or right, did not exist for him. Economic problems ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... I preferred the legal profession it would be hard to say. Neither mental bias nor interest gained by any searching examination of the science to which I wished to devote myself, turned the scale. I actually gave less thought to my profession and my whole mental and external life than I should have bestowed upon the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not to make one laugh; he writes for the pleasure of recalling, without bias, what, to him, seems a halfway and dangerous truth.... In his pessimism, Maupassant despises the race, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... diplomatists in the track of their eminent Berlinese New Type of the time, put on frankness as an armour over wariness, holding craft in reserve: his aim was at the refreshment of honest fellowship: by no means to discover that the coupling of his native bias with his professional duty was unprofitable nowadays. Wariness, however, was not somnolent, even when he said: 'You know, I am never the lawyer out of my office. Man of the world to men of the world; and I have not lost by ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... as was proposed by the different members was improbable, and although the proposals may have been dictated by the usual French bias in situations where English interests are at stake, these opinions indicate pretty well the real sentiment in ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... shuddering in the unsuspecting reader. But in mere honesty, if in nothing else, it behoves the conscientious writer to examine the sources of his information. The sources may be—they too frequently are—contaminated by political rancour and bias, and calumnious accusation against historical figures too often is founded on mere envy. And then the rechauffeurs, especially where rechauffage is made from one language to another, have been apt (with a mercenary desire to give their readers as strong a brew as possible) to attach the darkest meanings ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... was overthrown, and the lost ground was never regained. With Jefferson's election to the presidency, began the democratic period of the United States; but it has always been colored strongly and naturally by the federal bias toward law ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... for the pleasure of airing himself. He was essentially glib, as becomes the young advocate, and essentially careless of the truth, which is the mark of the young ass; and so he talked at random. There was no particular bias, but that one which is indigenous and universal, to flatter himself and to please and interest the present friend. And by thus milling air out of his mouth, he had presently built up a presentation of Archie which was known and talked of in all corners of the county. ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... they both loved and revered them. Never had they experienced severity from them, and but seldom received even a reprimand. When the reserve of their father, and languor of their mother, occasionally gave way to the natural bias of tenderness, and they would testify pleasure and gratification in the society of the young people, the latter felt such occasions to be those of their highest enjoyments. They had sense to discern the difference of the conversation ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... the Laputan method of composing books (pushed a outrance) as a sufficient one of Shakespeare and the "Principia." Equally in either case an intelligence, guided by a purpose, must be continually in action to bias the directions of the steps of change—to regulate their amount, to limit their divergence, and to continue them in a definite course. We do not believe that Mr. Darwin means to deny the necessity of such intelligent direction. But it does not, so far as we can see, enter ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... fore seek ways of escaping from it. Accordingly they maintain that in knowledge we are in direct contact with objects, which may be, and usually are, outside our own minds. No doubt they are prompted to this view, in the first place, by bias, namely, by the desire to think that they can know of the existence of a world outside themselves. But we have to consider, not what led them to desire the view, but whether their arguments for ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... succeeded by a deathlike paleness, came over his face for a moment—construed by those around into a consciousness of guilt; for, where the prejudices of men become active, all appearances of change, which go not to affect the very foundation of the bias, are only additional proofs of what they have before believed. He rested his head upon his hands in deep but momentary agony. What were his feelings then? With warm, pure emotions; with a pride only limited by a true sense of propriety; with ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... artificial entity or one of the many varieties of nature spirits that is meant, for the elemental kingdoms proper do not admit of any such conceptions as good and evil, though there is undoubtedly a sort of bias or tendency permeating nearly all their subdivisions which operates to render them rather hostile than friendly towards man, as every neophyte knows, for in most cases his very first impression of the astral plane is of the presence all around him of vast hosts of Protean spectres who advance ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... of the Pretender continued to reside, conforming to the established order of things, and therefore unmolested. In most instances their private opinions were suspected, in some actually known; but a few of them were so skilful in concealing their political bias and partialities, as to pass for steady and conscientious favourers of the Queen's government. Here was one and no unimportant cause of the prolongation of the war; the number of spies thus harboured in the very ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... causes which combine to blind Man's erring judgment, and mislead the mind, What the weak head with strongest bias rules Is pride, the never-failing ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... notice that the California clipper era is almost generally ignored by the foremost English writers of maritime history. For one thing, it was a trade in which their own ships were not directly concerned, and partizan bias is apt to color the views of the best of us when national prestige is involved. American historians themselves have dispensed with many unpleasant facts when engaged with the War of 1812. With regard to the speed of clipper ships, however, involving a rivalry far more thrilling ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... that before in English poetry; it has the bizarrerie of a new thing in beauty. How far it is really beautiful how can I tell? How can I discount the "personal bias"? Only I know that it is ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... manager of a cooperative store, namely, steadiness, conservatism of judgment, attention to detail and business punctuality always will be in great demand in the business world. Hence, when no barrier is interposed in the form of preempted opportunities or class bias, the exceptional workingman who possesses these qualifications will likely desert his class and set up in business for himself. In England, fortunately for the cooperative movement, such an ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... nothing further, but followed his wife to the gate. On his way to his office, he turned and looked after her with a frown as she rattled her team along the uneven road. She was a vain and covetous woman with a bias towards intrigue, but there had been times since her marriage when she despised herself, and as a natural consequence blamed her husband. Sometimes she hated Thurston, also, though more often she was sensible of vague regrets, and grew morbid thinking of what might ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... propose to discuss the "preparedness" of the State to care for its unfortunates. And I propose to do this without any party bias and without blame upon any particular individual, but in just ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... Hanirabbat or Ugarit whom my messengers saw?" Then Nimmuria took up the tale, and complained that Kadashman-Bel sent only ambassadors who had never frequented his father's Court, and were moreover of adverse bias. "Send a kamiru" (evidently a eunuch is meant) "who knows thy sister." Further misunderstandings come under discussion, from which it is evident that the general situation between the two princes was very ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... health and vigour were equally diffused through the whole. They were men of letters. Their minds were by nature and by exercise well fashioned for speculative pursuits. It was by circumstances, rather than by any strong bias of inclination, that they were led to take a prominent part in active life. In active life, however, no men could be more perfectly free from the faults of mere theorists and pedants. No men observed more accurately the signs ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... women don't need to know much beside housekeeping and sewing. I just hate to hear about ruffles cut on the straight or bias, and I couldn't tell what Dacca muslin, or jaconet, or dimity was to save myself. And eyelet work and French knots and run lace—that's what the big girls who come to see Polly talk about. But I like books, and studies, and different countries. I'd like to travel. But I don't ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... make war upon their families; wherefore the assertion, if true, turns to her reproach; but it happens not to be true, or only partly so and the phrase PARENT or MOTHER COUNTRY hath been jesuitically adopted by the king and his parasites, with a low papistical design of gaining an unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds. Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from EVERY PART of Europe. Hither have ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... which Ctesias selects as a day of the great revolution whereby the Empire of the East passed from the hands of the Shemites into those of the Arians. The long residence of Otesias among the Persians, gave him a bias toward that people, which even extended to their close kin, the Medes. Bent on glorifying these two Arian races, he determined to throw back the commencement of their empire to a period long anterior to the true date; and, ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... well as any novelist of his time. If he pitches upon episodes redounding to the glory of the young republic, surely England has glory enough to forgive him, for the sake of his excellence, the patriotic bias at her expense. The interest of his tales is convincing and unflagging; and there runs through his work a steady vein of friendliness for the old country which the succeeding generations of his compatriots have replaced ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... no danger of that little boat's overtaking this large ship!" exclaimed Sir George, with a vivacity that did great credit to his philanthropy, according to the opinion of Mr. Dodge at least; the latter having imbibed a singular bias in favour of persons of condition, from having travelled in an eilwagen with a German baron, from whom he had taken a model of the pipe he carried but never smoked, and from having been thrown for two days and nights into the society ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... a king, but a commissioned officer in Her Majesty's N. W. M. P. An orderly held us up, and when MacRae had convinced him that our business was urgent, and not for his ears, he graciously allowed us to enter the Presence—who proved to be a heavy-set person with sandy, mutton-chop whiskers set bias on a vacuous, round, florid countenance. His braid-trimmed uniform was cut to fit him like the skin of an exceedingly well-stuffed sausage, and from his comfortable seat behind a flat-topped desk he gazed upon us with the wisdom of a tree-full of owls ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... vigorously. "Even most of those absolved were not tried fairly. Postumia was, if the records from so long ago are to be trusted. The first trial of the third Licinia was perfectly fair, the minutes are very full and there is no shade of bias in the discussion of her many interviews with Crassus, while the court was plainly genuinely amused at his greed for desirable real-estate and at his artifices to induce her to sell cheap. Fabia, in the same year, was justly treated. But most of the other ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... the Signal of the 28th inst. is a report from the undersigned respecting Henry Bibb. His narrative always excites deep sympathy for himself and favorable bias for the cause, which seeks to abolish the evils he so powerfully portrays. Friends and ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... advice— All kinds of vulgar prejudice I pray you set aside: With stern, judicial frame of mind From bias free of every kind, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... make dissimulation my duty were truths that did not speedily occur. The discovery, when made, appeared to be a joint work. I saw nothing in Ludlow but proofs of candour, and a judgment incapable of bias. ...
— Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist - (A Fragment) • Charles Brockden Brown
... brought forward far too much evidence of design in animal organisation to allow of our setting down its marvels to the accumulations of fortunate accident, undirected by will, effort and intelligence. Those who examine the main facts of animal and vegetable organisation without bias will, no doubt, ere long conclude that all animals and vegetables are derived ultimately from unicellular organisms, but they will not less readily perceive that the evolution of species without the concomitance ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... worth to anybody except me and the Chinaman. I reckon he's sold it to me for that five hundred dollars. It's mine, and I mean to have it. I sure reckon I naturalized one heathen when I took that scalp. There's one bias-eyed fan-tanner that won't pull his freight for Chiny as soon as he gets his pockets full of good American money. I reckon I was a public benefactor when I sheared that washee-washee, and I deserve the pig tail as a decoration ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... those Scriptures mean that I may obey them. Save me from the bias of self-interest. Help me to live by the understanding I had with Thee at the outset of our walk together. What may I do to please Thee? My time and my energies are Thine, for I am bought with a price. Thou seest my possessions. What shall ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... be said about this general movement in favor of social morality if the attitude of public opinion would not have that mistaken and dangerous bias which is given it by certain elements which at all times have been an obstacle to the instruction of the Filipino people. These elements, taking advantage of the preoccupation of public opinion to combat vice and purify ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... tale you must be the judge. I do not wish to bias you. I have stated my belief in his innocence, but I repeat that I give no opinion myself as to who else may be guilty. Hear his account, and then take up the affair or not, as you may think fit. He would not come to you without your ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... graduates, whether political corruption is decreasing in American cities. The difficulty that faces an argument in such cases as these is not the loss of the evidence, but rather that it consists of a multitude of little facts, and that the selection of these details is singularly subject to bias and partisan feeling. These questions of a broad state of affairs are like questions of policy in that in the end their settlement depends thus largely ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... beautiful, than all; and when I should see that pomp, which my own soul disdains, ('Quem semper abhorrui sicut cenum' is the expression used by Rienzi, in his letter to his friend at Avignon, and which was probably sincere. Men rarely act according to the bias of their own tastes.) made dear and grateful to me because associated with thee! Yes, it is these thoughts that have inspired me, when sterner ones have shrunk back appalled from the spectres that surround their ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... Jews among my most intimate and faithful friends since my boyhood, and I hope to have them till I die. But even if I did have a dislike of Jews, it would be illogical to call that dislike a prejudice. Prejudice is a very lucid Latin word meaning the bias which a man has before he considers a case. I might be said to be prejudiced against a Hairy Ainu because of his name, for I have never been on terms of such intimacy with him as to correct my preconceptions. ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... member of Parliament, but he may be what is called a king. If there is any reason for excluding foreigners, it ought to be from those offices where mischief can most be acted, and where, by uniting every bias of interest and attachment, the trust is best secured. But as nations proceed in the great business of forming constitutions, they will examine with more precision into the nature and business of that ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... negative tendency that the particular laws of the physical world express. None of them, taken separately, has objective reality; each is the work of an investigator who has regarded things from a certain bias, isolated certain variables, applied certain conventional units of measurement. And yet there is an order approximately mathematical immanent in matter, an objective order, which our science approaches in proportion to its progress. For if matter is a relaxation of the ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... great mistake to be prejudiced against a fish just because it is German. Tom and Archer were quite free from that narrow bias. And if it should ever be your lot to be marooned in a ramshackle old watch tower on the Rhine on a dull, rainy day, remember that the same storm which has marooned you will have marooned some fishes among the crevices of rock—only ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... when I confronted you, impressed me favourably. It was not that of a guilty man. But I could not let an opinion bias me, for, in spite of everything, you might still have been guilty. There was a great possibility that ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... for Port Hudson at nine o'clock. We finished in good time, and their appearance recompensed us for our trouble. Lilly's was trimmed with folds of blue from mine, around collar, cuffs, pockets, and down the front band; while mine was pronounced a chef d'oeuvre, trimmed with bias folds of tiny red and black plaid. With their fresh colors and shining pearl buttons, they were really very pretty. We sent word that we would be happy to make as many as they chose for themselves or their friends, and the eldest, with many fears that it was an ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... Diego Belloso and Bias Ruiz had hardly boarded their ships, when Captain Gallinato entered Chordemuco with the flagship, by way of the river. They told him all that happened with the Chinese and Cambodians and of the favorable condition of affairs for continuing them, ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... all this is fairly open to question. But within the limits which he laid down, and within which he confined his reasonings, he used his materials with skill and force; and even those who least agreed with him and were most sensible of the strong and hardly disguised bias which so greatly affected the value of his judgments, could not deny the frankness and the desire to be fair and candid, with which, as far as intention went, he conducted his argument. His first appearance as a writer was in the controversy, as has been said before, on the ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... [Difference of quantity or degree.] Inequality. — N. inequality; disparity, imparity; odds; difference &c. 15; unevenness; inclination of the balance, partiality, bias, weight; shortcoming; casting weight, make- weight; superiority &c. 33; inferiority &c. 34; inequation[obs3]. V. be unequal &c. adj.; countervail; have the advantage, give the advantage; turn the scale; kick the beam; topple,topple over; overmatch &c. 33; not come up to &c. 34. Adj. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the beam of perceiving consciousness is focussed on a certain region or subject, through the effort of attention. Then this attending consciousness is held on its object. Third, there is the ardent will to know its meaning, to illumine it with comprehending thought. Fourth, all personal bias - all desire merely to indorse a previous opinion and so prove oneself right, and all desire for personal profit or gratification must be quite put away. There must be a purely disinterested love of truth for its own sake. Thus is the perceiving consciousness ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... that fall short of this dignity; questions that concern public convenience only, and do not wear any moral aspect, such as the bullion question, never do become subjects of public opinion. It cannot be said in which direction lies the bias of public opinion. In the very possibility of interesting the public judgment, is involved the certainty of wearing some relation to moral principles. Hence the ardor of our public disputes; for no man views, without ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... Southern man for political thought—an instinct which makes every man in that section first of all things a partisan, and constitutes politics the first and most important business of life—but besides this general interest in public affairs he had also an inherited bias of hostility to the right of secession, as well as to its policy. His father had been what was termed a "Douglas Democrat," and the son had absorbed his views. With that belief in a father's infallibility which is so ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... as Saintsbury and Mr. Birrell. Borrow was shy, angular, eccentric, rustic in accent and in locution, but with a charm for me, at least, that was irresistible. Hake was polished, easy and urbane in everything, and, although not without prejudice and bias, ready to shine generally in ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... Rouse, There falling out at Tennis; or perchance, I saw him enter such a house of saile; Videlicet, a Brothell, or so forth. See you now; Your bait of falshood, takes this Cape of truth; And thus doe we of wisedome and of reach With windlesses, and with assaies of Bias, By indirections finde directions out: So by my former Lecture and aduice Shall you my Sonne; you haue me, haue you not? Reynol. ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... "If I have a bias it's in favour of the rector. I don't pretend to understand the merits of voluntary versus board schools; but, as you say, a clergyman is always right—most probably Mr. Curzon's is the better cause, and most certainly he ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... untrustworthiness and inconsistency are supposed to have caused his overthrow. The Queen made Sir John Cowell write me a note to find out whether John would be disposed to go to the great banquet next Tuesday and sleep at Windsor. Kindly done of her—of course he declines. I read Herbert Spencer on "The Bias of Patriotism," yesterday—much of it truly excellent. To-day I am at "Progress" in the Essays ... of which I have read several here and there. Whenever I have the feeling that I, not Herbert Spencer, have written what I am reading, I have the delightful sensation of complete agreement ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... seems to me the field of action of the human will. Every act of choice involves a special relation between the ego and the conditions before it. But no man knows what forces are at work in the determination of his ego. The bias which decides his choice between two or more motives may come from some unsuspected ancestral source, of which he knows nothing at all. He is automatic in virtue of that hidden spring of reflex action, all the time having the feeling that he ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... day or two I was undecided whether to respond to this call, or take no notice of it. I was not conscious of the slightest mysterious bias, influence, or attraction, one way or other. Of that I am as strictly sure as of every other statement that I make here. Ultimately I decided, as a break in the monotony of my life, that I ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... she stretched out after her. She might still wear her hair as she did when the old General raved over her, although the frost of many winters had touched it; but she would never hold on to the sleeves of those days or the skirts or the mantles: Out or in they must go, be puffed, cut bias, or made plain, just as the fashion of the day insisted. Oh! a most level-headed, common-sense, old aristocrat was ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the Commandant Krieger if the foregoing is not a fair and impartial statement of the views of himself and his people. I am sensible of no mental bias toward or against these Boers; and during the several journeys I made to the poor enslaved tribes, I never avoided the whites, but tried to cure and did administer remedies to their sick, without money and without price. It is due to them to state that I was ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... end, the place of honour, where he talked of nothing but cloths and jewels, and whenever they made mention to him of aught, he said, "I have plenty of it." Next day, he again repaired to the market-street where he showed a friendly bias towards the merchants and borrowed of them more money, which he distributed to the poor: nor did he leave doing thus twenty days, till he had borrowed threescore thousand dinars, and still there came no baggage, no, nor a burning plague.[FN38] At last ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... glad, for it removed many dark doubts from my own mind also. From that time, my desire to read the New Testament, that I might discover the best means of acting according to the doctrines of Jesus, was greatly increased. I endeavoured to divest myself of all selfish bias, and loved more and more to inquire into religious subjects. I saw, and continue to see, many of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church, which I could not believe, and which I found opposed to the truths of the Gospel; and I wished much to find some of her best teachers to explain them to ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... must, for these reasons, guard against the misconception that the early awakening of sexuality is per se pathological. The fact that the study of the sexual life has been undertaken chiefly by medical men, and above all by neurologists and alienists, has inevitably introduced a certain bias into the results of the investigation. Opportunities for the study of the sexual life of normal persons have been comparatively rare; for those in whom the early awakening of sexuality has been recorded ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... came a series of notable books. They were all similar in that they bore the stamp of the romanticism of the thirties and forties, interpreting history in terms of the {4} individual; but they differed in their political bias. These works were written by Carlyle, Louis Blanc, Lamartine ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... enquired into the matter, was told by Otare, himself an artist, by the way, that science in their opinion had a tendency to destroy the illusion of Nature and impair the finer sentiments and spontaneity of the soul; hence they left the systematic study of it to the few who possess a decided bias for it. As a rule they are content ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... to be pursued by the Government of this colony in relation to the admission of Chinese or coolie labour into the Northern Territory is, I understand, among the pressing subjects of the hour. Approaching the subject without prejudice or bias, it does not seem difficult to determine the principles by which the action of the State should be guided. If we have faith in the superior qualities of our own people we shall do well, even at the cost of considerable delay in material development, to reserve ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... was the establishment of a home department—a measure which does not appear to have met the views of Congress on account of its supposed tendency to increase, gradually and imperceptibly, the already too strong bias of the federal system toward the exercise of authority not delegated to it. I am not, therefore, disposed to revive the recommendation, but am not the less impressed with the importance of so organizing that Department that its Secretary may devote more of his time to our foreign relations. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Andrew Jackson • Andrew Jackson
... opposed to the natural unfolding of my character, which was fervent, of strong grasp, and disposed to infatuation, and self-forgetfulness. He made the common prose world so present to me, that my natural bias was controlled. I did not go mad, as many would do, at being continually roused from my dreams. I had too much strength to be crushed,—and since I must put on the fetters, could not submit to let them impede ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... the seminal fluid did not originate in the spinal cord. Two comparisons are recorded of his, one that puberty is the equivalent of the flowering time in plants, the other that milk is the equivalent of white of egg.[1] Both show his bias towards looking at the functional side of living things. The latter ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... this, but declined on the ground that there was too strong a personal hostility between both Darwin and Grant Allen and himself to make it possible for him to review the book without a bias against it. (Memoir, ...
— The Samuel Butler Collection - at Saint John's College Cambridge • Henry Festing Jones
... methodical man, about sixty years of age. He always spoke directly to the point, and in his story, he had evidently made no attempt to draw conclusions, or to bias my judgment in any way. Nevertheless, he showed that he was really affected by young Gordon's murder, and I saw that I should get more really valuable assistance from him, than from both of the other two. Mr. ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... by irrelevant gibes [271]; he has made people believe what is untrue [333]; he was quite as prejudiced and unfair as the notorious Bishop Bale [342]; his narrative has been exposed as untrustworthy by reason of its bias, but has not even yet been subjected to complete and thorough criticism [352]. In consequence of all this, says Mr. Gairdner, Foxe has given a false colour to the history of the times, and especially to the sentiments and motives of the persecutors. ' It is quite untrue, as Foxe and his school have ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... himself in direct opposition to the party which had nominated and elected him Vice President. The son, who is the author or editor of these volumes, appears to be forgetful of this fact; for on no other ground can we account for the bias which he exhibits from the first page to the last. His duty, he thinks, is to defend his father's administration, and this idea leads him into trouble at the very beginning. He says: "The Whig party of 1840 had ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... Edgware Road district. He told how Lauriston ran into him as he entered the shop; what Lauriston said to him; what he himself saw and observed; what happened afterwards. It was a plain and practical account, with no indication of surprise, bias, or theory—and nobody asked the detective any questions arising ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... judgment and conscience, the responsibility of action may well be startling; even a wise and experienced man will often pause at such moments, doubtful of the course he shall pursue. It is an easy matter to settle a question, when passion, feeling, interest, or prejudice gives the bias; but where these are all silent, and cool judgment is left alone to decide, the greatest men feel, to a painful degree, how limited are their powers; the high responsibility which is attached to free-will rises before them, and they ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud. On the other hand, the Tossafists, the school of commentators succeeding him, by their petty quibbling and hairsplitting casuistry made the Talmudic books more intricate and less intelligible. Such being the intellectual bias of the age, a sober, rationalistic philosophy could not assert itself. In lieu of an Ibn Ezra or a Maimonides, we have Jehuda Hachassid and Eliezer of Worms, with their mystical books of devotion, Sefer ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... pure and blessed instincts, all that there was of light and wisdom in the poor boy, who had attracted her from the very beginning. True, Cousin Willie would take every opportunity to disparage the lad, but what cared she? It is not so easy to bias the mind of a properly-taught child; and her own heart told her what was good in the boy and what was evil in her cousin. As for Willie, he walked about like some evil genius, making the deformity of the body more conspicuous by the deformity of the soul, and casting a huge and ugly ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... of Joseph, points the familiar lesson that the opportunity to do ill deeds often makes ill deeds done. The path for entering on evil is made fatally easy at first; that gate always stands wide. The Devil knows how to time his approaches. A weak nature, with an evil bias in it, finds everywhere occasions and suggestions to do wrong. But it is the evil nature which makes innocent things opportunities for evil. Therefore we have to be on our guard, as knowing that if we fall it is not circumstances, but ourselves, that made stumbling-blocks ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... However, it is now some comfort to reflect, that in what I said of my countrymen, I extenuated their faults as much as I durst before so strict an examiner; and upon every article gave as favourable a turn as the matter would bear. For, indeed, who is there alive that will not be swayed by his bias and partiality to the ...
— Gulliver's Travels - into several remote nations of the world • Jonathan Swift
... of our army, who has since the war made valuable contributions to the history of its operations—especially valuable as well for their accuracy as for their freedom from personal or partisan bias—writes thus ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... hand, almost fine enough for a lady's, while I observed him with keen scrutiny. He was an English Canadian, I learned that before I ever saw him, born and bred under Canadian skies, but this implies little of his bias or disposition. ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... Bias Supersede Sly Aversion Capital Meerschaum Extravagant Travel Alley Concur Travail Fee Attention Apprehend Superb Magnanimity Lewd Adroit Altruism Instigation Quite Benevolence Complexion Urchin Charity Bishop Thoroughfare Unction Starve Naughty Speed Cunning Moral Success Decent Antic Crafty Handsome ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... for Camille Mauclair, a Parisian critic in sympathy with the arts of design, literature, and music, to place Monticelli in his proper niche. This Mauclair has done with critical tact. In his Great French Painters, the bias of which is evidently strained in favour of the impressionistic school, in his L'Impressionisme, and in his monograph on Watteau this critic declares that Monticelli's art "recalls Claude Lorraine a little and Watteau even more by its sentiment, and Turner ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... not so impressively honest, in the other stories, "A Victory for the People," "A Triumph's Evidence," "The Mercy of Death," and "A Most Lamentable Comedy;" and where he fails of perfect justice to his material, I think it is because of his unconscious political bias, rather than anything wilfuller. In the story last named this betrays itself in his treatment of a type of man who could not be faithful to any sort of movement, and whose unfaithfulness does not necessarily censure the movement Mr. White dislikes. Wonderfully good as the portrait ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... ants, bees, and wasps are so interesting and so personal, is reluctant to credit the bee, from the moment it forsakes the routine of its habitual labour, with any power of discernment or reasoning. This attitude of his may be due in some measure to an unconscious bias in favour of the ants, whose ways he has more specially noted; for the entomologist is always inclined to regard that insect as the more intelligent to which he has more particularly devoted himself, and we have to be on our guard against this little personal ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... miserable, took great pains to make me more so if possible. He proved,—to his own satisfaction if not altogether to mine,—that the abnormal position of certain molecules in the brain produced an eccentricity or peculiar bias in one direction which, practically viewed, might be described as an intelligent form of monomania, but which most people chose to term 'genius,' and that from a purely scientific standpoint it was evident that the poets, painters, ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... answer, before those here assembled, to the charges which I understand you desire to bring against him. State, therefore, those charges; but before doing so ye shall swear by the Light of our Lord the Sun that your motive in instigating these proceedings is free from all bias or personal ill will; that you are animated therein solely by anxiety for the public welfare, and that you will say no word save what you, personally, know to ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... played a prominent part in the Revolution. He was made Bishop of Salisbury in 1689. He is principally known by his History of the Reformation, written in the Protestant interest, and by his greater work, the History of my Own Times. Not without a decided bias, this latter work is specially valuable as the narration of an eye-witness. The history has been variously criticized for prejudice and inaccuracy; but it fills what would otherwise have been a great ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... natural body, but in some specific interest or moral aim. It translates animal life into moral endeavour, and what figured in the first as a local existence figures in the second as a specific good. Reason accordingly has its essential bias, and looks at things as they affect the particular form of life which reason expresses; and though all reality should be ultimately swept by the eye of reason, the whole would still be surveyed by a particular method, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... idolize intellect. Brilliancy is placed before goodness and intellectual dexterity above fidelity. Intellect walks the earth a crowned king, while affection and sentiment toil as bond slaves. Doubtless our scholars, with the natural bias for their own class, are largely responsible for this worship of intellectuality. When the historian calls the roll of earth's favorite sons he causes these immortals to stand forth an army of great thinkers, including philosophers, scientists, poets, jurists, generals. The great minds are exalted, ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... bias was also present, which confounds ignorance with faith. It is often forgotten that He who surrounded us with this ever-evolving mystery of creation has also implanted in us the desire to question and understand. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... is no more certain way of judging a man than from his own words, if his real words be in our possession. In doing so, we are bound to remember how strong will be the bias of every man's mind in his own favor, and for that reason a judicious reader will discount a man's praise of himself. But the reader, to get at the truth, if he be indeed judicious, will discount them after a fashion conformable with the nature of the man whose character ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... pudding, vegetables, and bread, for dinner. Cake on special fete-days as an extra. The boys do credit to their rations, and show by their bright faces and energy their good health and spirits. They are under strict military discipline, and both by training and heredity have a military bias. There is no compulsion exercised, but fully 90 per cent. of those who are eligible finally enter the army; and the school record shows a long list of commissioned and non-commissioned officers, and even two Major-Generals, who owed their early ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... From "The Invasion of the Crimea," one of the masterpieces of modern historical literature, but often criticized for its excessive bias against France as represented ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... chief 'swells' on that bench, I need not say. But, for the sake of accurate thinking, it is worth while observing that formerly this question was moved almost exclusively with a view to the Latin and Greek classics; and that circumstance gave a great and a very just bias to the whole dispute. For the difference with regard to any capital author of ancient days, as compared with modern authors, is this, that here we have a twofold interest—an interest with work, and a separate interest in the ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... cannot have a clear purpose, nor the firm perception of ways and means leading to the aim, and still less have they the sternness of conviction so necessary for men dealing with such mighty events, on which depend the life and death of a society. Such men hesitate, postpone, bias and deviate from the straight way. Such men believe themselves in the way to truth, when they are aside of it. It results therefrom, that when certain amiable qualities, such as conciliation, a little dodging, ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... was strong enough to induce the leaning toward him which, on Carrie's part, we have seen. She might have been said to be imagining herself in love, when she was not. Women frequently do this. It flows from the fact that in each exists a bias toward affection, a craving for the pleasure of being loved. The longing to be shielded, bettered, sympathised with, is one of the attributes of the sex. This, coupled with sentiment and a natural tendency to emotion, often makes refusing difficult. It persuades ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Executive Council took no notice of it; for certain papers found in the iron chest at the Tuileries cast doubts on the purity of Talleyrand's patriotism. Further, as Pache, Minister at War, hated Dumouriez, personal bias told strongly against the moderate proposals coming from London and The Hague. Nevertheless the Executive Council now decided to defer for the present the invasion of Holland, meanwhile chasing the Austrians beyond the Rhine, and fortifying Antwerp. The last step was declared ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... material of the kind may be found most convenient, fourteen inches and seven-eighths long and ten inches and a half wide, which is sloped off on the corners, and trimmed with two strips of embroidery, separated by a bias strip of blue satin, which is turned down on the edges an inch wide on the wrong side, and gathered so as to form a puff. The embroidered strips are worked on a foundation of white cloth as shown by Fig. 2. For the corn-flowers use blue silk, and work them in chain stitch. The calyxes are worked ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... for my soul's remotest And stillest place. For oh, I starve and thirst To hear in quietness man's passionate protest Against the doom with which his world is cursed. Not my own wand'rings—not my own abidings— Shall give my search a bias and a bent. For me is no light moment of content, For me no friend, no ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson |
