"Justifiable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... so dear; but he was not a miser, though he had a real Venetian's understanding of the value of money, and did not like to part with it till he was sure that he was to receive a full equivalent. For the rest, what he was doing was perfectly justifiable in his eyes: if the couple had been caught within the territory of the Republic, Alessandro Stradella would have had to answer to the law for the atrocious crime of carrying off a Senator's niece and affianced ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... justifiable, for he soon found that he was leading a forlorn hope. As morning after morning the men assembled in the dark meeting-room behind a saloon, and sat about in their overcoats complaining and whining, quoting their wives and relatives, more ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... contemplated was a bad form of prostitution, and he told me why. Of course, I did not grasp all the things he told me at once, but I listened and felt comforted; I began to feel that perhaps I might amount to something, might have some life of my own, and that my rebellion was perhaps justifiable. I began to understand why work was so objectionable to me and why I rebelled against the authority of my parents. My conceptions of freedom were crude, but I began to feel that my revolt was just, and was based upon the terrible injustice ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... continued the doctor, "culminated in my asking Miss Lynden to marry me. . . . I've been thinking—wondering—whether that lie was justifiable. And I've given up the problem. But I respect your motive in telling it. It's a matter for you to settle privately with yourself and your Maker. I'm no Jesuit by nature; but—well—you've played a man's part in the life of a young and friendless girl who has become to me the embodiment ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... was asked to imagine himself in a supposed dilemma and then to discuss the considerations which would lead him to adopt the one or the other line of conduct. Some of these situations suggest excellent dramatic possibilities, conditions of life, for instance, where suicide seemed justifiable, misadventures with pirates, or a turn of affairs which threatened a woman's virtue. Before the student reached the point of arguing the case, the story must be told, and out of these narratives of adventure, told at the outset ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... the Jamieson-Brown MS. It was first printed by Scott, with the omission of the second stanza—perhaps justifiable—and a few minor changes. He notes that he had seen a copy ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... acknowledgment that I do not think the claim of the governor to a right of nomination well founded. Yet it is always justifiable to reason from the practice of a government, till its propriety has been constitutionally questioned. And independent of this claim, when we take into view the other considerations, and pursue them through all their consequences, we shall ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... entrusted with the care of his bees. Even the Sabbath cannot be observed as a day of rest; and often, instead of being able to go to the House of God, the bee-keeper is compelled to labor among his bees, as hard as on other days, or even harder. That he is as justifiable in hiving his bees on the Sabbath, as in taking care of his stock, can admit of no serious doubt; but the very liability of being called to do so, is with many, a sufficient ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... whom were Ministers and had adopted Mr. Steyn's view; on the other side, fifty-three members of both Chambers passed a resolution approving the policy of the British Government. President Steyn complained of troops being sent to Africa. Later events have proved whether these complaints were justifiable. On September 29th, the Netherlands Railway stated that communication with Natal was interrupted. The telegraph wires were cut. On October 2nd, President Krueger, in adjourning the Volksraad sine die, stated that "War is inevitable," ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... opinion that the provisions of the present law permit as general an introduction of this feature of mail service as is necessary or justifiable, and that it ought not to be extended to smaller communities than are ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Volume 8, Section 2 (of 2): Grover Cleveland • Grover Cleveland
... remaining traces of their fatal visit to my tent. Still for many a day I could not drive the picture of their hideous countenances out of my head, as they lay stark and stiff on the ground, killed by my hand— yet never was homicide more justifiable. I had, as I believed, got rid of all the traces of the savages outside the tent. When I found the arrows sticking inside it in my bed, it did not occur to me that it would be equally necessary to get ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... kindly. "Just hang on a few moments longer, dear Mrs. Sykes, and your non-existent but very justifiable curiosity shall be satisfied." ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... the hopeful talk of an intimate neighbor, his son Charley is chanting the Old Hundredth before the whole chapter. When Charley has been put through his vocal paces, the contemporary boy is requested to sing. Whereupon that clear-throated competitor, sustained by justifiable self-confidence and a new-laid egg which he had sucked scarcely a minute before he made his bow to their reverences, sings out with such richness and compass that all the auditors recognize ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... found equal reason to repent of his connection with Mr Hunt. And it is certain that each has sought to justify, both to himself and to the world, the rupture of a copartnery which ought never to have been formed. But his Lordship's conduct is the least justifiable. He had allured Hunt to Italy with flattering hopes; he had a perfect knowledge of his hampered circumstances, and he was thoroughly aware that, until their speculation became productive, he must support ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... spasmodic, intermittent and lukewarm attention. But let the murderer be black or the thief brown or the violator of womanhood have a drop of Negro blood, and the righteousness of the indignation sweeps the world. Nor would this fact make the indignation less justifiable did not we all know that it was blackness that was condemned and ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... that duties of 12d. and 5d. do not, even if a departure from the principle of charging on quality were justifiable, represent the just proportional rates which ought to be levied upon what are supposed to be, respectively, cultivated and wild, as they are represented in the ordinary Price Current by the highest and lowest prices, which are 3s. 10d. and 2s. The just proportional ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... But each of the little colleges had its band of devoted adherents, held fast to it by the strongest of all ties, that of religion. Most of all was this the case with Acadia, founded in hot and justifiable anger, and eager to justify its existence. Had Howe been a wary politician, he would have thought twice before stirring up such a wasp's nest, more especially as the {77} Baptists had hitherto been his faithful supporters. But Howe was both more and less than a wary politician, and when early ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... delirium of reasoning, she showed in the first few moments to Janet when she had returned to London. Down at Kew she spent an evening, delighted, with a justifiable pride, to be seen in one of the dainty frocks that Traill had ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... judge. "Well, I congratulate you two young fellows on your escape last night. Those scoundrels have got away; and if they turn up again, lawyer though I am, I should advise you both to shoot on sight. If you are brought before me, I'll promise you I will bring it in justifiable homicide." ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... was labouring to build up his own fortunes upon the ruin of those of his benefactress—of the confiding and generous mistress to whom he was indebted for all the honours which he then enjoyed—nor could he fail to feel that reprisals on her part would be at once legitimate and justifiable; and accordingly he caused the commission of her regency to be prefaced by the most elaborate encomiums. Not content with asserting that her "able government and her wise measures had proved her to be alike the mother of the sovereign and of the state." Louis, acting under ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... adventurer in lotteries. 182 The history of Leviculus, the fortune-hunter. 183 The influence of envy and interest compared. 184 The subject of essays often suggested by chance. Chance equally prevalent in other affairs 185 The prohibition of revenge justifiable by reason. The meanness of regulating our conduct by the opinions of men 186 Anningait and Ajut; a Greenland history 187 The history of Anningait and Ajut concluded 188 Favour often gained with little assistance from understanding. 189 The mischiefs of falsehood. The character ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... her promise willingly. Michael's reason seemed to her such a justifiable one that their secret might ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... dimensions of such a powerful engine of research as the Hooker telescope are not in themselves a source of satisfaction to the astronomer, for they involve a decided increase in the labor of observation and entail very heavy expense, justifiable only in case important results, beyond the reach of other instruments, can be secured. The construction of a telescope of these dimensions was necessarily an experiment, for it was by no means certain, after the optical and mechanical difficulties had ...
— The New Heavens • George Ellery Hale
... gentleman from his overseer; and knowing him to be on an excursion with the ladies, and thinking he would be back about mid-day, I advised him, sir, to delay his return to the station, until he had seen his master. Hence, you see, sir, his presence on the station was perfectly justifiable. With regard to his peccancy I will not attempt, sir, to offer any palliation beyond the expression of my belief, that the tobacco was taken without any notion of the offence he was committing; in proof of which, I may mention, sir, the absence of any concealment ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... did not complain and this of itself added a hundredfold to the pathos of the situation. Her unfailing sweetness and patience touched the healthy, hardy young people who were so devoted to her more than the most justifiable impatience on ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... purpose:—"It may not be known to you, Sir Jasper, that since the general pouring out of Christian light upon this kingdom, many solid men have been led to doubt whether the shedding human blood by the hand of a fellow-creature be in any respect justifiable. And although this rule appears to me to be scarcely applicable to our state in this stage of trial, seeing that such non-resistance, if general, would surrender our civil and religious rights into the hands of whatsoever daring tyrants ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... whether, in your opinion, the fact is sufficient to guarantee a verdict of "Not Guilty," in case I am prosecuted for murder, or whether an unscrupulous jury could sacrifice me to the unsettled condition of the popular mind on the subject of justifiable ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... example of the capacity of wood and plaster and brick to acquire personality. It was the physical symbol of its owners' position in life; it was the history of their career, written down for all to see, and as such they felt in it the most justifiable pride. When Mr. and Mrs. Emery, directly after their wedding in a small Central New York village, had gone West to Ohio they had spent their tiny capital in building a small story-and-a-half cottage, ornamented with the jig-saw work and fancy turning ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... circumstances, to which may be added the uncertainty of the Hecla's liberation from the ice to the southward before the close of the season, I no longer considered it prudent or justifiable, upon the slender chance of eventual success now before us, to risk the safety of the officers and men committed to my charge, and whom it was now my first wish to reconduct in good health to their ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... pay her particular court. Opposition to her opinion, was, in her estimation, high treason. The uxuriousness of the amiable King towards his fascinating Princess (who to all her sex's charms united all their foibles), exceeded justifiable attachment to an engaging and faithful partner. He gave her credit for qualities she did not possess; and the malice of the Parliamentary leaders against her, on account of her religion, increased his eagerness to support and defend her; nor could his most attached friends counteract ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... termed "rudimentary organs." It is a natural and justifiable assumption for a zoologist that all vestigial organs have previously been more largely developed. It is also an assumption that a given custom is vestigial, but it is not a ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... it necessary to increase the powers of Child Welfare Officers for these purposes. To give them more actual powers over children who have not committed an offence would be to risk justifiable public objection to interference with the liberty of the subject and the ...
— Report of the Juvenile Delinquency Committee • Ronald Macmillan Algie
... he said. 'Your very justifiable anger melts before reflection. The storm subsides, and you are at leisure to examine the matter dispassionately. Doubts begin to creep in. Possibly, you say to yourself, I have been too hasty, too harsh. Justice ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... at once cleared. "The fraud is justifiable," he said. "For why should he take my Black Tom and give me naught? I do but protect myself when I give him instead ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... time, insincere in endeavouring to obtain peace? The learned gentleman, indeed, assumes that we were; and he even makes a concession, of which I desire not to claim the benefit; he is willing to admit that, on our principles, and our view of the subject, insincerity would have been justifiable. I know, Sir, no plea that would justify those who are entrusted with the conduct of public affairs, in holding out to Parliament and to the nation one object while they were, in fact, pursuing another. I did, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... very original instrument at the board. The Catholics freely acknowledge the fact to be true; and, at the same time appeal to all the world, whether a wiser, a better, a more honourable, or a more justifiable project could have been thought of. They were then reduced to slavery and beggary by the English rebels, many thousands of them murdered, the rest deprived of their estates, and driven to live on a ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... standstill. He's sole owner of the mills, and he's a rich man. He has always treated his employees as if they were his own children. If they turn on him now for something which, from their experience of his character, they must know was fair and justifiable"— ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... Minister, did not think that the conquest of the Transvaal, supposing it to be justifiable, would pay for its cost, and he accordingly made a treaty with the people of that country (1881). Lord Beaconsfield thought this policy a serious mistake, and that it would lead to trouble later on. He said, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... all a former Abderitish glory. In the brittle case of Mr. Bayard the laughing cynic did not laugh alone; that gray eagle of the tape saw much in Mr. Gwynn and his polite adventures to delight him. He declared the situation to be a most justifiable sarcasm addressed, not against an ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... brow-beaten, sneered at, handed over by this highly-connected young or old gentleman, to that highly-connected young or old gentleman, and dodged back again; he is a man with no rights in his own time, or his own property; a mere outlaw, whom it is justifiable to get rid of anyhow; a man to be worn out by all ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... a preliminary court recently, Col. S.C. Vance appearing for Col. English. After a hearing of all the testimony the court reached a decision of justifiable homicide and English was released. The locality of the shooting is in the mountains of western North Carolina, and not far from the Flat Rock mica mine, the scene of the brutal midnight murder, Feb. 17, of Burleson, Miller, ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... the original certain lines which the editor has exercised his discretion by suppressing; inasmuch as they comprise national reflections which the bard's justifiable indignation has made him pour forth against a people which, if not universally of an amiable, is generally of a respectable character, and deserves not in this case to be censured 'en masse' for the ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... of fourteen years, and only after their physical capability has been certified to by a physician. It insists on the prohibition of all dangerous occupations. The former articles in this Bulletin on the abuses which exist in the industrial employment of children in New York show how justifiable is this action of the society. "Thousands of children," says Mr. Gerry, "die of diseases contracted in these injurious employments; in this respect our nation is far behind Europe in its means of affording ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... Morgan, a rising young lawyer with justifiable political aspirations, married Elinor Ashton, leading woman at the Green Square Theatre, his old schoolmates and neighbours back in Spring Valley held up their hands in horror, and his father and mother up in the ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... offices in London. Not satisfied with this security, he advised the introduction of the mains of the New River into the lower parts of the fabric, and cisterns and movable engines in the roof; and quite justifiable was his joke, that "he would reproduce the Deluge in ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... worldly-minded woman. She represents, indeed, the claim of modern women for a distinctive interest and employment not less urgent and necessary than the interests and employments of men. And when she failed, as she plainly must have failed, to find any such occupation, her sense of beauty and her justifiable demand for life found an outlet largely in shopping, in entertaining, in all such ephemeral attractions and amusements as women in her class may seek and reject. That way of escape, however, soon raised financial obstructions ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... from that day Mme. Veuve Vauquer availed herself of the services of M. Goriot's coiffeur, and went to some expense over her toilette, expense justifiable on the ground that she owed it to herself and her establishment to pay some attention to appearances when such highly-respectable persons honored her house with their presence. She expended no small amount of ingenuity in a sort of ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... the Deity is "the sole Operant" (Religious Musings) is indeed far too bold: may easily be misconstrued into Spinosism; and, therefore, though it is susceptible of a pious and justifiable interpretation, I should by no means now use such a phrase. I was very young when I wrote that poem, and my religious feelings were more settled than ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... of repetition, applied either to a word or to part of a phrase, is perfectly justifiable in cases where the artist, for physical reasons, is unable to sing the phrase in one breath. I give an excerpt from Weber's Der Freischuetz (Grand Air, ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... Archbishop of Magdeburg to prohibit it. Failing to obtain any satisfaction, he followed the old university custom, made out ninety- five theses, or reasons, why he did not believe the practice justifiable, detailed the abuses, set forth what he conceived to be the true Christian doctrine in the matter, and challenged all comers to a debate on the theses (R. 151). Following true university custom, also, these theses were made ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... would have entered a further protest. He did not see the necessity of confronting an old woman with the gruesome sight of a mutilated corpse, nor did he perceive justifiable cause for further ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... is made in such time that the principal can attain his object without suffering any prejudice, an action will lie at his suit, in default of proof by the agent that he could not resign before, or that his resignation, though inconvenient, was justifiable. ...
— The Institutes of Justinian • Caesar Flavius Justinian
... make him a busy-body, a meddler, or a pedantic formalist, in the relations of ordinary life. I have taken the instance of father and son, which might be supposed by many as one in which extreme interference was not only justifiable, but requisite. In stating how necessary it is even there to be very careful as regards the extent and mode of interference, I leave my readers to estimate how essential it must be in all other cases where the relation is not of that closely connected character. I believe that the parental relation ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... which Hastings was executed, were beheaded earl Rivers, Lord Richard Grey, Vaughan, and Haute. These executions are indubitable; were consonant to the manners and violence of the age; and perhaps justifiable by that wicked code, state necessity. I have never pretended to deny them, because I find them fully authenticated. I have in another(19) place done justice to the virtues and excellent qualities of earl Rivers: let therefore my ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... some time. It seemed to us that, in marrying Janet Gilbert, Herbert would secure for himself, in the very beginning of his career, the most important element of a happy life. But suddenly, without any reason that seemed to us justifiable, Mr. Gilbert, the only surviving parent of Janet, broke off the match; and he and his daughter soon after left the town for a trip ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... broken. Everybody rose, and not the least precipitately the streaming Mr. Ziegler, who, ejecting the mute with much spluttering, and pitching away his empty glass, sprang towards the door, with justifiable ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... all are they in America justified in being excited about our action. It would be erroneous to suppose that the step made a particularly deep impression abroad. It is regarded as what it is—justifiable defensive action in the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... But, on the contrary, she had, he considered, flirted most outrageously with Mr. Spotts. Indeed Cecil was already strongly of the opinion that the actor was trying to succeed where he had failed—a course of action which he thought quite justifiable on his, Banborough's, part, but highly reprehensible on the part of any one else. Matters had now culminated. Fate had brought the three together at this inopportune moment, and as it was manifestly impossible not to say something, ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... nation, that the emigrants had the greatest right to claim the justice and favour of the royal government, because they alone had not wandered from the righteous path. And starting with this position, he represented the forfeiture and sale of their property, not as the justifiable acts of a legislative body, but as revolutionary outrages and robberies which the nation ought to hasten to ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... the existence of which in this country has been so often denied, but of which, we trust, a sufficient number of examples are now provided to render that reproach to Scottish architecture no longer justifiable. We have to thank the fine red sandstone of the district, of which the church is built, for the perfect preservation of all the details of the structure. These remain, even in the minutest carving, as perfect and complete as the day they ...
— Scottish Cathedrals and Abbeys • Dugald Butler and Herbert Story
... was discovered to have been opened and emptied; and when the prisoner was committed by the magistrates, the precious stones were found torn out of their settings and sewed up in her stays. The lady considered it a case of justifiable self-compensation. The law declared it to be a robbery committed on the executors of the dead man. The lighter offense—which had been passed over when such a charge as murder was brought against her—was just the thing to revive, to save appearances ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... point of view was, I think, justifiable. Leaving out the intolerable implication that Lance had showered benefits upon her, she felt that the Lorrigans had been over-generous. The schoolhouse and the books might be accepted as a public-spirited effort to do their part. But the piano, ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... Some doubt is justifiable as to the ordinarily accepted scene of his birth. Of two adjoining houses forming a detached building on the north side of Henley Street, that to the east was purchased by John Shakespeare in 1556, but there is no evidence that he owned or occupied the house to the west before 1575. Yet this ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... called it, and Gwen stayed in the playground until the bell rang, fuming with indignation. Every fresh little episode seemed to serve to make her more of an alien in the Form than ever. But here her decision was absolutely justifiable; not one of the girls would have cared to accept the unenviable role which they had wished to thrust upon her. Perhaps for that very reason they were all the more annoyed at her action. She was received with black looks when she re-entered the classroom. Elspeth Frazer whispered something to a friend, ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... attention of the whole civilized world. It was evident that Rizal's fate might have been that of any of his countrymen, and the thinking world saw that events had taken such a course in the Philippines that it had become justifiable for the Filipinos to attempt to dissolve the political bands which had connected them with ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... passing of the public resolutions, after the battle of Dunbar if not before that time, by a conviction of the dissimulation of the king. He probably thought, with the framers of the western remonstrance,(28) in which he seems to have concurred, that they would not be justifiable in fighting for Charles, without some additional security being provided for the maintenance of their religious privileges, and unless some adequate restraint were imposed upon the exercise of the royal authority. His dread ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... two fragments, which are to be found in Athenaeus, book x., and which Barnes, from the similarity of their tendency, has combined into one. I think this a very justifiable liberty, and have adopted it in some other fragments of ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... are passionately fond of the durian, distinguished it by the title of DIEN, which signifies the fruit PAR EXCELLENCE. Under such circumstances my anticipations are justifiable. To my friend I am also indebted for several young plants of the sapodilla plum (ACHRAS SAPOTA), sold in some parts of India under the spurious title of MANGOSTEEN, and considered to be one of the most ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... I did not all the time know that it was to this it was sure to come, soon or late?" she said, with justifiable complacency. "It's a good thing to have a house o' one's own an' an estate. An' the linen that's in the house! I've no need to turn a hand to the flax-wheel for ten years if I've no mind. An' ye can all bide your times, an' see what John'll make o' the farm, now he's ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... the methods hitherto adopted to ensure the tranquillity of that country were superficial and fallacious. His cabinet immediately recognized a distinction between political and predial sources of disorder. The first, they resolved into a mere system of agitation, no longer justifiable by the circumstances, and this they determined to put down. The second, they sought in the conditions under which land was occupied, and these they determined to investigate. Hence, on the one hand, the O'Connell prosecution: on the ...
— Lord George Bentinck - A Political Biography • Benjamin Disraeli
... there is any) for this inflation is twofold: the patriotic sentiment which leads American amateurs to desire the oldest and most precious typographical and historical monuments of their country, and, secondly, the perhaps less justifiable enthusiasm of some Englishmen for books which, as they may plead, are the offspring of the States while they were still English settlements. A copious and fairly contemporary view of the extensive family of works belonging to the earlier Anglo-American library may be found in the bibliographies ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... are the ways of God, And justifiable to men; Unless there be who think not God at all. If any be, they walk obscure; For of such doctrine never was there school, But the heart of the fool, And no man therein doctor ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... the consequence of this was that a most unusual and incredible number of women were reduced to the utmost distress. Some were delivered and spoiled by the rashness and ignorance of those who pretended to lay them. Children without number were, I might say, murdered by the same but a more justifiable ignorance: pretending they would save the mother, whatever became of the child; and many times both mother and child were lost in the same manner; and especially where the mother had the distemper, there nobody ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... will subsequently appear in this work have been forced from me by the attacks made upon my nation by the American authors; and that, if I am compelled to draw comparisons, it is not with the slightest wish to annoy or humiliate the Americans, but in legitimate and justifiable defence of my ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... Land in a fittingly reverential mood. Exactly the same difficulty is experienced in approaching the sacred shrines of art. Enthusiasm about great artistic productions, though we may readily understand it to be justifiable, is by no means so easily communicable. How many people possessing a real claim to culture have felt themselves puzzled by their insensibility before some great masterpiece! Conditions may be easily ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... unalterable possession of their race since the beginning of the world. But reflection and enquiry should satisfy us that to our predecessors we are indebted for much of what we thought most our own, and that their errors were not wilful extravagances or the ravings of insanity, but simply hypotheses, justifiable as such at the time when they were propounded, but which a fuller experience has proved to be inadequate. It is only by the successive testing of hypotheses and rejection of the false that truth is at last elicited. After all, what ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... Mrs. Kearney bought some lovely blush-pink charmeuse in Brown Thomas's to let into the front of Kathleen's dress. It cost a pretty penny; but there are occasions when a little expense is justifiable. She took a dozen of two-shilling tickets for the final concert and sent them to those friends who could not be trusted to come otherwise. She forgot nothing, and, thanks to her, everything that was ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... confession, and that consequently he was not at liberty to reveal it, a point which I shall notice in a subsequent page. The means adopted to procure his confession were curious, and perhaps not strictly justifiable. A trap was set for the prisoner ...
— Guy Fawkes - or A Complete History Of The Gunpowder Treason, A.D. 1605 • Thomas Lathbury
... breast. Whether his future action was based on the decision of his council to which he submitted, sanctioning on his own part the treachery by which alone Douglas could be beguiled within his reach, as the chroniclers, to whom such a device was quite justifiable, tell us; or whether when he issued his safe-conduct he still hoped to be able to convince the Earl of his folly in resisting, and to bring him to a real and effectual change of mind, no one can now tell. But James was so little addicted to treachery, so fair, tolerant ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... of the plaintiff. Upon examination, I can find no sufficient evidence to support this claim; it becomes therefore, in my belief, by its very nature, an atrocious outrage alike to the living and the dead—an insulting violation of natural justice and the law of the land, sufficient to rouse every justifiable effort ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... whether New York possesses a police; the doubt is very justifiable, for these guardians of the public peace are seldom forthcoming when they are wanted. They are accessible to bribes, and will investigate into crime when liberally rewarded; but probably in no city in the civilised world is life ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... exercises—which of them had the best right to command in that house? But was it right to divulge a secret? Ah! that was another question. It is true that, as a general rule, it is wrong to betray secrets; yet, it is nevertheless true, that to betray a secret that ought to be known is at least justifiable. Moreover, was it not a Christian duty to let the grandfather know as soon as possible what extraordinary things his granddaughter was turning over in her noddle? And finally—there was money in ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... straightforward. He held that he had sent the letter at a time when he was a prisoner simply, which was justifiable; not when a prisoner on parole, which was shameless. The temper of the court was against him. Most important was the enmity of the Jesuits, whose hatred of Puritanism cried out for sacrifice. They had seen the work of the saints in every turn of the late siege, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of all this was that we all felt ourselves well led, and had the most absolute confidence in our chief, and I myself was particularly fond of him. It really was a fine sight both from the picturesque point of view and from that of a justifiable national pride, when our twenty white-sailed ships manoeuvred all together, under the admiral's signal, on the blue Mediterranean waters, with no sound to break the silence except the shrill voices of the officers of ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... wariness, resist the excessive desire to slake his burning thirst. It is Bushman-like practice to take advantage of its piteous necessities, for most of the feathers they obtain are procured in this way; but they eat the flesh, and are so far justifiable. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... punishment of the undeniable guilt of a few. In the event of a general outbreak, it might be proper that the government should be armed with the power of arresting objects of its suspicion without trial. But there existed no such necessity at present; and he did not think it justifiable to take away the franchise of a whole people, in order to punish a few known and dangerous individuals, or to guard against the misconduct of twenty-three men, by enveloping them in a general forfeiture of personal ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the lad's future was made by any of the people who admired his cleverness. Miss Cadman still clung in a fitful way to the idea of making her nephew a cleric; she had often talked it over with the Misses Lumb, who of course held that 'any sacrifice' was justifiable with such a motive, and who suggested a hope that, by the instrumentality of Lady Whitelaw, a curacy might easily be obtained as soon as Godwin was old enough. But several years must pass before that Levitical stage could be ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... are less inclined to be fussy, and by the same token more inclined, on having accomplished a cure, to take a justifiable pride in it and to brag publicly about it. As I stated a moment ago, I claim Mr. Blythe viewed the matter in a proper and commendable light when he took pen in hand to describe more or less at length his reduction processes. So, too, did that other ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... themselves—or of their position as drones in the world's hive. They seem rather to apologise for their degradation as a thing inevitable, for which they are not accountable— and sometimes, in the case of the rich, as a thing justifiable. ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the Protagoras, of virtue as a calculation of pleasure, an opinion which he afterwards repudiates in the Phaedo. What then is his meaning? His meaning we shall be able to illustrate best by parallel notions, which, whether justifiable by logic or not, have always existed among mankind. We must remind the reader that Socrates himself implies that he will be understood or appreciated ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... purchased the whole district from its then owners, for thirty talents, (27) which sum they had actually paid. But the Lacedaemonians, acting on the principle "that a purchase which forcibly deprives the weaker party of his possession is no more justifiable than a seizure by violence," compelled them to emancipate Epeium also. From the presidency of the temple of Olympian Zeus, however, they did not oust them; not that it belonged to Elis of ancient right, but because the rival claimants, (28) it was felt, were "villagers," hardly equal to the ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... it was argued, that as the Americans had resolved not to trade with England, it was but fair to prevent their trading with other countries; that as they had entered into associations to ruin British merchants, impoverish British manufacturers, and starve our West India islands, it was a justifiable act of retaliation to return their mischiefs upon their own heads; and that, if any foreign power had only offered a tithe part of the insults and injuries we had received from our colonists, the whole nation would have been aroused to advocate revenge, and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sold into the colonies as slaves for a term of years. The English courts were busy grinding out human material for the Virginia plantations; and, as the objects of commerce were considered paramount, this process of disposing of what was regarded as the scum element was adjudged necessary and justifiable. No ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... appears that, after seeing it, Father McCabe went straight to Father Brennan, and the priests sat till midnight, sipping their punch and considering this fine point of theology—if a man may ask a woman to sit naked to him; and then if it would be justifiable to employ a naked woman for a statue of the Virgin. Father Brennan said, 'Nakedness is not a sin,' and Father McCabe said, 'Nakedness may not be in itself a sin, but it leads to sin, and is therefore unjustifiable.' At their third tumbler of punch they had reached Raphael, ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... challenge to fight, say "No" if you can—only take care you make it clear to yourselves why you say "No." It's a proof of the highest courage, if done from true Christian motives. It's quite right and justifiable, if done from a simple aversion to physical pain and danger. But don't say "No" because you fear a licking, and say or think it's because you fear God, for that's neither Christian nor honest. And if you do ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... know, to rescue my child from a fate far worse than death, and it may be some consolation to you, young men, to recollect, at the close of your own careers, which I trust will yet be long and happy, that a parent, in his last moments, found a consolation in the justifiable hopes he had ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... illustrates the relative thickness of the mantles in the Krag-Joergensen, Mauser, Lee-Metford, and Guedes bullets. Given an equal degree of force and velocity on the part of the bullet at the moment of impact, the assumption is justifiable that the thinner mantles would tear or burst more readily in direct ratio to their relative thinness. I believe this assumption to be borne out by my own experience of the common deformities that occurred; but the great relative frequency with ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... of crude, impetuous, merciless youth. I had once felt as she did, but now I could see the cruel train of conditions behind certain characters forcing them into different positions, and in place of Dawn's wholesome, justifiable, hot-headed rage against the likes of Rooney-hyphen, I felt for him a contempt so immeasurable that it almost ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... and the best teachers usually sought the most lucrative positions; and sometimes, in the battle for bread and butter, the rather keen competition in certain districts led to the periodical dismissal of teachers without justifiable cause. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... much of a man to hazard an opinion on the proprieties in the face of his wife's disapproval, so he grunted an amiable acquiescence in that spirit of justifiable hypocrisy known among his kind as "humoring the women-folks." Privately he was disposed to exult in his daughter's spirit and good sense, and so long as these admirable qualities did not take her ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... it was merely the flattered portrait of an earthly beauty; the wife, at best, of the artist; or, it might be, a peasant girl of the Campagna, or some Roman princess, to whom he desired to pay his court. For love, or some even less justifiable motive, the old painter had apotheosized these women; he thus gained for them, as far as his skill would go, not only the meed of immortality, but the privilege of presiding over Christian altars, and of being worshipped with far holier fervors than while they dwelt on earth. Hilda's fine sense ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... position, contending that the methods of the Russian Government rendered terrorism not only justifiable, but inevitable ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... used in this case were justifiable the result has proven. By no other course could the murderer of Henry Schulte have been successfully punished or the money which he had ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton |
