"Drastic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Assembly Suspended.—In the very month that Townshend's Acts were signed by the king, Parliament took a still more drastic step. The assembly of New York, protesting against the "ruinous and insupportable" expense involved, had failed to make provision for the care of British troops in accordance with the terms of the Quartering Act. Parliament ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... upset the routine of the old agricultural life in a very drastic fashion. Suppose that the Duke of Hildesheim was going to the Holy Land. He must travel thousands of miles and he must pay his passage and his hotel-bills. At home he could pay with products of his farm. But he could not well take a hundred ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... view of this fact I came to the conclusion that salvation must be looked for in the first place from science. Here, in the thinking and knowing of man, was the root of modern troubles; here must come a drastic revision, and here, if possible, a completely new direction must ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... with the greatest ease obtain positions of responsibility and emolument, notably upon the directorate of public companies, and can often, if he finds his salary insufficient, persuade his fellow-directors to increase it, whether by threatening them with exposure or by some other less drastic and more ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... building with faces ablaze with indignation!" Our correspondent volunteers the information that "a much severer test of the patience of the Western people will come when the art palace is opened"; also that "the treatment the Western people are getting is drastic and cruel, but it will work wonders in cultivating and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... attached a carriage reserved for the military, who were accompanying the departing Britishers to the frontier. Curiously enough, not one of us knew definitely what had happened. Rumour was busy, but it was inconclusive. The general feeling was that Britain had taken some drastic action which must have serious results, otherwise we should not have been bundled ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... play, which is prominent in Pepys's diary, underwent more drastic revision. Here D'Avenant had the co-operation of Dryden; and no intelligent reader can hesitate to affirm that the ingenuity of these worthies ruined this splendid manifestation of poetic fancy and insight. It is only fair to Dryden to ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... sobbed by the ages. Men chuckle in the irony of pain, and they smile cold, lessoned smiles in resignation; they laugh in forgetfulness and they laugh lest they die of sadness. A shrug of the shoulders, a widening of the lips, a heaving forth of sound, and the life is saved. The remedy is as drastic as are the drugs used for epilepsy, which in quelling the spasm bring idiocy to the patient. If we are made idiots by our laughter, we are paying dearly for the ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... Saturday morning Gaspard was admitted to audience with his kinsman, but found him so weak from Monsieur Ambrose Pare's drastic surgery that he was compelled to postpone his business. "Get you back to Eaucourt," said Coligny, "and cultivate your garden till I send for you. France is too crooked just now for a forthright fellow like you to do her service, ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... wait for the shoes of Albert and Isabella, and until the Dutch republic had been absorbed into the obedient Netherlands by his assistance, was not a very flattering prospect for a son or daughter of France. The ex-Huguenot and indomitable campaigner in the field or in politics was for more drastic measures. Should the right moment come, he knew well enough how to strike, and could appropriate the provinces, obedient or disobedient, without ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that delirium and epilepsy in insane asylums are also more frequent in hot than in cold months. The influence of the telluric factors, then, cannot be denied, and the influence of the social factor intensifies it, as I have already shown by its most drastic and characteristic example, that of want. One can, therefore, understand that a man, whose morality has been shaken by the pressure of increasing want, may be led to commit a ...
— The Positive School of Criminology - Three Lectures Given at the University of Naples, Italy on April 22, 23 and 24, 1901 • Enrico Ferri
... to ignore fools and knaves and not to speak to them, as the best method of keeping them at a distance, does not seem drastic enough in these days of the modern newspaper-reporter nuisance. One may throw them out of the house, nail all the doors and windows, and stuff up all key-holes; still he will come; he will slide down through the chimney, ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... interrupt a dance of country-folk, and which, owing to "its arbitrary connection with a trivial motive," as Strauss so adroitly and correctly puts it, renders this symphony "the least remarkable." A more drastic expression appears to have occurred to the Master; but he prefers to speak here, as he says, "with becoming modesty." But no, for once our Master is wrong; in this case he is really a little too modest. Who, indeed, will enlighten us concerning this Sweetmeat-Beethoven, if not Strauss himself—the ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Nature. His style of treatment would be known now as expectant, and he tried to order his practice "to do good, or, at least, to do no harm." When he considered interference necessary, however, he did not hesitate even to apply drastic measures, such as scarification, cupping and bleeding. He made use of the narcotics mandragora, henbane, and probably also poppy-juice, and as a laxative used greatly a vegetable substance called "mercury," beet and cabbage, and cathartics such as scammony and elaterium! ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... of tartar ten times more excessive than a white; the same dose of brandy given to a black, a yellow, and a white, will not produce on the three men either drunkenness at the same moment, or intoxication at all. Mulattoes can sustain more drastic aperients than other races; the negro does not suffer from yellow fever, but he readily falls to phthisis; he will catch the cholera more quickly than a white. Human races, where they may catch the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... emphasis, "nothing whatever, until sales are rendered impossible and the big men—the real smugglers who are trading in the life-blood of their brothers—are reached and scotched. As for myself, I am past praying for; but thousands of others could and ought to be saved—by drastic measures and a stern exposure. The fellows in this business are as cunning as the devil; the stuff arrives by roundabout channels and from the most surprising quarters. Now and then they allow a consignment to be seized, but as a mere blind, a sop, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... should have coal. He did not propose to allow the operators to maintain the deadlock by sheer refusal to make any compromise. In case he could not succeed in making them reconsider their position, he had prepared a definite and drastic course of action. The facts in regard to this plan did not become public until many years after the strike was settled, and then only when Roosevelt described ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... mother humbly to accept of this exposition of our holy rule, the better to conceive what your poor child ought to be, who daly beges your blessing. Constantia Francisco." And here in the Apophthegmata, collected by Conrad Lycosthenes, and published after drastic expurgation by the Jesuits as a commonplace book, some Portuguese has entered a hearty vow that he would never part with the book, nor lend it to any one. Very different was the disposition of my poor old Lisbon acquaintance, ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... name gives me a sort of hereditary right to take exceptional interest in such matters, though indeed my respected, and respectable, ancestor is not in all things the model of his more catholic and cosmopolitan descendant. The McDougall regimen would doubtless be a little too drastic. To improve the Music-hall Song off the face of the earth, is an attempt which could only suggest itself to puritan fanaticism in its most arbitrary administrative form. The proletariat will not "willingly let die" the only Muse whose ministrations really "come home ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... which distracted Florentine society began to raise up in the minds of the people violent antipathy for a Sovereign whose private example was so abominable, and whose discharge of public duties was so basely marked by turpitude. A revolution of a drastic description seemed to be inevitable, and, really, Cosimo had no ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... being lost in the post nowadays," states a daily paper, "that drastic action should be taken in the matter." We understand that the POSTMASTER-GENERAL has expressed ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... feelings were decidedly hurt, and she began to vie with Mr. Pound in urging that the valley be rid of the obnoxious Professor. So drastic were the measures which she called for, and so vigorous her demands on the gentle squire, that he retreated on Mr. Pound for aid, advocating all that the minister had proposed as the most humanitarian method of ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... distribution defends them. The most bigoted British Conservative hesitates to say that his king should be much poorer than Mr. Rockefeller, or to proclaim the moral superiority of prostitution to needlework on the ground that it pays better. The need for a drastic redistribution of income in all civilized countries is now as obvious and as generally admitted as ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... opinion that more of the oppression of the subject populations is due to the bad and thieving instincts of the local officials than directly to the Sublime Porte, and that the simplest way of bringing about reforms (after the drastic one of abolishing the Turkish government) is in the Powers asserting a right of approbation of all nominations to the governorships throughout the whole empire. When, as at certain moments in the long struggle of which I am now beginning the history, I came ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... his thirteen years of residence, Ezra is not recorded to have promulgated the law, though it lay at the basis of the drastic reforms which he was able to carry through. Probably he had not been silent, but the solemn public recitation of the law was felt to be appropriate on occasion of completing the wall. Whether the people had heard it before, or, as seems implied, it was strange to them, their desire to hear it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... as always, a splendidly done bit of work. He rose to the occasion fully and it was the greatest possible occasion. ... Lansing says that they (he and the President) had the terms of Armistice before election—terms quite as drastic ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... have been warning for years of the drastic social upheavals which must inevitably accompany an "exploding" population. It is a problem the complexity of which grows in geometric progression as time goes on. In the United States nearly 300 years were required to produce 90 million people. In the past 60 years this number has ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... marriage. It was currently said that hundreds of contemplated marriages were broken off in Norway as an effect of its statement of a vital problem. The remodelling the play originally underwent for its performance in Germany was drastic. The second and third acts were entirely recast, the character of Dr. Nordan was omitted and others introduced, and the ending was changed. The first version was, however, evidently the author's favourite, and it is that that is presented ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... Builder was naturally the man looked to, and he gave answer quietly and firmly. If the fire once leaped Thames Street, and attacked the south side, nothing short of a miracle could save the bridge houses, unless some drastic step were taken; and the only method which he could devise in the emergency, was that some of the houses at the northern end should be demolished by means of gunpowder, and the ruins soaked in water, so that the passage of the flames ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... putting an end to the dual ownership. It was unthinkable that he should continue for the space of a whole hour in the horrible position of a Rowton House for vagrant mice (already his imagination had at least doubled the numbers of the alien invasion). On the other hand, nothing less drastic than partial disrobing would ease him of his tormentor, and to undress in the presence of a lady, even for so laudable a purpose, was an idea that made his eartips tingle in a blush of abject shame. He had never been able to bring himself even to the mild exposure of open-work ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... when word comes in that cattle stealers are in the neighborhood of any ranch, it behooves those charged with the safety of men and animals to be on the "jump." There is always more or less theft going on among the western cattle ranches but most of it is on such a small scale that drastic action is not often taken. No ranchman missed an occasional animal, which may be "lifted" because of dire hunger, perhaps, on the part of ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... a particular city or territory into submission, so it is the aim of a blockading fleet to enforce the same treatment on the nation as a whole. It is also essential to keep in mind that the question of contraband has nothing to do with a blockade, for, under this drastic method of making warfare, everything is contraband. Contraband is a term applied to cargoes, such as rifles, machine guns, and the like, which are needed in the ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... to race fusion lies in the drastic and increasing proscriptive legislation by which the South attempts to keep the white and colored races apart in every place where their joint presence might be taken to imply equality; or, to put it more directly, the persistent effort to degrade the Negro to a distinctly and permanently inferior ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... rather the quicker-witted of the two, he had put in three thoughts to the other fellow's one; but the position showed no improvement in the result, and the enemy's second thought, slowly dawning, was obviously of a more practical and drastic nature. His undecided fidgeting with his rifle made this abundantly clear. No time was to be lost. Our friend realised dimly that at all costs he must conceal his nationality. This promised to be a matter of languages, never his strong point. But, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, February 16, 1916 • Various
... is reported with some emphasis as the tradition of the Ancients in Buddhaghosuppatti, chap. VII. If the works were merely those which Buddhaghosa himself had translated the procedure seems somewhat drastic.] ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... known how to treat it, upon the advice of an old, old apothecary, who had full authority from my guardians to run up a most furious account against me for medicine. This being the regular mode of payment, inevitably, and unconsciously, he was biased to a mode of treatment; namely, by drastic medicines varied without end, which fearfully exasperated the complaint. This complaint, as I now know, was the simplest possible derangement of the liver, a torpor in its action that might have been put to rights in three days. In fact, one ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... adventurous spirits and exported, with the result that Ostrich farms soon sprang up in widely separated localities over the earth. The lawmakers of Cape Colony looked askance at these competitors and soon prohibited Ostrich exportation. Before these drastic measures were taken, however, a sufficient number of birds had been removed to other countries to assure the future growth of the industry in various regions of the world. It was in 1882 that these ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... in the way of pleasure, for the 'sixties were very busy years. China was just beginning to realize that she could no longer remain in peaceful self-sufficiency; intercourse with foreign nations she must have, willing or no; that meant drastic changes—changes in which the I.G.'s advice would be valuable. Thus circumstances helped him into a unique position, one without parallel in any other country; he was continually consulted on hundreds of matters ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... contemptuous disapproval from the lady Ayisha, who seemed to think that no plan could be a good one unless it entailed murder. The farther we headed eastward, the nearer we came to the pale beyond which her lord and master's word was summary law, the more openly she advocated drastic remedies for everything, and the less she was inclined to take no ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... pronounced the word questioningly. "Can Christianity really mean that—renunciation of the world? Must we take it in the drastic sense of the Church of the early centuries-the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to think that severity had been pushed too far, and that the wretched Cormac might be left in peace. But Elizabeth had long been accustomed to turn to Raleigh for advice on her Irish policy. He gave, as usual, his unflinching constant counsel for drastic severity. He 'very earnestly moved her Majesty of all others to reject Cormac MacDermod, first, because his country was worth her keeping, secondly, because he lived so under the eye of the State that, whensoever she would, it was in her power to suppress him.' This last, ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Richard—Owen, seems to refer to a proposed review of the Duke of Argyll's 'Reign of Law,' and possibly, also, of the Rev. Edwin Sidney's 'Conversations on the Bible and Science.' Whether Owen was too drastic in his methods or not does not certainly appear; but, for some reason, the article was either not written or not published, though the friendly relations between Owen and ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... want to take so drastic a step unless I am compelled." The coroner shook his head dubiously. He had been primed by Britz and was following the part which he had been directed to play. "As the evidence stands, I can see no other course to pursue. But I'm not going to commit anyone ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... the increasing influence of Russia in Turkey, and suggested drastic reforms in a note addressed to the powers on December 30, 1875. It was approved and presented to the sultan by the five great European powers. Abdul Aziz quietly accepted it. This was not what the Russian Slavophils expected, and they incited ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... an electorate of about 300,000, their disfranchisement was an important step towards freedom of election. A message to parliament recommending economy was extorted from the king as an introduction to a plan of economical reform which was brought forward by Burke. It was not so drastic as his earlier plan, for the king acting in the cabinet through Shelburne and Thurlow objected to many of the proposed retrenchments. Nevertheless, in spite of mutilations, the bill, which became law, effected a saving of L72,000 a year, chiefly by abolishing useless offices. The act ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... feared for his life and insisted that he should come to live with them in their monastery, where he would be safer from any violence his enemies might attempt. Whether it was feasible to proceed in the drastic manner demanded by Las Casas is open to doubt. It is evident that the colonists would have offered an obstinate resistance, to combat which the three Jeronymites had nothing but the moral force of their commission. Even with our present facilities ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... two hundred years no man crossed 30d to 175d and lived to tell his story—not until chance drew me across and back again, and public opinion, revolting at last against the drastic regulations of our long-dead forbears, demanded that my story be given to the world, and that the narrow interdict which commanded peace, prosperity, and happiness to halt at 30d and 175d ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... invisibly amused. "I'm not sure that wouldn't be a good plan. It has at least the merit of originality. All the same I'm afraid Mrs. Clowes wouldn't like it, she is a standing obstacle in the way of drastic measures." ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... pronounced long ago, the Diet's duty merely being to confirm and execute it; hence, there was nothing else to be done by the Emperor than to attend to his office as warden and protector of the Church, and, together with the princes and estates, to proceed against the heretics with drastic measures. Also in the later discussions, conducted with a view of effecting a reconciliation, the Romanists refused to relinquish this position. From beginning to end they acted as the accusers, judges, and henchmen of the Lutherans. Nor was anything ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... every man who takes part in its distribution that these policies, thus liberally administered, should succeed and succeed altogether. It is only in that way that we can prove it to be absolutely unnecessary to resort to the rigorous and drastic measures which have proved to be necessary in some ...
— In Our First Year of the War - Messages and Addresses to the Congress and the People, - March 5, 1917 to January 6, 1918 • Woodrow Wilson
... cannot do this—if so drastic a remedy should be too repugnant to your present feelings, I would remember, were I in your place, that my uncle had never refused me anything; that I could draw upon him for what money I liked—that is to say, for all pleasures ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... that it shall be valueless, rather than that it shall be yours. Before population can be re-distributed to the advantage of town and country alike, this difficulty must be overcome. It can only be overcome by drastic legislation. Compulsory purchase, regulated by an equitable land court, is the only remedy; and it is hard that Irishmen should have, and grumble over, privileges which their English brethren ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... be hoped that the question will now be taken up seriously with a view to more drastic reform than any which has ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... of making drastic changes overnight, Judge Hastie was disturbed because he found "no apparent disposition to make a beginning or a trial of any different plan." He looked for some form of progressive integration by which qualified Negroes could be classified and assigned, not by race, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... don't misunderstand, general, but most of it is really quite harmless. It is the national pastime of the power elite; a sort of political mah-jongg and most of these little bubbling kettles cool and sour from inaction. However, this time, it is evident that some drastic catalyst has caused a most violent reaction of these subversive ingredients and the incredible, one in a million possibility has occurred. All the pots are suddenly, all at once, boiling over ...
— I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon • Richard Sabia
... the world. We have only to have a chance of even numbers or anything approaching even numbers to demonstrate the superiority of free-thinking, active citizens over the docile sheep who serve the ferocious ambitions of drastic Kings. [Cheers.] Our enemies are now at the point which we have reached fully extended. On every front of the enormous field of conflict the pressure upon them is such that all their resources are ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... drastic measures. The most violent thing she ever did was to get little Annie, Bridget-the-housewoman's Annie, to help her chase them out. They went from room to room periodically (when flies became too numerous), each armed with an old sawed-off ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... gold standard legally established. It was not this legislation, however, that rendered the period significant; it was the adoption of a new national policy of expansion, incident to the war with Spain. The Spaniards had been unable to put down the Cuban insurrection. The drastic measures, especially the policy of "reconcentration" adopted by General Weyler, had discredited the Spanish cause. The ancient tradition of Spain's cruelty to her colonies predisposed the American people to credit reports of atrocity. The administration was ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... requires to be corrected by the moral and religious sanctions, and it is the special province of the moral and religious teacher in each generation to take care that this correction shall be duly and effectively applied. The task may, from time to time, require the drastic hand of the moral or religious reformer, but, unless some one has the courage to undertake it, we are in constant danger of neglecting the weightier matters of the law, while we are busy with the mint and cummin and anise of fashion and convention. But, notwithstanding ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... consequently, any one thrown into deep water will swim by instinct. Experiments of this sort result badly, the victim clutching frantically at any support, and sometimes dragging down with him the theorist who is administering this drastic sort of education. In short, the instinctive response of a man to being in deep water is the same as in other cases of sudden withdrawal of solid support; it consists in clinging and is attended by ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... well thought of by all the big outfits; and when the situation became intolerable, and we got together to weed out 'the rustlers,' as these cattle-thieves were called, your father was approached and converted to a belief in drastic measures. He had suffered less than the rest of us because of his small herd and the fact that he was very popular among the cowboys. So far as I was concerned, the use of violent methods revolted me. My training in the ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... irritating conviction that every one else was heretical and anti-Christian, with which men of that age clung to their religious differences, Endicott had some reason for holding this opinion. The Boston authorities believed in no less drastic measures to maintain the civil peace and consequent good name of the colony. John Davenport of New Haven voiced the Massachusetts sentiment as well as his own in: "Civil government is for the common welfare of all, as well in the Church as without; which ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... about to yield to the temptation and to return, when, summoning all his strength, he made one mighty effort to dispel the illusion forever. Divesting himself of his clothes, he rolled his naked body among the thorn-bushes near his cave. It was drastic treatment, but it seems to have rid his mind effectually of disturbing fancies. This singular self-punishment was used by Godric, the Welsh saint, in the twelfth century. "Failing to subdue his rebellious flesh by this method, he buried ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... government at Constantinople, which he knew from long experience, were worthless; and declared that the Sultan was bound by no treaty obligation. The word "ought" was not heeded at Constantinople, but the word "must" was understood fully there. Coercion was a word perfectly comprehended there—a drastic dose which never failed. If we have the smallest regard for humanity, he concluded, we shall, with the help of God, demand that which is just and necessary. Mr. Gladstone was frequently and loudly applauded during his speech, at the conclusion of which ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... a landmark of old Naples, and new buildings, streets and squares, blank, dreary, pretentious and staring, have arisen in their places. This thorough sventramento di Napoli, as the citizens graphically term this drastic reconstruction of the old capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, is no doubt beneficial, not to say necessary, and we make no protest against these wholesale changes, which have certainly tended to destroy utterly its ancient character and ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... of stories are told of his somewhat drastic treatment of those who passed by his shrine without bringing an offering—stories which may be traced to the monks who dwelt there, and who reaped ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... bond or free." This last act specifically stated that no slave should be set free upon any pretense whatsoever "except for some meritorious services, to be adjudged and allowed by the governor and council." All this legislation was soon found to be too drastic and too difficult to enforce, and modification was inevitable. This came in 1732, when it was made possible for a slave to be a witness when another slave was on trial for a capital offense, and in 1744 this provision was extended to civil cases as well. In 1748 there ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... Schiller left the academy and was made doctor to a regiment of soldiers consisting largely of invalids. He dosed them with drastic medicines according to his light, but the service was disagreeable and the pay very small. To make a stir in the world he borrowed money and published The Robbers as a book for the reader, with a preface in which he spoke ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... a boy's inside festooned on rusty wire would naturally have spoiled the soul's awakening and the luxury of the sigh. I heard of a civilian official, on his way to Paris after the Armistice, who was just saved by rapid explanations from the drastic attention of a crowd of Tommies who mistook him for a ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... trusts to finance fiscal deficits. In an effort to stem further escalation of fiscal problems, the government has called for a freeze on wages for two years, a reduction of over-staffed public service departments, drastic cutbacks in hiring new government staff, privatization of numerous government agencies, and closure of ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... yet mentioned" I said, "the most drastic measure of all by which the Revolution affected private property, namely, the absolute equalizing of the amount of property to be held by each. Here was not perhaps any denial of the principle itself of private property, but ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... too often gravely dangerous operation, those women in whom the feminine urge to freedom is strongest choose the abortionist. One group goes on bringing children to birth, hoping that they will be born dead or die. The women of the other group strive consciously by drastic means to protect themselves ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... are now working on the theory that the entire Socialist organization is honeycombed with this traffic, and that the Socialist movement is only a blind to cover a wholesale distribution of women for immoral purposes. Drastic Federal action against the Socialist Party is ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... is the peasant proprietor of France, freed from governmental control, a self-sufficient producer of all his requirements. His attack was directed against the Servile State, supposed to be foreshadowed by the Minority Report, which proposed drastic collective control over the derelicts of our present social anarchy. Then Mr. Tom Mann came back from Australia as the prophet of the new proletarian gospel, and for a few months attracted working-class attention by his energy and eloquence. The South Wales miners, after many ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... Unionism can be protective in spirit and oppressive in action. Nevertheless, it was essential to the maintenance of their industrial standard by the artisan classes, because it alone, in the absence of drastic legislative protection, could do something to redress the inequality between employer and employed. It gave, upon the whole, far more freedom to the workman than it took away, and in this we learn an important lesson which has far ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... rate," continued Lyman, "has been lowered seventy-five cents; the St. Helena rate fifty cents, and please notice the very drastic cut from Red Bluff, north, along the Oregon route, to the Oregon ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... more imaginative and impatient reformers find out when they come to themselves, if that calming change ever comes to them. Oftentimes the most immediate and drastic means of bringing them to themselves is to elect them to legislative or executive office. That will reduce over-sanguine persons to their simplest terms. Not because they find their fellow legislators or officials incapable of high purpose or indifferent to the betterment ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... received an English peerage and died in all the odor of a distinction as brilliant as it would have been undeserved. The triumph of the American rebellion so soon after he had ignominiously washed his hands of it, sealed forever his own social doom. That, it is certain, was most severe and drastic. The money paid him by the British Government was accursed as were the thirty silver pieces of Iscariot; for his passion to speculate ruined him financially some time before the end of his life, and he breathed his last amid comparative ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... them down to a narrow sphere. The great chartered companies monopolized the profitable resources. The land magnates exacted tribute for the slightest privilege granted. Drastic laws forbade competition with the companies, and the power of law and the severities of class government were severely felt by the merchants. The chartered corporations and the land dignitaries were often one group with an identity of men and interests. ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... disgusting habit of eating sand, which not only showed how far he had fallen from grace, but also had a serious effect on his health. On several occasions he had to be taken to the army medical tent, and only the most drastic remedies saved his life. ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... of 1870. This is exactly what the French have done, and France is a good instance of the working paradox. Nowhere else is patriotism more purely abstract and arbitrary; and nowhere else is reform more drastic and sweeping. The more transcendental is your patriotism, the more practical ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... out long against the other's skill—for Ross possessed no illusions concerning the type of examiner he now faced—he was never to know. Perhaps the drastic interruption that occurred the next moment saved for Ross a measure ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... State Reform School and the cadets on parade. "The mischief is quite subdued before I am half through," she writes, "and they frequently return bringing other boys to see the photograph. This fact undoubtedly acts as a check upon the boys many times." A pleasing contrast is offered to such drastic and unwholesome methods as these by the gentle and cheery methods pursued by a librarian who says, "The children in this library talk less than the grown-ups. When they do raise their voices, I go up to them ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... as a pendulum, man oscillates. He in whom the love of repose predominates will accept the first creed, the first philosophy, the first political party he meets," most likely his father's. He gets rest, commodity, and reputation. Here is another aspect of art-duality, but it is more drastic than ours, as it would eliminate one part or the other. A man may aim as high as Beethoven or as high as Richard Strauss. In the former case the shot may go far below the mark; in truth, it has not been reached since ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... prospect that cheapness will show itself in reduced costs of the finished goods that are made of them, and that these finished goods will be used in greater quantities without substituting themselves for other things in so drastic a way as that which we have described in the case of aluminum. A reduction in the cost of steel would indeed bring about a substitution of that material for others at every point where the steel and something else are ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... asters, golden-rod and the beautiful sabbatia or "sentry" which is still found on the banks of the fresh ponds near the town and is called "the Plymouth rose." Edward Winslow tells [Footnote: Relation of the Manners, Customs, etc., of the Indians.] of the drastic use of this bitter plant in developing hardihood among Indian boys. Early in the first year one of these fresh-water ponds, known as Billington Sea, was discovered by Francis Billington when he had ...
— The Women Who Came in the Mayflower • Annie Russell Marble
... and in him the fever raged so fierce and violently that he had himself immersed to the neck in a huge jar of ice-cold water—a drastic treatment in consequence of which he came to shed all the skin from ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... the day of his funeral, when a faithful and favourite hound that had always kept guard over Wilde refused to allow the pallbearers to remove the body and had to be shot before the funeral cortege could proceed. It was a pity to have to do this drastic thing, but the loyal and devoted dog would no doubt have died in any case of a ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... authority, even during this latter period of his government was wholly exercised in the cause of tranquility it would be certainly rash to assert. At the same time it may be doubted whether any better choice was open to the king—short of some very drastic policy indeed. That he used his great authority to overthrow his own enemies and to aggrandize his own house goes almost without saying. The titular sovereignty of the king could hope to count for ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... demand for divorce would have been stupid, for it would have thrown a very vivid suspicion upon any later and more drastic attempt. ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... a vividness surpassing paint. He was as honest as the day—as honest as he was fearless and fussy. But he had no patience; he wanted things done and done at once, and his way was THE way to do them. People who did not think as he thought didn't THINK at all. On this drastic premise he went to work. There was of course continuous friction between him and the House of Burgesses. Dinwiddie had all a Scot's native talent for sarcasm. His letters, his addresses, perhaps in particular his addresses ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... members have known it, the Coach was even at that moment turning a rather drastic plan over in his mind. Something certainly had to be done. Practically every fellow at the Varsity and Second Team training tables had observed the sudden funereal atmosphere being radiated by one Speed Bartlett. His sad and solemn conduct had begun to descend like a pall upon a ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... farm until Joan was quite herself. Surely the gods of love and honor would understand that he had foreseen no such troublous dilemma as that which faced him now. He must take himself in hand. He must find an undisturbing level of common sense and keep his roving feet upon it. The need was drastic. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... state to the central government. All early attempts to awaken popular interest in social and political reform had fallen flat, because of this helpless ignorance and indifference of public opinion. But the drastic official measures against early agitators proved to be a challenge to further activity in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... challenge round of 1921 was staged in New Zealand in accord with the agreement between Australia and New Zealand and also in memory of A. F. Wilding. The tremendous interest in the play throughout the entire country showed the time was ripe for a drastic step forward if the step was ever to be taken. So after careful consideration the split of Australia and New Zealand has taken place. What will this mean to New Zealand? First it means that it will be years ...
— The Art of Lawn Tennis • William T. Tilden, 2D
... be discharged, and that in disgrace, to be rendered homeless, cast upon the world at a moment's notice, for that which—with but trifling, almost unconscious, manipulation of fact—could be made to appear as nothing worse than a venial error of judgment, did really sound and seem most unduly drastic punishment. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... received from ten of them something to use on a sore or to take for gonorrhea. It is only justice to say that occasionally one finds drug stores which will refer a patient to a doctor or a dispensary. Drastic legislation to suppress this sort of malpractice is part of the program of Great Britain, Germany, and West Australia, and we in this country cannot too quickly follow in ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... conscientiously in his own way, that both possess peculiar gifts for studying and describing correctly what there is worth studying and describing in this terra incognita, and that we can rely on both. Mr. Taylor is more picturesque, lively, fascinating, and drastic; M. Enault more thorough, quiet, and reserved in the expression of his opinions. The parts seem to be interchanged,—the Frenchman exhibiting more of the Anglo-Saxon, the American more of the French genius; but both confirm each other's ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... that, Monsieur, because you fear it sounds a little drastic. But we are not in Paris or London just now; we can say what we think. Or better still" (glowing with enthusiasm), "they tie them to the mouth of a big gun, and then—Boum ... houpla!! Biftek a ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... earliest troubles and most drastic punishments had come of a propensity to "sweethearts," developed at an indecorously early age, and in fact at the time of which I write he could barely recall the name of Miss This or Miss The Other by the association of ancient physical pangs suffered ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... his absence. The sultan was deliberately picking the troops off, a few at a time, always insisting that he was at peace with the Americans. The war department, many miles away, was unable to understand the situation. Orders required that the Moro receive humane treatment, and forbade any drastic measures being taken against the juramentados, saying time would cure it. It was outrageous, and intelligent men were being made fools of by the sultan, who understood the ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... The house officer had carefully saved a pair of clean khaki trousers to honour the Sunday services, but in the local judgment they were no fit garment for the Lord's house. Local judgment, I may add, was not so drastic in its strictures on boudoir caps. Some very pretty ones came to service on the heads of the choir, but the verdict was a unanimously favourable one. A nomadic Ladies' Home Journal was ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... Nancy took the drastic counsel away from the church with her, and it was many a year before she could manage to add to this slender store anything to increase her gratitude for mercies given, though all the time she was outwardly busy, ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Noble concoctor Has succeeded in ousting the family Doctor. Peel's a perfect old wife—twaddles on about diet, About exercise, air, mild aperients, and quiet; Would leave Nature alone to her vigour elastic, And never exhibit a drug that is drastic. Doctor Russell's the man for a good searching pill, Or a true thorough drench that will cure or will kill. For bleeding and blistering, and easy bravado, (Not to speak of hot water,) he passes Sangrado. He stickles ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... steamboat folk would put it, over-engined for his beam. Both the President and the General Attorney were devoted to their company, and neither would have scrupled to loot an orphanage or burn a church had such drastic measure been demanded by Anaconda interests. Once in town, these excellent officers lost no time in presenting themselves at Mr. Gwynn's. To their joy that unbending personage was so good as to grant them a personal ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... is busy carrying its Presbyterian uniformity platform. London city and the Parliament are crying out to apply the shears against sectaries and schismatics; the army is less drastic; shows, indeed, an undue tolerance to Presbyterian alarm. With Cromwell's approval the army is to be quartered not less than twenty-five miles from London. This quarrel between army and Parliament waxes; the army gains strength by securing ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IX. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... after you had given my little hints a trial. I'll say now that just the orderly course of your life, with four miles a day, no more, no less, isn't a bit likely to get you anywhere. My treatment for such a case as yours would be very drastic. I'd set you some real stunts to do if you were my patient. May tells me that they won't have you in the army, the navy, or the flying corps, but I believe I could find some excitement for ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... business, of course, was not mentioned; your cuttings had become the official act of the department. What that meant, you can perhaps hardly conceive. Here was popular musical comedy censored as it had never been censored before. Time was too short for negotiation; besides the whole thing was too drastic for half measures to be of any avail. Dullness, decorum, and disaster stared the management in the face. Suddenly perceiving that its strength lay in submission, it accepted the situation like ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... Lee, that Lord Cornwallis might decide as to her punishment, sought to make the officer take less summary measures, but vainly, except to win the concession that if Hennion recaptured the prisoner he would take a less drastic course. The morrow brought a return of the pursuing party, empty-handed, and in a hasty consultation it was agreed that the squire should accompany Janice, leaving Mrs. Meredith under the protection of Philemon,—an arrangement ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... others, had been imprisoned or banished eastward over the Rockies. The pressure of increasing numbers, combined with the rather idle carelessness into which all California-Spanish regulations seemed at length to fall, later nullified this drastic policy. Notorious among these men was one Isaac Graham, an American trapper, who had become weary of wandering and had settled near Natividad. There he established a small distillery, and in consequence drew about him all the rough and idle characters of the country. Some were trappers, some sailors; ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... crowding to the episcopal palace crying for food. Hatto and his guests were just sitting down to a luxurious banquet. The bishop had been talking to his companions of these wretched people, and had expressed his opinion that it would be a good thing to do away with them altogether in some drastic way. ...
— Legends of the Rhine • Wilhelm Ruland
... called. If the chairman of the board would do his duty"—here he glared at the unconscious Mr. Innes—"he would set before it the things that have made this meeting necessary, and that call for drastic action." ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... regarding learning as forbidden fruit, stole away to secret places at night to study under the direction of friends. Some learned by intuition without having had the guidance of an instructor. The fact is that these drastic laws were not passed to restrain "discreet" southerners from doing whatever they desired for the betterment of their Negroes. The aim was to cut off their communication with northern teachers and abolitionists, ...
— The Education Of The Negro Prior To 1861 • Carter Godwin Woodson |
