"Bias" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is rather elective than hereditary, but the operation of the elective principle is affected by a strong bias in favour of the most capable son of the late chief; so in practice a chief is generally succeeded by one of his sons. An elderly chief will sometimes voluntarily abdicate in favour of a son. If a ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... of observation may be divided into two general classes; the instrumental and those due to the personal bias of the observer; the former referring to the standard itself, and the latter to the application of the standard and the record ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... noble lord thought with Sterne in Tristram Shandy, though the nexus is not easy to discover, that "there is a strange kind of magic bias, which good or bad names irresistibly impose upon our character and conduct," or perhaps he had misread that controverted passage in Plautus (Aulular. Act ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 191, June 25, 1853 • Various
... men worth while don't run after 'respectable working girls'; they leave that to things who wear 'Modish Men's Clothing'—with braided cuffs and pockets slashed on the bias!—and stand smirking on corners we have to pass going home. Do you think I'd do my hair becomingly, and—and ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... understood the inherent limitations of the subject. These are the result of personality. Each partner is after all a distinct individual, with will, and conscience, and life apart, with a personal responsibility which none can take from him, and with an individual bias of mind and heart which can never be left out ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... character of the people who observe its rites, and subject their conduct to its precepts. Every religious idea lays hold on the heart and understanding: consequently the state of the affections and the intellectual bias of each nation must communicate to the worship it professes a particular influence, which is seen, not only in the way in which ceremonies are practised, or in the organization of the hierarchy, or in the style ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... out: my political past is an open book. I have never changed, except perhaps to become a little more moderate, you see. My heart is still with the people; but I don't deny that my reason has a certain bias towards the authorities—the local ones, I mean. (Goes into the ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... to enter into competition with them in all departments of learning. Even taking into consideration many brilliant achievements and an immense amount of creditable, and even distinguished work, the answer of those who have no personal bias in the matter for the sake of a Cause—is generally that they are not. Facts would seem to speak for themselves if only on the ground that the strain of equal studies is too great for the weaker physical ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... Hastie, but in the end he dropped the idea of a regular quota system, judging it unworkable in the case of the officer candidate schools. He concluded that many commanders approached the selection of officer candidates with a bias against the Negro, and he recommended that a directive or confidential memorandum be sent to commanders charged with the selection of officer candidates informing them that a certain minimum percentage of black candidates was to be chosen. Hastie's ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... from the Renaissance to the Counter-Reformation, on which I dwelt in the second chapter of this work. By natural inclination he belonged to the line of artists which began with Boccaccio and culminated in Ariosto. But his training and the bias of the times in which he lived, made him break with Boccaccio's tradition. He tried to be the poet of the Council of Trent, without having assimilated hypocrisy or acquired false taste, without comprehending the ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... business to do; besides, their decisions necessarily aggrieved one party or the other and sometimes caused feuds and bad feelings, and were always liable to be suspected of being tinged with partiality; whereas the judges being strangers in the district would give their decisions without bias or favour. ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... together, they were indignant, they searched for a bias to strengthen that which had so much need of strength, but this bias could not be found; they consulted together, and Grimaldo formed a bold resolution, which astonished me to the last degree, and much troubled ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... DOWNWARD.—It is hard enough to advance in the quality of life without being loaded with clay heavier than your own. It will be sufficiently difficult to keep your children up to your best level without having to correct a bias in ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... the animating thrill of the war-trumpet—was "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and simply because the topic admitted of whatever novelty of treatment the bias of the bard might devise. This is the Laureate's most successful attempt at strictly popular composition. It proves him to possess the stuff of a Tyrtaeus or a Koerner,—something vastly more stirring and stimulating than the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... in the cool shade of the golden autumn woods. Of course, Cynthia was the most beautiful woman in the world. My brother thought so, and that was enough for us. It was true that Ward observed her from a point of view wonderfully subject to a powerful bias, but that was no business of ours. Ward said it, and there the matter ended. If Ward had said that Cynthia was ugly, a trim, splendid figure, brown hair, and a manner irresistible would not have saved Cynthia from being eternally ugly so far as we were concerned; ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... critic, with a philosophic bias, is inclined to quarrel with the obvious human congruity of Shakespeare's utterances. What is the use of this constant repetition of the obvious truism: "When we are born we cry that we are come to this ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... players, on different parts of the green, came through the quiet air with a cheery ring. The language of the bowling-green sounds very quaint to people unused to the game. "Too much land, James!" cries one. "Bravo, bully-bowl! That's th' first wood! Come again for more!" cries another. "Th' wrong bias, John!" "How's that?" "A good road; but it wants legs! Narrow; narrow, o' to pieces!" These, and such like phrases of the game, came distinctly from the green into the highway that quiet evening. And here I am reminded, as I write, that the philosophic ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... internal moral intensity with external physical reference; and the natural conditions of sensibility require that perceptions should owe their existence and quality to the living organism with its moral bias, and that at the same time they should be addressed to the external objects which entice that organism or ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... an adherence to the law by a proportionate effect. Does not the "punishment fit the crime" better in this case—the rewards also. And looking at it from a reasonable point of view, devoid from theological bias, which plan seems to be the best exemplification of Justice and Natural Law, not to speak of the higher Divine Justice and Cosmic Law? Of course, we are not urging these ideas as "proofs" of Reincarnation, for strictly speaking "proof" must lie ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... biassed by any particular views, another bias equally powerful may have deflected the Frenchman from the truth; for they evidently write with contrary designs: the Portuguese, to make their mission seem more necessary, endeavoured to place, in the strongest light, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... d'Arc" (published by the Societe de l'Histoire de France) is the only real authority for her history. For English affairs we are reduced to the meagre accounts of William of Worcester, of the Continuator of the Crowland Chronicle, and of Fabyan. Fabyan is a London alderman with a strong bias in favour of the House of Lancaster, and his work is useful for London only. The Continuator is one of the best of his class; and though connected with the house of York, the date of his work, which appeared soon after Bosworth ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... any practical knowledge on the subject of food production. But Kropotkin is an exception. His two books, "The Conquest of Bread'' and "Fields, Factories and Workshops,'' are very full of detailed information, and, even making great allowances for an optimistic bias, I do not think it can be denied that they demonstrate possibilities in which few of us would otherwise ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... 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 you ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... pepper-stands were beside these. On each plate was folded a large damask napkin, on the top of which rested a bouquet of roses and ferns, tied with a broad white satin ribbon, on one end of which, running bias, were painted the colors of the Union. On the other end was an etching in black and white of the White House and surrounding shrubbery, while underneath, in gilt lettering, was "Jan. 14, 1886." Gilt bullet-headed pins, to attach the bouquet to the corsage, lay beside these, while above ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... hackers sometimes wax about the amount of idiocy in the world, they tend by reflex to assume that everyone is as rational, 'cool', and imaginative as they consider themselves. This bias often contributes to weakness in communication skills. Hackers tend to be especially poor ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... 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 is self-determining. ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... Talaus and Areius, sons of Bias, and mighty Leodocus, all of whom Pero daughter of Neleus bare; on her account the Aeolid Melampus endured sore affliction in the ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... the mind is apt, within certain limits, to find what it is prepared to find. And since there is in these acts often a distinct wish to detect some particular feeling, we can see how easy it must be for a man through bias and a wrong focussing of the attention to deceive himself up to a certain point with respect to the actual contents ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... be doing far better if he never allowed the child to hear a fairy-tale or a line of poetry. Why not amuse his mind with facts, train him to the habit of scientific thought? For all he knew, he might be giving the child a bias which would result in a life's unhappiness; by teaching him to see only the hard actual face of things, would he not fit him far more surely for ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... temperament of the American people is essentially alien to such a sluggish attitude. Independently of all bias for or against protection, it is safe to predict that, when the opportunities for gain abroad are understood, the course of American enterprise will cleave a channel by which to reach them. Viewed broadly, it is a most welcome ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... should talk of these or such-like things to men that had taken their bias another way, how deaf would they be to all I could say!" "No doubt, very deaf," answered I; "and no wonder, for one is never to offer propositions or advice that we are certain will not be entertained. Discourses so much out of the road could not avail anything, nor have any effect on men whose minds ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... consideration, and with assuredly no bias against Mr. Darwin's views, it is our clear conviction that, as the evidence stands, it is not absolutely proven that a group of animals, having all the characters exhibited by species in Nature, has ever been originate by selection, whether artificial or natural. Groups having the morphological ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... cannot, describe our meeting. It was the meeting of brothers—yet of strangers—and a confusion of wonder, curiosity, vague expectation, and doubt, possessed the soul of each. I trust and believe, that notwithstanding the different political bias which sways each, the ancient ties which bound us together as brothers will again unite us. The countenance of Calpurnius, though dark and almost stern in its general expression, yet unbends and relaxes frequently and suddenly, in a manner that impresses you forcibly with ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... times," admitted the judge, subsiding, "when I radically disagreed with my late client; when I opposed her strongly. But when she willed her whole estate to you, Miss Smith, instead of to Nicholas Jelnik, I heartily approved. Understand, I have no personal bias, no animosity against this young man; but he is, I am told, more or less of an artist, and one might as well leave an estate to an anarchist at once. I have expressed this opinion to the town at large, and I seldom express my opinion publicly," ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... Archdeacon Henry Williams had at least this good result, that it led to the compilation of a full and authoritative life of the latter by his son-in-law, Mr. Hugh Carleton (two vols., Auckland, 1874 and 1877). When allowance is made for the personal bias of the talented author who fights both governor and bishop "with the gloves off," the book remains an authority of the ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... esprit. This was much the cleverest thing the writer ever heard in the French Chambers, and, generally, he knew few men who said more witty things in a neat and unpretending manner than General Lafayette. Indeed this was the bias of his mind, which was little given to profound reflections, though distinguished ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... the history was again surveyed in two works, the one, Geschichte des Deutschen Protestantismus, by Kahnis (translated 1856), who belongs to the Lutheran reactionary party; the other, Geschichte der neuesten Theologie, 1856, by C. Schwarz, whose work is so candid and free from party bias, that it is unimportant to remark the party ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... officer, too, of large interest, and the Amphytrion of the day; for when they had performed those duties for which they were so well fitted, their medical ones, they were to dine on the scene of their arduous labours. The eldest surgeon had rather a bias against the doctor, as he could not legally put M.D. against his own name. The next in seniority was entirely adverse to the invaliding, as, without he could invalide too, he would have to go to the West Indies in the place of our surgeon. The youngest ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... sinned, and come short of the glory of God. There is none righteous, no, not one. We are by nature and practice strangers to God, even the new-born babe having wrapped up within its tiny bosom a sinful heritage and bias. And the soul that sinneth shall die. But sin can be put away, and its dreadful penalty escaped. Shall I not ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... it, and read to several of them in 1864. Perhaps the only souvenir of refugee and "skedaddler" life abroad during the war ever published, its preservation may one day be useful in the socialistic archives of the South, to whose posterity slavery will seem almost a mythical thing. With as little bias in the second tale, I have etched the young Northern truant abroad during the secession. The closing tale, more recently written, in the midst of constant toil and travel, is an attempt to recall ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... 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 ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... It was evident that her natural kindness of heart gave her a bias towards the lovers—she had, perhaps, been through an affair of the same sort herself in her youth—yet on the other hand her duty to her sister urged her to take stern measures. She drew the letter from her pocket with the seeming intention of strengthening her resolution against the ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil
... judgment, my dear Chamisso; I do not seek to bias it. I have long been a rigid censor of myself, and nourished at my heart the worm of remorse. This critical moment of my life is ever present to my soul, and I dare only cast a hesitating glance at it, with a deep sense of humiliation and grief. Ah, my dear ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... misplaced; but if the present occasion of referring to Mr. Hall, had been neglected, no other might have occurred. The man whose name is recorded on high stands in no need of human praise; yet survivors have a debt to pay, and whilst I disclaim every undue bias on my mind in estimating the character of one who so ennobled human nature, none can feel surprise that I should take a favorable retrospect of Mr. H. after an intercourse and friendship of more than forty years. Inadequate as is the present offering, some satisfaction is felt at the ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... sustained, and lamented by the Northern Irish, was distrusted, avoided, and execrated by those of the South. There may have been exceptions, but this was the rule. The Bards and Newsmen of subsequent times, according to their Provincial bias, charged the failure of Bruce upon the Eugenian race, or justified his fate by aspersing his memory and his adherents of the race of Conn. This feeling of irritation, always most deep-seated when driven in by a consciousness of mismanagement ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... of candor, I assume that an absolute freedom from bias is impossible on either side. It is sometimes amusing to witness the assurance with which professed agnostics assume that they, and they alone, look upon questions of comparative religion with an unbiased and judicial mind. They have no belief, they ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... by different members of the school. Just because the birth-throes of modern Germany, which extend over the first seventy years of the nineteenth century, were especially violent during the period under consideration, the program of the school had from the outset a strong political bias. The broad masses of the people were unacquainted with political forms and principles. They were by time-hallowed tradition virtually the wards of their patriarchal princes, sharing with these protectors a high degree of jealous regard for state sovereignty and of instinctive opposition towards ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... had occasion to observe that the natural disposition of the Chinese should seem to have suffered almost a total change by the influence of the laws and maxims of government, an influence which, in this country more than elsewhere, has given a bias to the manners, sentiments, and moral character of the people; for here every ancient proverb carries with it the force of a law. While they are by nature quiet, passive, and timid, the state of society ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... provinces of the colony of New South Wales describe as existing there usages nearly identical with those which regulate the proceedings of the natives occupying the west of the continent. And these testimonies cannot be doubted for they are incidentally introduced without any theoretical bias and in ignorance of the conformity they tend to prove. Natives from the country about the Murrumbidgee have described to me Australian customs as being in force there which exhibit the same accordance with those I found in the west; and I have myself ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... prevails in Huxley's "Science and Hebrew Tradition" and in Spencer's chapters on "The Unknowable" (so the Synthetic Philosophy denominates God), caused a revulsion of sentiment,—the anti-religious bias of evolution standing forth the clearer to my mind, the longer I occupied ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... ingenious as myself; clumsy fellows, as it might happen, who could not afford the baggages one excuse for their weakness, besides those disgraceful ones of sex and nature!—O Belford! who can bear to think of these things!——Who, at my time of life especially, and with such a bias ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... 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 ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... And so must time, my friend, be close pursued, or lost. Business is the rub of life, perverts our aim, casts off the bias, and leaves us wide and ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... the other hand, had had an entirely different training. The artists of Touraine had no shadow of Flemish influence in their practice. Their sculptures, enamels, colour-scheme were of another bias. Their stamp came from Italy, and if not so deep as that of Flanders or Dijon, it was equally ...
— Illuminated Manuscripts • John W. Bradley
... importance in dealing with a question like this, to observe the greatest caution and to maintain a strictly detached position. The astronomer, archaeologist, geologist, and anthropologist have each their share in the solution of the problem, but each also has the bias due to his own special science. The mineralogist solves the problem of the Foreign Stones by suggesting a "glacial drift" without reference to the geologist, who will tell him that the local gravels contain no pebbles which belong to those classes of stones known as Foreign Stones. The astronomer, ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... float it in the desired direction, and at length Alfy thought he might venture to throw the rope. He did so, and with some good effect, for it fell over a branch, and, though it did not wind tightly round and had no firm hold, he could just give the tub a bias in ...
— The Island House - A Tale for the Young Folks • F. M. Holmes
... speaking) exaggerated; and by daily use, the ethics of a police-office translate themselves, insensibly, into the ethics even of religious people. But I tell that sycophantish fanatic—not this only, viz., that he abuses unfairly, against Kate, the advantage which he has from the inevitably distorted bias of society; but also, I tell him this second little thing, viz., that upon turning away the glass from that one obvious aspect of Kate's character, her too fiery disposition to vindicate all rights by violence, and viewing ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... 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, ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... therefore, that every circumstance, either of expense or of military enterprise, which looks towards the acquisition and defence of those provinces, is as much discouraged by him as he can venture to do, without openly declaring the whole bias of his mind: and it is very remarkable that, much as we have made it our business to press this to him in all our conversations, we have never yet been able to draw from him even a cold assent to ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... by extraordinary strength. But the public was and is interested greatly by the novel, and Daudet deserved the fame and money it brought him. His next book, Jack, was not so popular. Still, it showed artistic improvement, although, as in its predecessor, that bias towards the sentimental, which was to be Daudet's besetting weakness, was too plainly visible. Its author took to his heart a book which the general reader found too long and perhaps overpathetic. Some of us, while recognising its faults, will share in part ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Eugenics, University College, on "The Handicapping of the First-born." There was, he showed, a tendency for the first-born child to be lighter and smaller than later-born children. On the whole there was a very sensible bias ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... that only a hero who has no fear of his spear shall pass through, and so the drama ends. Wotan has definitely renounced love. The moment at which he can renounce life rather than endure life without love has not yet come. The old Adam, the biological bias, the will to live, ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... supposed to carry with them the contagion of the new ideas. Again, the lack of political unity might be supposed, as in Germany, so in Italy, {372} to facilitate sectional reformation. Finally, the Renaissance, with its unparalleled freedom of thought and its strong anti-clerical bias, would at least insure a fair hearing for innovations ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... who loves and admires all that is great and noble in the history of that famous republic, and can have no hereditary bias as to its ecclesiastical or political theories, may at least attempt the task with comparative coldness, although conscious of inability to do thorough justice ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... it was not only scholasticism that repelled him; the youthful Platonism and the rejuvenated Aristotelianism taught by Lefevre d'Etaples also failed to attract him. For the present he remained a humanist of aesthetic bias, with the substratum of a biblical and moral disposition, resting mainly on the study of his favourite Jerome. For a long time to come Erasmus considered himself, and also introduced himself, as a poet and an orator, by which latter term he ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... replaced in many critical editions (R.V.) by, 'Who hath loosed[114] us from our sins by His blood.' In early times a purist scribe, who had a dislike of anything that savoured of provincial retention of Aeolian or Dorian pronunciations, wrote from unconscious bias [Greek: u] for [Greek: ou], transcribing [Greek: lusanti] for [Greek: lousanti] (unless he were not Greek scholar enough to understand the difference): and he was followed by others, especially such as, whether from their own prejudices or owing to sympathy with the scruples of ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... environment of his youth. Third, one never knows just how much of his decision is due to reason and how much is due to passion or to selfish interest. Passion can dethrone the reason—we recognize this in our criminal laws. We also recognize the bias of self-interest when we exclude from the jury every man, no matter how reasonable or upright he may be, who has a pecuniary interest in the result of the trial. And, fourth, one whose morality rests upon a nice calculation of benefits to ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Macmillan in Infant Mortality. See also The Babies' Tribute to the Modern Moloch, by F. Victor Fisher. (Twentieth Century Press, 1d.) These are small polemical tracts. The case is treated fully, authoritatively and without bias in Infant Mortality ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... historical investigations, to choose invariably that alternative, even though the least probable, which would enable him to score a point against his adversary. For the rest I disclaim any personal bias, as against any personal opponent. The author of 'Supernatural Religion,' as distinct from the work, is a mere blank to me. I do not even know his name, nor have I attempted to discover it. Whether he is living or dead, I know not. He preferred to write ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... any share in his bias. The Brooks grandfather was as amiable and as sympathetic as the Adams grandfather. Both were born in 1767, and both died in 1848. Both were kind to children, and both belonged rather to the eighteenth than to the nineteenth ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... to earn money, little woman. Miss Egerton has kept me in shackles. I've worn them patiently, but now I burst the bonds. Daisy, I have formed a little theory. I believe girls are sent into the world with a strong bias in a particular direction. You see, it always did seem to be meant that dear Primrose was to be a companion, or secretary, of some sort; for Mrs. Ellsworthy wanted her to be Mr. Ellsworthy's secretary, and to write his letters for him. She would not be that, even though ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... intelligible meaning, and that it is merely an attempt to clutch at human immortality in an emotional and unscientific spirit. To this, however, I in no way plead guilty. My ideas about life may be quite wrong, but they are as cold-blooded and free from bias as possible; moreover, they apply not to human life alone, but to all life—to that of all animals, and even of plants; and they are held by me as a working hypothesis, the only one which enables me to fit the known facts of ordinary vitality into a thinkable scheme. Without ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... with her parents, and afterwards with her husband, and thus her natural bias was encouraged. It was not until her two sons were of age to be educated that she remained stationary—on their account. As the business concerns of her husband required his presence alternately in Vienna and in Lemberg, he intrusted ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... materially their empire. The extent and activity of industry and commerce; the necessity of consulting the general good; the habit of frequent, easy, prompt, and regular intercourse between peoples; the invincible bias for free association, inquiry, discussion, and publicity,—these characteristic features of great modern society already exercise, and will continue to exercise more and more, against the warlike or diplomatic fancies ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... but the mere position of an English official gives him a point of view which cannot but bias his mind on this question." Pagett moved his knee up and down a little uneasily ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... these contentions in behalf of theological opinions is the way in which the liberal party brought itself to the task of manifesting its own purposes. Its first organizations were tentative and inclusive, without theological purpose or bias. No distinct lines were drawn, and to them belonged orthodox and liberal alike. Their sole distinguishing attitude was a catholicity of temper that permitted the free activity of the liberals. One of the first organizations of this kind was ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... he called, I think, LETTERS TO ELECT LADIES, and which, he said, was the best composition he had ever read; but Dr. Fergusson's library did not supply the volume.] Dr. Fergusson considered him as a man of a powerful capacity and original ideas, but whose mind was thrown off its just bias by a predominant degree of self-love and self-opinion, galled by the sense of ridicule and contempt, and avenging itself upon society, in idea at ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... Cop at Shrewsbury, as you may know, is a street that winds steeply down to the English Bridge over the Severn. Had it been straight, the bias of the barrel would doubtless have soon carried it to the side, and Joe Punchard might have risen in course of time to the status of a master cooper in his native town. But when I went to the door to see what was happening, there was the barrel in full career, following ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... always a little on the bias, and in 1810 he went crazy for the fifth time. Always before that he had gone right ahead with his reign, whether he was crazy or not, but with the fifth attack of insanity, coupled with suggestion of the brain and blind ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... is set before us in the Variorum, and because it too 'is an intellectual form in which a literary man with obsessions illustrates his idea of criticism.' Genetically, it is a continuation of the shoddy element in Coleridge's Shakespeare criticism, a continual bias towards transcendental interpretation of the obvious. To take the origin a phase further back, it is the portentous offspring of the feeble constituent of German philosophy (a refusal to see the object) after it had been submitted to ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... 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. But if after moving about in the modern world and meeting Jews, knowing Jews, ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... "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 is the ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... absurdly considered as the real principles of that union: but they are in truth merely the occasions, as anything may be of anything, upon which our nature carries us on according to its own previous bent and bias; which occasions therefore would be nothing at all were there not this prior disposition and bias of nature. Men are so much one body that in a peculiar manner they feel for each other shame, sudden danger, resentment, honour, prosperity, distress; one or another, or all of these, ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... weight upon his heart grew heavier, and the chill of dread more unendurable. He saw his character as another might see it. He saw a nature to which, from infancy, a wrong bias had been given, made selfish by indulgence, imperious and strong only in carrying out impulses and in gratifying base passions, but weak as water in resisting evil and thwarting its vile inclinations. The pride and hope that had sustained him in what he regarded as the great effort of his ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... curiosity about him; but nothing comes of it: the prisoner will not speak to him. When Jesus is ill received in a Samaritan village James and John propose to call down fire from heaven and destroy it; and Jesus replies that he is come not to destroy lives but to save them. The bias of Jesus against lawyers is emphasized, and also his resolution not to admit that he is more bound to his relatives than to strangers. He snubs a woman who blesses his mother. As this is contrary to the traditions of sentimental romance, Luke would ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... 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 criticism of ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... the mental bias of their author, who is described as being peculiar and eccentric. Many of the men of genius who have assisted in making the history of the world have been the victims of epilepsy. Julius Caesar, military leader, statesman, politician, and author, was an epileptic. Twice on the ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... Republican party vastly more damaging than the one in 1866. Opposition to Grant's candidacy also threatened to widen the breach. The Conservatives, led by Thurlow Weed, wishing to break the intolerant control of the Radicals by securing a candidate free from factional bias, had pronounced for the Soldier's nomination for President as early as July, 1867,[1152] and although the current of Republican journalism as well as the drift of party sentiment tended to encourage ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... might have been, given a different temperamental bias. I'd say—the man Jay Allison started out to be. The man he refused to be. Within his subconscious, he built up barriers against a whole series of ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... Rossini's self-love was flattered by constant adulation, his expressions of respect and admiration for such composers as Mozart, Gluck, Beethoven, and Cherubini display what a catholic and generous nature he possessed. The judgment of Ambros, a severe critic, whose bias was against Rossini, shows what admiration was wrung from him by the last opera of the composer: "Of all that particularly characterizes Rossini's early operas nothing is discoverable in 'Tell;' there is none of his usual mannerism; but, on the contrary, unusual richness of form and careful finish ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... "An unconscious theological 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. Through many years ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us; He knows each chord, its various tone, Each spring, its various bias. Then, at the balance, let's be mute, We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, But know ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... the latter part of his residence at Eton, he was led away more and more by the predominant bias of his mind, from the exclusive study of ancient literature. The poets of England, especially the older dramatists, came with greater attraction over his spirit. He loved Fletcher, and some of Fletcher's contemporaries, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... it was solicited[216], but of this there was not sufficient evidence; and let me not presume to charge Johnson with injustice, because he did not think so highly of the writings of this authour, as I have done from my youth upwards. Yet that he had an unfavourable bias is evident, were it only from that passage in which he speaks of Swift's practice of saving, as, 'first ridiculous and at last detestable;' and yet after some examination of circumstances, finds himself obliged to own, that 'it will perhaps appear that he only liked one mode of expence better than ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... of life, the crowning fortune of a man, is to be born with a bias to some pursuit, which finds him in employment ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... each other. They detested each other with a detestation rooted in the most essential differences of character and outlook. As good fortune arranged it, however, each came to occupy precisely that political station in which he could do his best work and from which he could best correct the bias of the other. Marshall's nationalism rescued American democracy from the vaguer horizons to which Jefferson's cosmopolitanism beckoned, and gave to it a secure abode with plenty of elbowroom. Jefferson's emphasis on the right of the contemporary majority to shape ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... cannot understand your objection to a man's evidence whose bias lies your way; and I must say, it speaks well for Mr. Eden that he has ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... His own to mourn over. He could only commiserate others. Your intensest grief must begin with yourself. Like the watchful Levite of old, be a guardian at the temple-gates of your own soul. Whatever be your besetting iniquity, your constitutional bias to sin, seek to guard it with wakeful vigilance. Grieve at the thought of incurring one passing shadow of displeasure from so kind and compassionate a Saviour. Let this be a holy preservative in your every hour of temptation, "How can I do this great wickedness, ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... Perhaps it is rarely that this great fact occurs in nature, that is, so as to be a thing perceptible; it is still more rare that a person capable of making the observation has had the opportunity of perceiving it; and it is fortunate for the present theory, that our author, without prejudice or the bias of system, had been led, in the accuracy of a general examination, to make an observation which, I believe, will hardly correspond with any other theory ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... 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 ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the material realm. It is his to press the more tangible elements and forces into the service of man's material and intellectual needs, and to master and subdue the earth. It is woman's to become builder in the spiritual realm of the higher nature. It is woman's first' to give bias to the brain cells and soul impulses of ante-natal and post-natal infantile life. It is woman's, the normal mother and teacher, to look, and feel, and speak into impressible child life, the fine ennobling sentiments, the solid truths of social relations, the sterling ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... confident judgment of my own. I do not see how any thoughtful man can have who knows anything of the complexity of the problem. It is a problem which must be studied, studied immediately, and studied without bias or prejudice. Nothing can be gained by becoming partisans of any ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Woodrow Wilson • Woodrow Wilson
... assured me one day, when I asked him for a new copy of Horace, that the translation of "Poeta nascitur non fit" was "a nasty poet for nothing fit"—a remark which I took in high dudgeon. His repugnance to "the humanities" had, also, much increased of late, by an accidental bias in favor of what he supposed to be natural science. Somebody had accosted him in the street, mistaking him for no less a personage than Doctor Dubble L. Dee, the lecturer upon quack physics. This set him off at a tangent; and just at the epoch of this story—for ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Shakespeare's profoundest psychological studies, the weakness of the man is emphasized, as it were, and forced upon our attention by his outbreaks of impotent violence; so in Macbeth, that imaginative bias which lays him open to the temptation of the weird sisters is suggested from time to time through the whole tragedy, and at last unmans him, and brings about his catastrophe in his combat with Macduff. This is what I call ideal and imaginative representation, which marks ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... jasmines, and the costly blossoms of the century plant. After them were others, with golden water-pots, who sprinkled attar of roses before the Princess, who, dressed in the purest white silk, cut bias, and trimmed with pink fur, was escorted by the Prince. After them came the Prime Minister (released for the occasion), the nobles, etc., and the procession was closed by the guards of the palace, all dressed in blue and ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... with the freshness and force of direct observation and personal conviction. The following exquisite tribute by Horace to his worth is conclusive evidence how often and how deeply he had occasion to be grateful, not only for the affectionate care of this admirable father, but also for the bias and strength which that father's character had given to his own. It has a further interest, as occurring in a poem addressed to Maecenas, a man of ancient family and vast wealth, in the early days of that acquaintance with the poet ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... there is a nobility without heraldry, a natural dignity, whereby one man is ranked with another, another filed before him, according to the quality of his desert, and pre-eminence of his good parts. Though the corruption of these times, and the bias of present practice, wheel another way, thus it was in the first and primitive commonwealths, and is yet in the in- tegrity and cradle of well ordered polities: till corrup- tion getteth ground;—ruder desires labouring ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... once, I knew, but still he had the Frenchman's temper, and had always to argue down his bias against my race, and to cherish a good heart towards me; for he was young, and most sensitive to the opinions of his comrades. I can not express what misery possessed me when I saw him leave Doltaire, and, coming to me ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... not aware that I have been influenced by any more bias in regard to the Gadarene story than I have been in dealing with other cases of like kind the investigation of which has interested me. I was brought up in the strictest school of evangelical orthodoxy; and when ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... obscurity—is almost exactly that 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, feeling specially ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... even desirable, as it might have been to a strong mind sincere in its search for truth, and furnished with that calm capacity for impartial thought which is the best antidote against error—was fatal to one whose superficial knowledge and irregular life gave him already a powerful bias towards getting rid of everything which stood in the way of his tendencies and pursuits. Bruce was not in earnest in the desire for knowledge and wisdom: he grasped with avidity at a popular objection, or a sceptical argument, without desiring to understand or master ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... the slums. She visited police courts, jails, and all places where humanity suffers and struggles, and it was no doubt her early work in the newspaper field that gave to her later work, both in poetry and fiction, its strong social bias. Probably no poet of the present time responds more keenly to the social needs of the period, nor has a keener sense of the opportunity for service. Miss Morgan was one of the delegates to the First International Congress of Women, at The Hague, during the first year of ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... creation; the uses which have been made of it by priests and politicians; by poets, orators, and flatterers; by controversialists and designing historians;—how commonly has it been perverted to abuse the very senses of mankind, and to give a bias to their thoughts and feelings, only to mislead and to betray! Let the evidence be well compared, and a view taken of the respective amounts of doubt and certainty which appertain to human history ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby |
