"Hard-and-fast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they've eaten out of the same dish, as it were, all their days, and had the same opportunities, they should be so totally unlike one another physically, mentally, and morally. It's impossible to lay down any hard-and-fast rule for them now, as one could ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... precept is false. My principles have been various, among various men; I had to change them with every change of latitude. Things that we admire in Europe are punishable in Asia, and a vice in Paris becomes a necessity when you have passed the Azores. There are no such things as hard-and-fast rules; there are only conventions adapted to the climate. Fling a man headlong into one social melting pot after another, and convictions and forms and moral systems become so many meaningless words to him. The one thing that always remains, ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... if the Cavalry Divisions are constantly drilled together under the same Leader in Peace, there is at least a very great risk that this certain degree of drill control, which we recognise as indispensable, will degenerate into hard-and-fast prescription, since the Leader has always the same number of units at his disposal, and will thus by degrees habituate himself to consider these as invariable quantities in the solution of ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... evidently, experience in training war pilots, and the practical results obtained by these men at the front, have been proof enough to the French authorities of the folly of setting rigid standards, making hard-and-fast rules to be met by prospective aviators. As our own experience increased, we saw the wisdom of a policy which is more concerned with a man's courage, his self-reliance, and his powers of initiative, than with his ability to work out theoretical ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... travellers who now visit (like those who for the past century have visited) South America come in three categories— although, of course, these categories are not divided by hard-and-fast lines. ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
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