|
|
|
More "Arbitrary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for, says he, it is not every one who can be weary of the most exquisite enjoyments of society, and to be thus sated a man must have been greatly prized by beauty and wealth. These reflections and explanations are arbitrary, and not impartial. But even if Lord Byron, at twenty-one years of age, did borrow ideas and sentiments not really his, by way of producing poetic effect, we must nevertheless acknowledge that, even in this order of sentiments, part still were genuine and real. Like all young men, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... is an arbitrary cuss," said the old woman. "They say he was one of Teddy's Rough-riders in the war. He sure can ride and handle a gun. 'Pears like he thinks he's runnin' the whole range," she continued, after a pause. "Cain't nobody so much as shoot a grouse since he came on, and the Supervisor upholds ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... forcibly detain me by seizing hold of the bicycle, at the same time making no pretence of concealing their eager curiosity concerning the probable contents of my luggage. Naturally disapproving of this arbitrary conduct, I push them roughly away. With a growl more like the voice of a wild animal than of human beings, one draws his sword and the other picks up a thick knobbed stick that he had dropped in order to the better pinch and sound my packages. Without giving ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... ever to carry with it? that you are obeyed solely from respect to the bayonet? and that this House, the ground and pillar of freedom, is itself held up only by the treacherous underpinning and clumsy buttresses of arbitrary power? ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... which I am sure is, that the distinction between the organic and inorganic is arbitrary; that it is more coherent with our other ideas, and therefore more acceptable, to start with every molecule as a living thing, and then deduce death as the breaking up of an association or corporation, than to start with inanimate molecules and ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... to the progress of this country, and to the peace of the world. Having referred briefly to one cause of disturbance to the progress of mechanical engineering, he named another, which at the present moment is occupying thoughtful men to a considerable extent, namely, the arbitrary imposition of duties and bounties for the professed object of protecting manufactures, while in fact they constitute taxes on a nation for the benefit of a few individuals. In some countries excessive duties have been imposed, as against ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... noises to express his amazement at this astounding phenomenon, Dick waved her theme by him as though he were an arbitrary traffic policeman, and, so to speak, beckoned forward his ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... and love. It brings a joy to the parents' hearts to behold their child obeying willingly. By the help of God such obedience can be obtained. Some one may ask, "Would you never punish a child?" Yes; it is sometimes necessary, but not so often as many have supposed. Training, and not arbitrary government is ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... no!" exclaimed the superintendent. "It is evident, Mr. West, as indeed the histories say, that governmental action carried with it in your day an arbitrary implication which it does not now. The Government is actually now what it nominally was in the America of your day—the servant, tool, and instrument by which the people give effect to their will, itself being without will. The popular will is expressed ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... much attention to the rather arbitrary rules on painting laid down by the Painters' Union. Life is too short. For instance, I don't put my brushes in turpentine when I have finished for the day; and if I do I put the green brush and the light-blue ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... have been subjected to trials of temper so severe as vexed Mr. Adams during his Presidential term. To play an intensely exciting game strictly in accordance with rigid moral rules of the player's own arbitrary enforcement, and which are utterly repudiated by a less scrupulous antagonist, can hardly tend to promote contentment and amiability. Neither are slanders and falsehoods mollifying applications to a statesman inspired with an upright and noble ambition. Mr. Adams bore such assaults, ranging ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... also because it requires a very small degree of previous instruction. It seems, in fact, to be merely the exertion of a man's physical force; and its value above that of a machine of equal power arises from its portability, and from the facility of directing its efforts to arbitrary and continually fluctuating purposes. It may perhaps be worthy of enquiry, whether a more constant average might not be deduced from combining with this species of labour those trades which require but a moderate exertion of skill and which likewise ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... far more philosophical language than that which is frequently substituted for it by Poets, who think that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their art in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression in order to furnish food for fickle tastes and fickle appetites ...
— Lyrical Ballads, With Other Poems, 1800, Vol. I. • William Wordsworth
... nature. He had hated Aunt Jane, and regarded her as cruel and selfish—a fair estimate of her character—until Aunt Jane's nieces taught him to be more considerate and forgiving. Patricia, especially, had exercised a gentler influence upon the arbitrary youth, and as a consequence they had become ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... difficult. The Senate desires impartiality, equable temper, and knowledge of parliamentary law from its presiding officer. But it will not submit to any attempt on the part of the presiding officer to direct or advise it, and will instantly resent any arbitrary ruling. Of course, Mr. Roosevelt presided only at a few meetings before the final adjournment. When Congress met again he was President of ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... a member of the legislature, a petition was presented to the house for an act of amnesty of all those arbitrary measures which the American officers had been obliged to adopt during the war, in order to get horses, provisions, &c. for the army. The petition was signed by the names of all the favorite officers of the state, and among ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... Thus the arbitrary hand of power, in one night, smote and swept away the sciences: to which succeeded the low vulgar buffoonery of a showman. Virgil and Cicero made way for a wild beast from Angola! and now a guard is on duty at the very ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... differences between the races and their number must have been small; consequently as far as their distinguishing characters are concerned, they then had less claim to rank as distinct species than the existing so-called races. Nevertheless, so arbitrary is the term of species, that such early races would perhaps have been ranked by some naturalists as distinct species, if their differences, although extremely slight, had been more constant than they are at present, and had not graduated ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... and the head men at once assembled and seated themselves in the council circle as a matter of course and of right.[3] The chief, unquestionably a man of courage and physical power, was an executive officer who rarely asserted arbitrary rule, particularly in civil affairs, for the Sioux were too high spirited a people to tolerate anything savoring of despotism. Usually he was suave, diplomatic and tolerant, and enjoyed the affection and veneration of his people. ...
— Sioux Indian Courts • Doane Robinson
... Russian vessel laden with Chinese goods, an accessory circumstance which deserves to be mentioned for the light which it throws on the character of this Pizarro of Kamchatka. He was not set free until the year 1706, and then recovered his command in Kamchatka, with strict orders to desist from all arbitrary proceedings and acts of violence, and to do his best for the discovery of new lands. The first part of this order he however complied with only to a limited extent, which gave occasion to repeated complaints[309] and revolts among the already unbridled Cossacks. Finally, in 1711, Atlassov and several ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... Creator, but the expression for the time being of a mechanical process of development of matter, the expression of a necessarily active cause, that is, of a mechanical cause (causa efficiens). Where teleological Dualism seeks the arbitrary thoughts of a capricious Creator in miracles of creation, causal Monism finds in the process of development the necessary effects of eternal immutable laws of nature." Haeckel's "Anthropogeny" also is replete with attacks upon a teleological {162} view ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... to put the question. If a member is aggrieved by the conduct or decisions of the Master, he has his redress by an appeal to the Grrand Lodge, which will, of course, see that the Master does not rule his lodge "in an unjust or arbitrary manner." But such a thing as an appeal from the Master of the lodge to its members is unknown ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... this time, probably, that the custom of inventing an arbitrary private vocabulary of words and phrases for the purpose of disguising references to functions and parts of the body regarded as immodest and indecent, first began to become common. Such private slang, growing ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... for several months, when Madame Augereau, his wife, a woman of courage, saw come into the harbour a ship flying the tricolour. She went on board to give the captain a letter, informing the French government of the arbitrary arrest of her husband. The captain, although not a naval officer, went boldly to the Portuguese ministry and demanded the release of his compatriot; failing which, he said that he would declare war in the name of France. ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... nothing but the welfare and deliverance of the people; when a king listens to such excellent men; and when a parliament, from the basest, most interested motives, interposes to intercept the blessing, must I not change my opinions, and admire arbitrary power? or can I retain my sentiments, without ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... be ruled by the personal, arbitrary whims of supremely wise men, or by laws formulated by ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... of rhetoric:—"He did not think it possible that such a case of abuse could pass unnoticed as that he had just heard. The general conduct of the police was, he believed, good; but the instances of arbitrary conduct and overbearing demeanour set to flight all the ancient examples brought forward to enrich by contrast the serious parts of the glorious genius of Shakspeare." We never understood or imagined there was an Anacreon among the aldermen, a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, October 2, 1841 • Various
... a mass of trivial and arbitrary conventions, "extremely troublesome to those who practise them and insupportable to everybody else," seem to forget the long, slow progress of social intercourse in the upward climb of man from the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... material existence. In the first place, the existence of a material celestial sphere would require that all the myriad stars should be at exactly the same distances from the earth. Of course, no one will say that this or any other arbitrary disposition of the stars is actually impossible, but as there was no conceivable physical reason why the distances of all the stars from the earth should be identical, it seemed in the very highest degree improbable that the stars ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... now refer was long before the church, in its wisdom, enacted a law for regulating chapels of ease; and not only the amount of stipend, but the continuance of clergymen who officiated in such chapels, depended on the arbitrary and sovereign will of their pious founders. Bellerstown, though a step in William Douglas' professional progress, yielded too scanty a revenue to admit of matrimony; but the talents, respectability, and prepossessing manners ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... from the brief Morgan control under Spencer to the receivership contained the same kind of irregularities and errors of policy that had prevailed under the earlier Garrett management. Statements of profits had been swelled by arbitrary entries in the books and nearly six million dollars which had not been earned had been paid out in dividends. Furthermore the company had endorsed the notes of certain subsidiary roads to the extent of over five million ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... loyal, without making such public revelations in the interest of patriotism, that any pretended private revelation must necessarily have become a farce. No one, especially, would have held any such secret for months, and then divulged it in the ambiguous mode of a romance, while arbitrary arrests and unexplained imprisonments were making the once free States of the Old Union a second Venice. Suspicious circumstances have been observed, and suspicious persons put under watch; but if anything more than mere suspicion has been reached, the disloyal persons ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... memory, "I would rather," said he, "that you would teach me that of forgetfulness; for I even now recollect what I would rather not; but I cannot forget what I should like to." This was a very sensible answer. But still the fact is that it is the act of a very arbitrary philosopher to forbid a man to recollect. It seems to me a command very much in the spirit of your ancestor, Manlius, or even worse, to command what it is impossible for me to do. What will you say if the recollection ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... when lovers' sentiments stray away from feeling, they are to be suspected of a disloyalty. Yet he admired the tone she took. He had got an 'ideal' of her which it was pleasanter to magnify than to distort. An 'ideal' is so arbitrary, that if you only doubt of its being perfection, it will vanish and never come again. Sir Purcell refused to doubt. He blamed himself for having thought it possible to doubt, and this, when all ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... and for private interests. But the peoples decipher no principles but those that are writ in blood, and the evils of legality will always be pacific; it flattens a nation down, that is all. Jacquet, a man of modern liberty, returned home reflecting on the benefits of arbitrary power. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Islands, (Ellis's Polynesian Researches), that the inhabitants of Tahiti were more simple in their tattooing, and displayed greater taste and elegance than some of the other islanders. "Though some of the figures are arbitrary, such as stars, circles, lozenges, etcetera, the patterns are usually taken from nature, and are often some of the most graceful. A cocoa-nut tree is a favourite object; and I have often admired the taste ...
— The Cannibal Islands - Captain Cook's Adventure in the South Seas • R.M. Ballantyne
... grant to your people some assurance for the future. You have done neither the one nor the other. Since your Majesty has recovered your authority, nothing has been heard of on your part but arrests and arbitrary edicts. Anxiety, fear, and discontent begin to spread everywhere." Angouleme returned to France thoroughly disenchanted with the cause for which he had ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... arbitrary acts; there were those who curried favor with him, and worked his will, and became his minions. In that school of misery, where bitter minds dreamed only of vengeance, where the sophistries hatched in ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... having contraband goods in his possession, would it have been a good "reason" for such an atrocity, that the collection of duties was "a constitutional obligation"? You are condemned for voting for an arbitrary, detestable, diabolical law,—one that tramples upon the rights of conscience, outrages the feelings of humanity, discards the rules of evidence, levels all the barriers erected by the common law for the protection of personal liberty, and, in defiance of the Constitution, and against its express ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... the Pelasgi, at least, and who the Etruscans, and the as mysterious Iapygians, who seem also to have had an earlier acquaintance with writing—as proved by their inscriptions—than the Phoenicians, then only may he menace the Asiatic into acceptance of his own arbitrary data and dogmas. Then also may he tauntingly ask "how it is that no appreciable trace is left of such high civilizations as are ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... that, of all the men living, the railroad and day laborer of this "free country" is the most ill treated and oppressed. He has to work from dark to dark; he has to take store pay for his wages; and he has to obey the nod, look, and arbitrary commands of the lowest, cruellest, and most brutal class of men on earth. I ask any man, Is not this slavery? Van Stingey was now rich—had horses, wagons, and a splendid mansion. He took another, and a third contract, in which he was ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... well as properly spacing, and in felling and removing, from time to time, the trees which compose it, are too obvious to require to be more than hinted at. In conducting these operations, we must have a diligent eye to the requirements of nature, and must remember that a wood is not an arbitrary assemblage of trees to be selected and disposed according to the caprice of its owner. "A forest," says Clave, "is not, as is often supposed, a simple collection of trees succeeding each other in long perspective, without bond of union, and capable of isolation from each other; it is, on the contrary, ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... number of whorls appearing in the odd fingers is ascertained to be 2. Their positions are noted (1 in No. 1 and 1 in No. 7) and the values assigned to whorls appearing in those fingers are added together (16 plus 2 18). To this sum the arbitrary 1 is added, giving us the total of 19, which constitutes the denominator for this set of prints. To get the numerator, it is ascertained that there are 3 whorls appearing in the even fingers (2, 4 and 6), the values of which are added together (16 plus 8 plus 4 28). To this sum the ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... there be two sorts, Arbitrary, and Naturall. Arbitrary, is that which is agreed on by the Competitors; Naturall, is either Primogeniture, (which the Greek calls Kleronomia, which signifies, Given by ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... Cousin Zebedee Allen couldn't wear whiskers? Why," sez he, "his whiskers are his main beauty, and naterally Zeb is more particular about his looks than if he wuz married. Such laws are wicked and arbitrary. Why, when I courted my first wife, Samantha, my whiskers and my dressy looks wuz what won the day. And I d'no," sez he inquiringly, "but ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... in another place, Why do not the rich Catholics endow foundations for the education of the priesthood? Why do you not permit them to do so? Why are all such bequests subject to the interference, the vexatious, arbitrary, peculating interference of the Orange commissioners ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... feeling existing between members of the Cabinet comes out in many entries in Welles's Diary. "Pressing, assuming, violent, impatient, intriguing, harsh, and arbitrary," are examples of the terms in which Stanton is spoken of by Welles His contempt for the Committee on the Conduct of the War is expressed in no less stinging words. The members of this committee "are most of ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... towards depreciation because of their predilection for objective as opposed to subjective criticism. The late P.G. Hamerton, writing upon Rembrandt, says, "The chiaroscuro of Rembrandt is often false and inconsistent, and in fact he relied largely on public ignorance. But though arbitrary, it is always conducive to ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... with equal austerity and resolution, yet in a voice persuasive and conciliatory rather than arbitrary or dictatorial, the mere form and manner of this quixotic undertaking thrilled all my fibres in defiance of its sense. It was like the blare of bugles in a dubious cause; one's blood responded before one's brain; and but for Raffles, ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... Chopins? The reason, asserted a middle-aged man, was that women's emotions were too thoroughly instinctive to be projected in the form of first-class music, which was, in fine, emotion analyzed, compressed within the limits of fixed rules, expressed by series of arbitrary signs. In the midst of his conclusion, however, he lost his self-satisfied smile: he had caught sight of Lilla, who was looking at him blankly as though he had slammed a ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... ingenious contrivance, designed in the likeness of gaping jaws which opened and shut in fearful style, emitting volumes of sulphurous smoke, not to mention awesome noises. The 'make-ups' too were far from being the arbitrary fancies of the wearers. True, they possibly bore no great resemblance to the originals. But that was due to an ignorance of history rather than to carelessness about truth. The probability is that in many cases the images and paintings in the churches were imitated, as ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... This is arbitrary, however. On the crested bill of fare we learn that there are other things to be had, but that they must be ordered a la carte. Glancing down the mammoth card we begin reading such items: Saumon Fume, Pigeon Cocotte Bonne Femme, Rognons Sautes, Champignons, Caille ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... stage, and to anticipate therefore that social science will, in its turn, be emancipated from the delusion.... It [the existing social science] represents the social action of Man to be indefinite and arbitrary, as was once thought in regard to biological, chemical, physical, and even astronomical phenomena, in the earlier stages of their respective sciences.... The human race finds itself delivered over, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... made to reduce criticism to an exact science, which, quite disregarding the factor of personal taste, could refer all literature to a more or less fixed and arbitrary set of critical principles. The champions of this objective criticism point to the occasionally ludicrous divergence of the views expressed in criticism of certain poets or novelists, and insist that there is no occasion for such ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... the second class is a blow to public liberty. The magistrate cannot condemn until after the fullest evidence and a succession of facts. This leaves nothing to arbitrary decision. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... who explain this modern religiosity will seem most arbitrary to the inquirer. For they relate of God, as men will relate of a close friend, his dispositions, his apparent intentions, the aims of his kingship. And just as they advance no proof whatever of the existence ...
— God The Invisible King • Herbert George Wells
... There, too, I met Orestes Bronson, a remarkably well-read man, who had gone through every phase of religious experience from blank atheism to the bosom of the Catholic Church, where I believe he found repose at the end of his days. He was so arbitrary and dogmatic that most people did not like him; but I appreciated his acquaintance, as he was a liberal thinker and had a world of information which he readily imparted to those of a teachable spirit. As I was then in a hungering, thirsting condition ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... Benevento at Messina. His reception was still more cordial and soothing. He embraced me with warmth, and even wept over me. He could not refrain from imprecations upon the memory of my father, and he declared with energy, that the son of Leonora della Colonna should never suffer from the arbitrary and capricious tyranny of a Sicilian count. He assured me in the strongest terms that his whole fortune was at my disposal. Then telling me that his dear and only child had been impatient for my arrival, he took me by the hand, and led me to ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... The belief that arbitrary Government was about to be established throughout the colonies made the people in every direction rise in arms. A rebel force, consisting of several thousand men, began to collect in the neighbourhood of ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... defined as an organism with life and direction within. In the light of these definitions, I close with the conception of Carlyle. The order and energy of the universe I hold to be inherent, and not imposed from without, the expression of fixed law and not of arbitrary will, exercised by what Carlyle would call an Almighty Clockmaker. But the two conceptions are not so much opposed to each other after all. In one fundamental particular they at all events agree. They equally imply the interdependence and harmonious interaction of parts, and ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... was ten feet two inches high, and his shank measured four feet one inch. His nomination as Prince Imperial was an even more arbitrary violation of the right of primogeniture than the case of his predecessor had been, for he was chosen in preference to his elder brother merely because, when the two youths were casually questioned as to what they wished for, the elder said, "a bow and ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... annoying change in the initial meridian, or, what would more probably result, the retention of the first chosen meridian, which would thus lose its dependence upon the original definition, and become as arbitrary as if taken by chance in ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... fancy for allegory, has arisen from the desire to make the one a speaking picture without really knowing what it can and ought to paint, and the other a dumb poem without having considered in how far painting can express universal ideas without abandoning its proper sphere and degenerating into an arbitrary method of writing.... Since the artist can use but a single moment of ever-changing Nature, and the painter must further confine his study of this one moment to a single point of view, while their works are made not simply to be looked at, but to be contemplated long ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... this connection, does the author of Beowulf use "hilt" to designate the whole sword; consequently, to write "gylden hilt" as one word and capitalize it is both arbitrary and illogical. There is, in fact, nothing in the poem to indicate that the sword had ...
— The Relation of the Hrolfs Saga Kraka and the Bjarkarimur to Beowulf • Oscar Ludvig Olson
... malignant was a term of reproach given to those who, in the civil wars, opposed Divine truth, and promoted popery and arbitrary domination. Clarendon calls it 'a term imposed upon those that the puritans wished to render odious to ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the bar, you went and gave notice to your agents. They, in their turn, notified Falk that so-and-so was ready to go out. Then Falk (ostensibly when it fitted in with his other work, but, if the truth were known, simply when his arbitrary spirit moved him), after ascertaining carefully in the office that there was enough money to meet his bill, would come along unsympathetically, glaring at you with his yellow eyes from the bridge, and would drag you out dishevelled ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... of Mr. Tyrrel, one Hawkins;—I cannot mention his name without recollecting the painful tragedies that are annexed to it! This Hawkins had originally been taken up by Mr. Tyrrel, with a view of protecting him from the arbitrary proceedings of a neighbouring squire, though he had now in his turn become an object of persecution to Mr. Tyrrel himself. The first ground of their connection was this:—Hawkins, beside a farm which he rented under the above-mentioned ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... take into consideration such factors as physical build and muscular development. We don't train undersized boys to be freight handlers. But in general the division is arbitrary. And you'd be amazed how they respond to it. To keep a check on things, we interview our students twice a year to see how ...
— When I Grow Up • Richard E. Lowe
... more fanciful. He changed guides at the next native village, fearing that Binhart might have grown too intimate with the old ones. He was swayed by an ever-increasing fear of intrigues. He coerced his flagging will into a feverish watchfulness. He became more arbitrary in his movements and exactions. When the chance came, he purchased a repeating Lee-Enfield rifle, which he packed across his sweating back on the trail and slept with under his arm at night. When a morning came when ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... please. Indeed, the more learning and power we have and the more exalted our rank, the greater knaves we are; perpetrating every wicked deed, stirring up strife, discord, war and murder for the sake of executing our own arbitrary designs, where the question is the surrender of a penny in recognition of the hundreds of thousands of dollars daily received from God notwithstanding ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... not dead but living, rich in company, for the entertainment, the expansion, of the present; and Duke Carl was still without suspicion of the cynic afterthought that such historic soul was but an arbitrary substitution, a generous loan of ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... periods of time. Individual members were exiled for utterances which Von Plehve regarded as dangerous. The power of the zemstvos themselves was lessened by taking from them such important functions as the provisioning of famine-stricken districts and by limiting in the most arbitrary manner the amount of the budget permitted to each zemstvo. Since every decision of the zemstvos was subject to veto by the governors of the respective provinces, the government had at all times a formidable weapon at hand to use in its fight ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... king William, and prior of Winchester; he recovered for his monastery some of the lands which had been given to the Normans during the siege of the fen district. This was the "Camp of Refuge" for all the English who refused submission to the arbitrary rule of the foreigners, and thus it was the last strong hold of the Saxons, and cost the Norman king much loss of time, blood, and treasure, before he obtained possession, which was, however, at last ...
— Ely Cathedral • Anonymous
... of the great and small that it baffles description, that language fails, and that the tongue must remain mute. Therefore we hold, (and we speak from knowledge gained through years of close study and investigation), that the finer distinctions which we have made, and shall make, are not at all arbitrary, but absolutely necessary as are divisions and distinctions ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel
... we have stated above, the fact of its official recognition. This placed it in a privileged position among Oriental religions, at least at the beginning of the imperial regime. It enjoyed a toleration that was neither precarious nor limited; it was not subjected to arbitrary police measures nor to coercion on the part of magistrates; its fraternities were not continually threatened with dissolution, nor its priests with expulsion. It was publicly authorized and endowed, its ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... feeling of satisfaction avers that he does not eat and does not feel satisfied?—If the Bauddha should reply that he does not affirm that he is conscious of no object but only that he is conscious of no object apart from the act of consciousness, we answer that he may indeed make any arbitrary statement he likes, but that he has no arguments to prove what he says. That the outward thing exists apart from consciousness, has necessarily to be accepted on the ground of the nature of consciousness itself. Nobody when perceiving ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... throughout the plant is rigid. There are no petty rules, and no rules the justice of which can reasonably be disputed. The injustice of arbitrary discharge is avoided by confining the right of discharge to the employment manager, and he rarely exercises it. The year 1919 is the last on which statistics were kept. In that year 30,155 changes occurred. Of those 10,334 were absent more than ten days without notice ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... choose the least. Sound statesmanship regards any stretch of power better than the overthrow of the nation. Probably there never was a more able and wise body of men assembled, or more jealous of any exercise of arbitrary power, than the First Congress of the United States; and yet, almost in the commencement of our struggle for independence, when events wore such a gloomy aspect that failure seemed inevitable, rising above its fears of despotic measures, in its greater fear of total ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... knowest!" said Dudley but instantly checking himself, he added, "Yet she shall not find in me a safe or easy victim of arbitrary vengeance. I have friends—I have allies—I will not, like Norfolk, be dragged to the block as a victim to sacrifice. Fear not, Amy; thou shalt see Dudley bear himself worthy of his name. I must instantly communicate ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... manned almost exclusively by men who did not voluntarily enter the service, prompted by a feeling of patriotism, a sense of honor, or the expectation of emolument, but were victims to the unjust and arbitrary system of impressment. ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... not conceal from myself that there may be much that is arbitrary in my own criterion; but this does not seem to me possible to avoid. We must therefore appeal to psychology, and ask whether it is cognisant of any phenomenon offering a violent, lasting, and ineffaceable contrast with all the ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... Royalist section was ultimately crushed, while the Parliamentary section was gradually absorbed into that first great standing army which this country ever knew, the New Model of 1645. For fifteen years the people groaned under the dominance of this arbitrary, conscientious, and very expensive force. Then, in 1660, came the Restoration, and with it the disbanding of the New Model and the re-establishment of the militia. The country went wild with joy at the recovery ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... her, and allowed himself to be worked up to strong parliamentary anger against the magistrates and police. "When they think that they have public opinion on their side, there is nothing in the way or arbitrary excess which is too great for them." This he said to Barrington Erle, who angered him and increased the warmth of his feeling by declaring that a little close confinement would be good for the Bunces of the day. "If we don't keep the mob down, the mob will keep us down," said the Whig private ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... stronger would succeed and swallow up all the rest. The theory of checks and balances is admirable if the object be to trammel power, and to have as little power in the government as possible; but it is a theory which is born from passions engendered by the struggle against despotism or arbitrary power, not from a calm and philosophical appreciation of government itself. The English have not succeeded in establishing their theory, for, after all, their constitution does not work so well as they pretend. The landed interest controls at one time, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... Arbitrary criticism of the Biblical narratives of the raising of the "dead."—Facts which it ignores.—The subject related to the phenomena of trance, and records of premature burial.—The resuscitation in Elisha's ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton
... is contended that the national council ought to have no concern with any object of internal administration. An exact equality of suffrage between the members has also been insisted upon as a leading feature of a confederate government. These positions are, in the main, arbitrary; they are supported neither by principle nor precedent. It has indeed happened, that governments of this kind have generally operated in the manner which the distinction taken notice of, supposes ...
— The Federalist Papers
... you may readily perceive how God punishes vice and rewards virtue. He does not do it by any abstract law, or arbitrary mode of procedure, but lie has in infinite wisdom interwoven, the whole in the very constitution of our natures, so that the wicked cannot go unpunished, nor the righteous unrewarded. To teach that man can ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... thought they were worth. Then there were heated altercations, which sometimes ended in blood being spilt, or some of the crew being put in irons and logged for having instigated rebellion on the high seas. "I'll teach you to impeach my authority," the stupid, arbitrary tyrant would say; "you shall be fed on the smell of an oil-rag in future, and have your wages forfeited at the end of the voyage into the bargain." Alas, this wicked threat was too often carried into effect so far as the forfeiture of wages and ill-treatment were concerned. Whereas the ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... and nature, has changed the face of the Nation's River. Nature's rains, snows, ice and floods continually carve the shores. Man, also, changes the Potomac through man-made fills, walls, docks, bridges and piers. The arbitrary changes by man and nature have reached the point where careful planning and consideration must be given to the river's future in order to preserve its majestic beauty ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... Ethelberta, with glad displeasure. 'Did you ever hear such audacity? Fixing a time so soon that I cannot reply, and thus making capital out of a pretended necessity, when it is really an arbitrary arrangement of his own. That's real rebellion—forcing himself into my house when I said strictly he was not to come; and then, that it cannot rationally be objected to—I don't ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... crime. Though he had eluded man's judgment, yet vengeance had not suffered him to live. There was no relenting toward him, as there was in Mr. Clifford's mind. Something like the old heathen conception of a divine righteousness in this arbitrary punishment of the evil-doer gave him a transient content. He did not object therefore to Phebe's hasty visit to Mrs. Sefton at the sea-side, in order to break the news to her. The inward satisfaction he felt sustained him, and he even set about ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... man of small capacity, whimsical, jealous and arbitrary. But if he cuffed his apprentice Benjamin when the compositor blundered, and when he didn't, it was his legal right; and the master who did not occasionally kick his apprentices was considered derelict to duty. The boy ran errands, cleaned the presses, swept the ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... this conventional form. These many books of many ages have been bound up together, with the most imperfect classification either as to period or character. A verse-making machine has been driven through them all alike, chopping them up into short, arbitrary, artificial sentences, formally numbered in the body of the text. The larger divisions into chapters have been made in an equally mechanical manner. By this twofold system an admirable provision has been made for checking the flow of the writer's thought, and for effectually preventing any easy ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... seven hours to stop at Merv. I shall have time to visit this curious town. Its physical and moral transformation has been profound, owing to the somewhat arbitrary proceedings of the Russian administration. It is fortunate that its fortress, five miles round, built by Nour Verdy in 1873, was not strong enough to prevent its capture by the czar, so that the old nest of malefactors ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... regulated by the law, so that the greater part of the bills presented to the chambers "had been already enacted and executed in the shape of ordonnances; and the legislature had no other function except that of giving a legal sanction to the arbitrary ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... sanction of Wordsworth, that harsher opposition of poetry to prose, as savouring in fact of the arbitrary psychology of the last century, and with it the prejudice that there can be but one only beauty of prose style, I propose here to point out certain qualities of all literature as a fine art, which, if they apply to the literature of fact, apply ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... according to Comte, proceeding from the most simple to the most complex—that is, from mathematics to astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology to end at sociology, is generally considered by the learned as interesting but arbitrary. The philosophy of history, according to Comte, is this: humanity passes through three states: theological, metaphysical, positive. The theological state (antiquity) consists in man explaining everything ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... should have a fair trial, and very often something more. Judges of the Jeffreys type had become inconceivable, though impartiality might disappear in cases where the prejudices of juries were actively aroused. Englishmen might fairly boast of their immunity from the arbitrary methods of continental rulers; and their unhesitating confidence in the fairness of the system became so ingrained as to be taken as a matter of course, and scarcely received due credit from ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... captious with his sisters "whiles," she acknowledged in secret; he was arbitrary with his little brothers when they neglected tasks of his giving; and tried his mother and his grandmother, now and then, as young lads always have, and always will try their mothers and grandmothers, until old heads can ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... themselves by forced and rambling verbiage. Fraud, deceit, or malice had then not yet mingled with truth and sincerity. Justice held her ground, undisturbed and unassailed by the efforts of favour and of interest, that now so much impair, pervert, and beset her. Arbitrary law had not yet established itself in the mind of the judge, for then there was no cause to judge and no one to be judged. Maidens and modesty, as I have said, wandered at will alone and unattended, without fear of insult from lawlessness or libertine assault, and if they ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... aired—a performance which always caused my eight little brothers and sisters to place themselves in convenient positions for being stumbled over, to the great annoyance of industrious damsels, who, armed with broom and duster, endeavored to render their reign as arbitrary as it was short. For some time past, the nursery-maids had invariably silenced refractory children with "Fie, Miss Matilda! Your grandmother will make you behave yourself—she won't allow such doings, I'll be bound!" or "Aren't you ashamed of yourself, Master Clarence? What will ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... monstrous case, with which I will not waste your time. Far more numerous are they, who, admitting that the Authors of the Bible were inspired in quite a different sense from Homer and Dante, are yet for modifying and qualifying this admission after so many strange and arbitrary fashions, that the residuum of their belief is really worth very little. One man has a mental reservation of exclusion in favour of the two Books of Chronicles, or the Book of Esther, or of Daniel.—Another, is content to eliminate from the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... were his stringent measures as censor. In vain did he strike senators from the list, and make an onslaught on the abuses of his day. In vain were his eloquence, his simple manners, his rustic garb, and his patriotic warnings. That hard, narrow, self-sufficient, arbitrary, worldly-wise old statesman, whose many virtues redeemed his defects, and whose splendid abilities were the glory of his countrymen, could not restore the simplicities of former times. An age of "progress" had set in, of Grecian arts and culture, of material wealth, of sumptuous ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... according to custom, to curl her hair, perform the other little offices of her toilet, and administer as much flattery as she could get up, for the purpose; for Miss Squeers was quite lazy enough (and sufficiently vain and frivolous withal) to have been a fine lady; and it was only the arbitrary distinctions of rank and station which prevented her ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... are prone to imagine, the human and not unnatural impatience of subject races fretting under an alien rule which, however well intentioned, must often be irksome and must sometimes appear to be harsh and arbitrary; or whether to-day, in its more extreme forms at any rate, it does not represent an irreconcilable reaction against all that not only British rule ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... confusion, and uproar had never, I believe, disgraced a county meeting. These ministerial dependants appeared determined to carry every thing with a high hand, now that they found laws were passing to justify and protect arbitrary and corrupt power. ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... intercourse in the upper circles of society. He never established intimate relations with the rules of German. He used small initials for substantives, or capitalized verbs and adjectives according as they appeared important to him. His punctuation was arbitrary; generally he drew a perpendicular line between his words, letting it suffice for a comma or period as the case might be (a proceeding which adds not a little to the embarrassments of him who seeks to translate his ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... arms to the Indians, and on regulating with a strong hand all the doings of his small body of subjects. But such a policy costs money, and to obtain it by taxation he found himself compelled in August, 1647, like many another arbitrary ruler, to summon reluctantly the representatives of the people. Carefully as the functions of the Nine Men were limited, they constituted a permanent element in the governmental system, as the Twelve Men and Eight ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... organization was wider and more complex than the simple lodge. Even Boss McGinty was ignorant as to many things; for there was an official named the County Delegate, living at Hobson's Patch farther down the line, who had power over several different lodges which he wielded in a sudden and arbitrary way. Only once did McMurdo see him, a sly, little gray-haired rat of a man, with a slinking gait and a sidelong glance which was charged with malice. Evans Pott was his name, and even the great Boss of ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bit, the Bengalee Press accused the Government of encouraging the revival of sectarian strife, just as it denounced every measure for the maintenance of order which the Government was compelled to take in the discharge of one of its most elementary duties, as brutal repression and arbitrary vindictiveness, and any mistake of procedure made by some subordinate official under the stress of a very critical situation was distorted and magnified into a gross denial of justice. But it was out of the punishments ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... well repaid itself; for from no branch of physical science has more been learnt of the SCIENTIA SCIENTIARUM, the priceless art of learning; no branch of science has more utterly confounded a wisdom of the wise, shattered to pieces systems and theories, and the idolatry of arbitrary names, and taught man to be silent while his Maker speaks, than this apparent pedantry of zoophytology, in which our old distinctions of "animal," "vegetable," and "mineral" are trembling in the balance, seemingly ready to vanish like their fellows - "the four elements" of fire, earth, ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... and therefore God's will, yea, God's earnest endeavour, is to raise you out of those sins of yours, which make you miserable now, and which, if you go on in them, must bring of themselves everlasting misery to you.' Of themselves; not by any arbitrary decree of God (whereof the Bible says not one single word from beginning to end), that He will inflict on you so much pain for so much sin: but by the very nature of sin; for to sin is to be parted from God, in whose presence alone is life, and therefore sin is, to be in death. Sin is, to ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... O'Donnells, descendants of Domnall, had been one of the great forces of tribal strife for eighty generations, and they now saw their lands confiscated and given over to strangers. But they were only representatives of a feeling which was universal; an indignant opposition to arbitrary and tyrannous expropriation. ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... dissolution and recombination in nature, on old age; they have ideas in common, obvious ideas, glorified by poetry,—and Shakespeare, we are told, is borrowing from Lucretius or Juvenal; while the critic leaves his reader to find out and study the Latin passages which he does not quote. So arbitrary is taste in these matters that Mr. Collins, like Mr. Grant White, but independently, finds Shakespeare putting a thought from the Alcibiades I of Plato into the mouth of Achilles in Troilus and Cressida, while Mr. J. M. Robertson suggests that the borrowing ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... have I now before me, when you, Sir, came forward to patronize and befriend a distant, obscure stranger, merely because poverty had made him helpless, and his British hardihood of mind had provoked the arbitrary wantonness of power. My much esteemed friend, Mr. Riddel of Glenriddel, has just read me a paragraph of a letter he had from you. Accept, Sir, of the silent throb of gratitude; for words would but mock the emotions ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... competent at once to perform his duties as an officer. He had no vices to be criticized by the men, who respected him not only for his bravery on the battlefield, but for his good moral character; for even the vicious respect the virtues which they practically contemn. Being neither arbitrary nor tyrannical, he was cheerfully obeyed; and his company never appeared better than when, by the temporary absence of his superior, it was under ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... arbitrarily as Louis Napoleon controls France or Maximilian Mexico? Gentlemen ask, What right have they to hold an election and express their sentiments? What right have they to hold such an election? Surely they ought to have the right to petition, for their rulers are generally arbitrary enough. ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... observed, that as the Great Powers of Europe were using their best endeavours to induce the Sultan's Christian subjects to live peaceably under the Ottoman rule, they could not allow of such arbitrary acts of cruelty as that which had been perpetrated, and which was sufficient to rouse the whole of the Christian population against the Government. He understood, he said, that Sir Stratford Canning had asked ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various
... state of Miss Mowbray's mind, a less violent impulse than that which she had received from her brother's arbitrary violence, added to the fatigues, dangers, and terrors of her night-walk, might have exhausted the powers of her body, and alienated those of her mind. We have before said, that the lights in the clergyman's house had probably attracted her attention, and in the temporary ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... exceptions to this law. Bovril is compounded of Lat. bos, ox, and vril,[15] the mysterious power which plays so important a part in Lytton's Coming Race, while Tono-Bungay suggests tonic. The only exception to this is gas, the arbitrary coinage of the Belgian chemist Van Helmont in the 17th century. But even this is hardly a new creation, because we have Van Helmont's own statement that the word chaos was vaguely present to his mind. Chortle has, however, secured ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... that plank, so as to be sure that I get it right. All that it complains of is,—and the complaint is a just one, surely,—that these gentlemen exercise their power in a way that is secret. Therefore, we must have publicity. Sometimes they are arbitrary; therefore they need regulation. Sometimes they do not consult the general interests of the community; therefore they need to be reminded of those general interests by an industrial commission. But at every turn it is the trusts who are to ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... child, 'tis a standing maxim in conjugal discipline, that when a man would enslave his wife, he hurries her into the country; and when a lady would be arbitrary with her husband, she wheedles her booby up to town. A man dare not play the tyrant in London, because there are so many examples to encourage the subject to rebel. O Dorinda! Dorinda! a fine woman may do anything in London: o' my conscience, she may raise an army of forty ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar
... being thrown upon the head and upper part of the figure (from a high side-light) illumined the face broadly, and, while emphasising the features with definite though narrow shadows, made it dominate the ensemble. Very often this concentration of effect was associated with a forced and arbitrary use of chiaroscuro. In many of his pictures one finds the lower portion of the figure, including the hands, low in tone through the artist having arranged a screen or blind to throw a shadow over the parts he wished subordinated. This device appears in full-lengths as well as in busts and ...
— Raeburn • James L. Caw
... himself, admits no standards of truth superior to the evidence of the senses and the deductions of reason; consequently, that his conclusions on many important topics are at variance with existing practices, whenever it appears they have no better foundation than the continuity of prejudices and the arbitrary laws of custom. He therefore entertains very serious doubts whether his work will be acceptable to those learned Professors in Universities, who teach no doctrines or opinions but those of their predecessors; or whether it will suit Students, ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... been," the Duke admitted, "but I consider his action arbitrary. Not only that, but it was unnecessary, for he has already found another tenant for the place. I have instructed him, therefore, to send you a cheque for the amount you paid him, less the actual cost of ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... will save the loss or injury beyond repair of many books. It will also save the patrons of the library from the frequent inconvenience of having to do without books, which should be on the shelves for their use. How frequent this sending of books to repair should be, cannot be settled by any arbitrary rule; but it would be wise, in the interest of all, to do it as often as two or three dozen ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... do anything for me for a personal reason, so no matter on what ground he comes, we must accept his wishes. He is a seemingly arbitrary man, this is because he knows what he is talking about better than any one else. He is a philosopher and a metaphysician, and one of the most advanced scientists of his day, and he has, I believe, an absolutely open mind. This, with an iron nerve, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... astonishing: the name of the Commonwealth, a greater than Macaulay remarks, 'was grown infinitely odious: it was associated with the tyranny of ten years, the selfish rapacity of the Rump, the hypocritical despotism of Cromwell, the arbitrary sequestrations of committee-men, the iniquitous decimations of military prefects, the sale of British citizens for slavery in the West Indies, the blood of some shed on the scaffold without legal trial, . . . the persecution of the Anglican Church, the bacchanalian rant of sectaries, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... Charlotte M. Yonge. The large constructional lines of it are bad. The separation of Lucy and Richard is never explained, and cannot be explained. The whole business of Sir Julius is grotesque. And the conclusion is quite arbitrary. It is a weak book, full of episodic power and overloaded with wit. "Diana of the Crossways" is even worse. I am still awaiting from some ardent Meredithian an explanation of Diana's marriage that does not insult my intelligence. Nor ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... sufficed to render Ensisheim submissive, but Brisac proved more obstinate. The magistrates there did not resort to force. They declared there was no need, for they were fully protected by the article in the treaty of St. Omer, which forbade arbitrary imposition of any tax on the part of the suzerain. Their determined refusal made the lieutenant consent to refer the question to the Duke of Burgundy, and messengers were despatched to Treves to represent the ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... tendencies: a tendency to conservation, beyond question; but also a tendency to collapse, as in the diminution of energy; and a tendency to progress, as in biological evolution. To make conservation the sole law of matter implies an arbitrary decree, denoting only those aspects of reality which will count for anything. By what right do we thus exclude, with vital effort, even the feeling of liberty which in us ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... Government of Erebus had been unsatisfactory to many of its subjects, mainly on account of the arbitrary ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... propose?" asked the Colonel curtly, for opposition and argument bred no meekness in his somewhat arbitrary breast. ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... and currency exchange rates and expanded the state's right to intervene in the management of private enterprise. In addition to the burdens imposed by extremely high inflation, businesses have been subject to pressure on the part of central and local governments, e.g., arbitrary changes in regulations, numerous rigorous inspections, and retroactive application of new business regulations prohibiting practices that had been legal. Further economic problems are two consecutive bad harvests, 1998-99, and persistent ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... practitioners proceeded upon two general assumptions: one as to the cause of disease, the other as to its treatment. As to the cause of disease,—disease was sent by the inscrutable will of God. No man could fathom that will, nor its arbitrary operation. As to the treatment of disease, there were believed to be a few remedial agents of universal efficacy. Calomel and bloodletting, for example, were two of the principal ones. A larger or smaller dose of calomel, a greater or less quantity of bloodletting, —this blindly indiscriminate ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... All this unkindness of his twin he charged upon the fell Thing who had wrought this their first dissension, and, ah! most terrible thought, interposed between them so effectually, that Sweyn was wilfully blind and deaf on her account, resentful of interference, arbitrary ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... Power of Magistrates is greater in absolute Monarchies and in democratic Republics that it is in limited Monarchies.—Arbitrary Power of the Magistrates ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... the horrors of useless war. For this misfortune his father was responsible. The loving mother and sister could not counterbalance the terrible severity of the cruel King. Gradually Fritz changed from the sunny lad who had played in the gardens of Potsdam with Wilhelmina to a severe and arbitrary monarch. ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... lending enchantment to the view;' and that when your statesmen sentimentalize upon, and your journalists denounce far-away tyrannies—the horrors of Neapolitan dungeons—the abridgement of personal freedom in Continental countries—the exercise of arbitrary power by irresponsible authority in other lands—they would turn their eyes homeward, and examine the treatment and the sufferings of their own political prisoners. I would, in all sincerity, suggest that humane and well-meaning ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... that zoning is arbitrary and restricts the liberty of the individual to do as he wishes; but when zoning laws have been sensibly and comprehensively drawn, the courts have approved them as a reasonable exercise of the police power "for the public health, ...
— Better Homes in America • Mrs W.B. Meloney
... departments of the civil administration. At length a change took place. Lewis the Fourteenth had, from an early age, regarded the Calvinists with an aversion at once religious and political. As a zealous Roman Catholic, he detested their theological dogmas. As a prince fond of arbitrary power, he detested those republican theories which were intermingled with the Genevese divinity. He gradually retrenched all the privileges which the schismatics enjoyed. He interfered with the education of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... mother was her nurse. Grave judicium Dei in irrisorem patris sui." These little scraps of Latin, sometimes running into a distich, are frequent signs of a certain classical proclivity of the writer. Any one who should infer, from the good man's arbitrary mode of spelling many words, that he was an illiterate person, would be grievously mistaken, in his ignorance of the universal characteristic and license of that age in that matter. The Queen herself was by no means so good a "speller," by our standard, as was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Pickering, that woman has the most extraordinary ideas about me. Here I am, a shy, diffident sort of man. I've never been able to feel really grown-up and tremendous, like other chaps. And yet she's firmly persuaded that I'm an arbitrary overbearing bossing kind of person. I can't ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... philosophy and my philosophy better than the shape of that cross and the shape of this ball? This globe is reasonable; that cross is unreasonable. It is a four-legged animal, with one leg longer than the others. The globe is inevitable. The cross is arbitrary. Above all the globe is at unity with itself; the cross is primarily and above all things at enmity with itself. The cross is the conflict of two hostile lines, of irreconcilable direction. That silent thing up there is essentially ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... stores usually set arbitrary and high prices on the goods, which are often of poor quality and limited variety. As a result, a co-operative store among our settlers was established. We found that the association, in its meetings and activities, served as a school for the development ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... citizens. Perhaps; though there is no evidence that he meant more, or that they thought he meant more, than such rights as American citizens everywhere enjoy, even in the District of Columbia—equal laws, security of life and property, freedom from arbitrary arrests, local self-government, in a word, the civil rights which the genius of our Government secures to all under our control who are capable of exercising them. If he did mean more, or if they thought ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... life in other respects is one of less hardship; but in Nelson's day the feeling had been intensified by the practice of impressment, and by the severe, almost brutal discipline that obtained on board some ships of war, through the arbitrary use of their powers by captains, then insufficiently controlled by law. In this cruise he seems to have spent a little over a year; a time, however, that was not lost to him for the accomplishment of the period of service technically required to qualify as a lieutenant, his name continuing ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... safes, would have to be used. It was absolutely necessary, in order to insure safety, to use not one cipher, but a large number, changing the arrangement of the letters with each line written—even with each word, in order to defy solution. Yet such an arrangement being purely arbitrary, could not well be trusted to memory, for, once forgotten, the translation of the document written, even by the writer himself, would be absolutely impossible. It occurred to him that as there were six different concentric lines of lettering, each constituting in itself a complete cipher, the ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... of organisms, without relation to their distribution, and taking all fossil and recent, we see the degrees of relationship are of different degrees and arbitrary,—sub-genera,—genera,—sub-families, families, orders and classes and kingdoms. The kind of classification which everyone feels is most correct is called the natural system, but no can define this. If we say with Whewell undefined instinct of the importance of organs{135}, we have ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... effects of my indignation against a rascal who dared to come and insult me in my own house, but I do know that if I had given him security I should have impugned my own honour. The impertinent scoundrel threatened to have me arrested, but I know that a just Government rules here, and not arbitrary power." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... hold precisely the same views both of doctrine and church government as the Church, and have seceded on points connected with the existence of lay patronage. In England much discontent may sometimes be excited by an arbitrary appointment to a living; but it would be vain to endeavour to excite a movement throughout the whole country to prevent the recurrence of such appointments. Yet upon precisely this point did some three or four hundred ministers secede from the Scotch Church in 1843; and to maintain ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... the writings of Horne, Bishop Horsley, and President Forbes contain most earnest attacks upon the ideas of Newton, such attacks being based upon Scripture. Dr. John Owen, so famous in the annals of Puritanism, declared the Copernican system a "delusive and arbitrary hypothesis, contrary to Scripture"; and even John Wesley declared the new ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... man, brought into the direst confusion by our social state, our war of each against all, necessarily remain confused and foreign to the working-man when mixed with incomprehensible dogmas, and preached in the religious form of an arbitrary and dogmatic commandment. The schools contribute, according to the confession of all authorities, and especially of the Children's Employment Commission, almost nothing to the morality of the working-class. So short-sighted, so stupidly ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... some other crop—'will he also reap.' The wages of sin are paid in ready money; and it is as just to lay them at God's door as it would be to charge Him with inflicting the disease which the dissolute man brings upon himself. It is no arbitrary appointment of God's that 'he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption'; nor is it His will acting as that of a jealous despot which makes it inevitably true that here and hereafter, 'Every transgression and disobedience shall receive its just ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... deny the difference of environment that in the past has acted on women and on men. Speaking from a biological standpoint, it would seem that any present inferiority of woman is mainly social, due to her adaptation to an arbitrary environment. It has been truly said[6] that "man, in supporting woman, has become her economic environment." By her position of economic dependence in the sex relation, sex distinction has become with her "not only a means of attracting a mate, as with all ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... threatened famine, dissensions, and fear of the Indians, but through the energy and firmness of Capt John Smith, was enabled to maintain its ground, and in time, show evident signs of prosperity. The jealousy of arbitrary power, and impatience of liberty among the new settlers, induced Lord Delaware, Governor of Virginia in 1619, to reinstate them in the full possession of the rights of Englishmen; and he accordingly convoked a Provincial Assembly, the first ever held in America. The deliberations ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... this, the exhibitor may easily reckon the approximate length of the picture. The important point in this connection is that it would seem that the foolish old custom of making a picture run to an arbitrary length, either by padding it out or by cutting it down, regardless of all reason and logic, will soon be a thing of the past. The harm done to certain productions in the past by forcing them to adhere to a certain number of feet—so many even reels—can hardly be estimated. Imagine ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... world. Upon these agents the government might have had all the hold it required: yet it never demanded the sight beforehand of any speech, essay, or satire which was advertised as about to appear. It was still content to punish after publication what it deemed to be censurable excesses. Severe and arbitrary as some of its proceedings were in this respect,... it must be allowed that these prosecutions of written works were rare and exceptional, and that the traces we discover of the freedom of letters, even under the worst of the Emperors, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... Prossedi. My father was easy enough In circumstances, and we lived peaceably and independently, cultivating our fields. All went on well with us until a new chief of the sbirri was sent to our village to take command of the police. He was an arbitrary fellow, prying into every thing, and practising all sorts of vexations and oppressions in the discharge of ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... for pretended for transporting us beyond offences; for abolishing seas to be tried for pretended the free system of English offences; for abolishing the laws in a neighbouring province, free system of English laws establishing therein an in a neighbouring province, arbitrary government, and establishing therein an enlarging its boundaries, so arbitrary government, and as to render it at once an enlarging its boundaries, so example and fit instrument for as to render it at once an introducing the ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... I am sure is, that the distinction between the organic and inorganic is arbitrary; that it is more coherent with our other ideas, and therefore more acceptable, to start with every molecule as a living thing, and then deduce death as the breaking up of an association or corporation, ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... bridges. Phineas, who was soft-hearted, did what he could to comfort her, and allowed himself to be worked up to strong parliamentary anger against the magistrates and police. "When they think that they have public opinion on their side, there is nothing in the way or arbitrary excess which is too great for them." This he said to Barrington Erle, who angered him and increased the warmth of his feeling by declaring that a little close confinement would be good for the Bunces of the day. ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... as such, are echoes of waking life. There is something arbitrary in the way in which they are drawn from it. Every one feels that the same external cause may conjure up various dream-pictures. But they give symbolic expression to the feeling that one has something to ward off. The dream creates symbols; it is a symbolist. Inner experiences ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... explain the nature of Life, which have fallen within my knowledge, presuppose the arbitrary division of all that surrounds us into things with life, and things without life—a division grounded on a mere assumption. At the best, it can be regarded only as a hasty deduction from the first superficial notices of the objects that surround us, sufficient, perhaps, for the purpose ...
— Hints towards the formation of a more comprehensive theory of life. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... by Lord BOB and emphasised by BONAR LAW, against arbitrary conduct of Censor in dealing with ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 2, 1914 • Various
... Completely unified world, abolition of all national states under a single world sovereignty, colonies on Mars and Venus, that sort of thing. Some of these ideas didn't seem quite logical; a number of them were complete reversals of present trends, and a lot seemed to depend on arbitrary and unpredictable factors. Mind, this was before the first rocket landed on the Moon, when the whole moon-rocket and lunar-base project was a triple-top secret. But I knew, in the spring of 1970, that the first unmanned ...
— The Edge of the Knife • Henry Beam Piper
... It seemed intolerable that I should endure existence subject to the arbitrary visitations of a Magician who could thus play tricks with one's very stomach. If only I could in any way manage to pin him against ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... the real end of science is to ascertain how and why God acts? Science, from such a standpoint, would consist in investigating the law of arbitrary action, and in a grand endeavor to ascertain the rule ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... nearly a century, exhibited gifts fitting him for the government of a spirited and intelligent people, or made the slightest impression for good either for the Crown or the Colony. Their disposition was to be despotic, and to prevent a repetition of such arbitrary conduct, Jay sought to restrict the governor's power in making ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... my journey I reached Ganhard, which was formerly one of the most prosperous towns in Central India, but is now much decayed and governed by a wealthy, arbitrary, violent, generous, and cruel prince. His name is Rajah Maddan, a true Oriental potentate, delicate and barbarous, affable and sanguinary, combining feminine ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... a job to evaluate these nuts. We have been arbitrary about it. We haven't developed any scoring system, because there are so many variable factors that it seems to be almost impossible to do so. In our general plan of operation in the state we expect this native grove ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... the vision and clip the wings of the aspiring and heavenward-gazing spirit. Brethren! the tendency of this day—and one rejoices, in many respects, that it is so—is to revolt against the extreme of narrowness in the past that prescribed and proscribed a great many arbitrary and unnecessary abstinences and practices as the sign of a Christian profession. But whilst I would yield to no man in my joyful application of the principle that underlies that great fact that 'He came eating ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... do not wonder that the New England Colonies, particularly, should remonstrate against these arbitrary restraints, since their interests are chiefly commercial, and, therefore, more ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... satisfy a fanatic of the school of Hazlitt or of Lamb. He is, if anything, rather too severe on French as compared with English drama. Yet, when he comes to his own contemporaries, and sometimes even in reference to earlier writers, we find him slipping into those purely arbitrary severities of condemnation, those capricious stigmatisings of this as improper, and that as vulgar, and the other as unbecoming, which are the characteristics of the pseudo-correct and pseudo-classical school ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... while such men are in trust, who have no check from within, nor any views but toward their interest, there is no other fence against them, but the certainty of being hanged upon the first discovery, by the arbitrary will of an unlimited monarch, or his vizier. Among us, the only danger to be apprehended is the loss of an employment; and that danger is to be eluded a thousand ways. Besides, when fraud is great, it furnishes weapons to defend itself: ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... nature is in some ways arbitrary, the arbitrariness is always in the interest of simplicity. The book does have simplicity, permits instant reference, and provides an adequate drill which may be assigned at the stroke of ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... of Europe. But the Governments of Lombardy and Tuscany, through all their revolutions, preserved a different character. A people, when assembled in a town, is far more formidable to its rulers than when dispersed over a wide extent of country. The most arbitrary of the Caesars found it necessary to feed and divert the inhabitants of their unwieldy capital at the expense of the provinces. The citizens of Madrid have more than once besieged their sovereign in his own palace, and extorted from him the most ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Force. A vagrant may not take a sheaf of your wheat, a fowl from your hen-house: if he do so, the law protects you and punishes him. A syndicate of rich men, of powerful men, may take the whole of your land, and the State will compel you to accept any arbitrary price which it may choose to put upon your loss. According as you are rich or poor yourself, so great or so small will be the amount awarded to you. All the sub-prefects, all the syndics, all the officials in this province, will be richly rewarded; the people defrauded of the soil and the river ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... twenty purses, and the Serdie twelve purses into the Pasha's treasury. The Serdie generally regulate the amount of the Khone which they levy, by that which the Fehely receive; and take half as much; but the Khone paid to the Aeneze chiefs is quite arbitrary, and the sum paid to a single Sheikh varies according to his avidity; or the wealth of the Fellahs, from thirty and forty piastres up to four hundred, which ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... aristocracy or democracy, on the privileges of the few and the claims of the many, on liberty and slavery, power and the abuse of it, peace and war, are here very ably handled, with the spirit of a poet and the acuteness of a philosopher. Shakespeare himself seems to have had a leaning to the arbitrary side of the question, perhaps from some feeling of contempt for his own origin; and to have spared no occasion of baiting the rabble. What he says of them is very true: what he says of their betters is also very true, though ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... by the new nobility, introduced from Southern France. The English clergy groaned beneath foreign prelates introduced, not to feed, but to shear the flocks. The common people were ruined by excessive and arbitrary taxation. ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... one very important man behind the curtain at every performance on every stage, whose rule is arbitrary and absolute, and who is not on the company payroll. This is the house fireman, a city officer, with the power of the city and state behind him. The fire regulations are posted in plain sight on every stage. "No smoking" ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... rumours of his plain juggling about the verbals of the stipulated conditions, and his arbitrary prorogation of the parliament at Edinburgh, a thing which the best and bravest of the Scottish monarchs had never before dared to do without the consent of the States then assembled, the thud and murmur of warlike preparation was renewed both on anvil and in hall. ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... ridicule. He was tall and somewhat portly, and he had a bluff and offhand manner, which, however, served not so much to intimate his good-will toward you as his abounding good-humor with himself. He was a man of most arbitrary temper, one could readily judge, not only from his own aspect and manner, but from the docile, reliant, approving cast of countenance of his reserve force—a half-dozen men, who were somewhat in the background, lounging on the rocks about a huge copper still. They wore an attentive aspect, but offered ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... pretended to be derived from the adoption of the form selected by the complainant, except the incidental one of using it as a trademark. Its selection can hardly be said to be the result of effort even; it was simply an arbitrary chance selection of one of many well-known shapes, all equally well adapted to the purpose. To hold that such an application of a common form can be secured by letters patent, would be giving ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... reverend pastor exults in this "leading in triumph," because truly Louis the Sixteenth was "an arbitrary monarch"; that is, in other words, neither more nor less than because he was Louis the Sixteenth, and because he had the misfortune to be born King of France, with the prerogatives of which a long line of ancestors, and a long ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... clasped the king round the legs, imploring him to pardon their unhappy sister. His only reply was to belabour the miserable victim with a thick stick. Speke had carefully abstained heretofore from interfering with any of the king's acts of arbitrary cruelty. On hearing, however, his own name imploringly pronounced, his English blood was up, and, rushing at the tyrant, he stayed his uplifted arm, and demanded the poor creature's life. He, of course, ran a great risk of losing his own; but ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... total utility, which is a very different thing. This, it may be observed, makes all attempts to compare the wealth of different countries or different times, and no less to construct Index Numbers of Prices, imperfect of necessity, and arbitrary in their foundations. ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... to the consideration of the manner in which the disturbance of the brain may affect the mind. The brain is a storehouse of records of things formerly noted there by the imagination, either as the results of sense perception or of arbitrary combinations of phantasms; it is a library of facts and fancies. And these are not single, but grouped together, so that when one is stirred it will arouse others as well. When the brain is affected, whether by an acute or a chronic ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... Pale-parto on the map; the Trionto laves its foot. But the local pronunciation of this name is Palepite, and I cannot help thinking that here we have a genuine old Greek name perpetuated by the people and referring to this covering of hoary pines—a name which the cartographers, arbitrary and ignorant as they often are, have unconsciously disguised. (It occurs in some old charts, however, as Paleparto.) An instructive map of Italy could be drawn up, showing the sites and cities wrongly named ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... cultivated. She had excellent sense, and possessed many admirable qualities; she was far from being devoid of sensibility; but her sweet temper shrank from controversy, and Nature had not endowed her with a spirit which could direct and control. She yielded without a struggle to the arbitrary will and unreasonable caprice of a husband, who was scarcely her equal in intellect, and far her inferior in all the genial qualities of our nature, but who governed her ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... the direct outcome of dissatisfaction of many members of Union Bethel, now the Metropolitan Church, at the arbitrary action of Bishop Daniel A. Payne in the matter of the appointment of the Rev. John W. Stevenson as pastor of Union Bethel Church and the refusal to remove him. For these reasons 63 members decided to withdraw from the African Methodist Episcopal denomination ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... two evils. The greatest wisdom cannot avoid all evils; it can only choose the least. Sound statesmanship regards any stretch of power better than the overthrow of the nation. Probably there never was a more able and wise body of men assembled, or more jealous of any exercise of arbitrary power, than the First Congress of the United States; and yet, almost in the commencement of our struggle for independence, when events wore such a gloomy aspect that failure seemed inevitable, rising above its fears of despotic measures, in its greater fear of total ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... am forced to drop work or reading, and I abandon myself to the current of my sad thoughts. I feel tired and discouraged. The slow course of a political trial of which the preliminary examinations often extend over several years; the absolute and arbitrary character of the proceedings, the ready-made verdict sent from St. Petersburg; the prisoner's ignorance of the offence of which he is accused, and of which he seldom obtains details until the trial is ended; the disastrous influence ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... extraneous, alien, and discordant influences, so much mixed with foreign ingredients, so much overloaded with adventitious appendages, that it is to most of those who speak it, in a considerable degree, a conventional and arbitrary symbolism. The Anglo-Saxon tongue has a craving appetite, and is as rapacious of words, and as tolerant of forms, as are its children, of territory and of religions. But in spite of its power of assimilation, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... often be awed into silence—the hearts of the people are ready to respond their indignant no! And I, for one, am ready to join in the cry, and stepping into the first rank of the opposers of arbitrary power, breast the storm in discharging my duty ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... the two kinds [C. a. aurifrons and C. a. incanescens] ... merge so gradually that over a broad area the whole population is intermediate, making decisions as to any sharply drawn dividing line difficult and in part arbitrary." C. a. incanescens, according to Wetmore, occurs in western and central Texas south to northeastern Chihuahua and northern Coahuila whereas C. a. aurifrons occurs in north-central Coahuila (Monclova) and southern Texas south to Jalisco, ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... alive? or to sit on my throne?" To this, when he fiercely replied "that he, the son of a king, occupied the throne of his father, a much fitter successor to the throne than a slave; that he (Servius) had insulted his masters full long enough by his arbitrary shuffling," a shout arises from the partisans of both, and a rush of the people into the senate-house took place, and it became evident that whoever came off victor would have the throne. Then Tarquin, necessity itself ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... according to the nature of the dramatist who planted them, their effect on the unfortunate characters is the same; the creatures were begotten to be staked, and staked they are! The demand for a good plot, not unfrequently heard, commonly signifies: "Tickle my sensations by stuffing the play with arbitrary adventures, so that I need not be troubled to take the characters seriously. Set the persons of the play to action, regardless of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and the general absence of arrangement in the "Hesperides," Dr. Grosart advances the theory that the printers exercised arbitrary authority on these points. Dr. Grosart assumes that Herrick kept the epigrams and personal tributes in manuscript books separate from the rest of the work, which would have made a too slender volume by itself, and on the plea of this slender-ness was induced to trust the ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... same undertone of arbitrary will, of inflexible determination, that had been in them when he spoke in the council. Though the shadows fell more and more ominous and threatening across his path, to turn back did not occur to him. The stubborn tenacity of the man could not ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... nourishment—the metaphysical and dialectical discussions practiced by the Eleatic philosophers, and the semi-historical method which was applied to the myths by Hecataeus and Herodotus. A third source is to be traced to the schools of the physicians. These aimed at eliminating the arbitrary element from the view and knowledge of nature, the beginnings of which were bound up with it in a greater or less degree, though practically without exception and by the force of an inner necessity. A knowledge of medicine was destined to correct that defect, and we shall mark ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... in a district where many large homes pooled their lawns in block-long stretches of soft green. The street lights cast arbitrary patches of brightness against the houses, but their windows were blank and dark. This street, like most in this small town, was lined with trees on either side. There were the ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... God are bright, for God is Light. God's arbitrary will and almighty power may seem dark by themselves though deep, but that is because they do not involve His moral character. Join them with the fact that He is a God of mercy as well as justice; remember that His essence is love, and the thunder-cloud will blaze with dewy ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... Song has not been more frequently chosen for decorative purposes on roofs, walls, or windows of ecclesiastical buildings, where a long series would be appropriate. Perhaps the length of the series, and the difficulty of making any but an arbitrary selection, has something to do with the rarity ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... being we have violated it; and now are so confused that we hardly know what "human nature" really is, or of what it is capable. That is why we get such extraordinarily different ideas about morals, and why, as I think, we get such arbitrary judgments ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... reward paid for the same. In the list of offences and punishments for the month of December, we see some very curious items; and, not knowing anything of the peculiar circumstances of each case, they are apt to strike one as being somewhat arbitrary. For instance, 'for refusing to work,' a man had 'bread and water for three days;' a second, 'for insubordinate conduct'—much the same thing, we should suppose, as 'refusing to work'—had the very severe punishment of 'bread and water, and twenty-eight days' solitary ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... are they, who, admitting that the Authors of the Bible were inspired in quite a different sense from Homer and Dante, are yet for modifying and qualifying this admission after so many strange and arbitrary fashions, that the residuum of their belief is really worth very little. One man has a mental reservation of exclusion in favour of the two Books of Chronicles, or the Book of Esther, or of Daniel.—Another, is content to eliminate from the Bible ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... happened?" asked the squire, beginning almost to tremble in his chair; for he knew that his son was given to very violent tempers, and was of a very arbitrary disposition; and he felt, moreover, within the depths of his own heart, that he had not checked him as he should. "What is the ...
— The One Moss-Rose • P. B. Power
... hindered of anything that was his, except by an authority which had legitimated to his intelligence its right to command. He could obey that readily and entirely, as his life from infancy clearly witnesses; but he never knew a merely arbitrary master. ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... of spiritual corn is not to be carried on in an arbitrary fashion, but chiefly according to the appointment and disposition of God, and in the second place according to the appointment of the higher prelates, in whose person it is said (1 Cor. 4:1): "Let a man so account of us as of the ministers of Christ, and the dispensers of the mysteries of God." ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... exciting contrast to that commonplace routine of existence, that daily round of conventionalities, which is imposed upon them by the social tyranny of the West. Fettered as women are in highly civilized countries by restraints, obligations, and responsibilities, which are too often arbitrary and artificial, their impatience of them is not difficult to be understood; and it is natural enough that when the opportunity offers, they should hail even a temporary emancipation. No doubt it is this motive which, in different ways, has influenced the courageous ladies, whose names ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... Now, this was not known at the time, and came out years later. It had certainly not reached persons of the Weller class. The truth is that most of Sam's grotesque epithets, e.g., "young Brokiley sprout," were the arbitrary coinage of a fantastic mind. This, too, as Sir Walter said, "he may have heard in a crowd," or in the mazes of his own brain. "Old Nobs" is just as reasonable as Hamlet's "Old Truepenny." "Are you there, Old Truepenny," might have ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... positions, no arbitrary characters, and the vowels are written in their natural order without lifting the pencil; as in ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... It needs a wise treatment, and, alas! we lack wisdom. For convenience and order, all the members of a worshipping assembly ought evidently to adopt the same method; but this is not a matter for arbitrary ecclesiastical enactment. The Pharisee and the publican both stood while they prayed; but their prayers seem to have been short. To enact that the congregation must stand during prayer, and then to keep them praying for twenty minutes or half-an-hour, which is sometimes done, seems to be in ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... the six ministers, the initials of whose names furnished the word Cabal, by which their junto was distinguished. He was the most virtuous and honest of the junto, but a Catholic; and, what was then synonymous, a warm advocate for arbitrary power. He is said to have won his promotion by advising the desperate measure of shutting the Exchequer in 1671, the hint of which he is said to have stolen from Shaftesbury. This piece may have been undertaken by his command; for, even at the very time of the triple ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... to man with equal austerity and resolution, yet in a voice persuasive and conciliatory rather than arbitrary or dictatorial, the mere form and manner of this quixotic undertaking thrilled all my fibres in defiance of its sense. It was like the blare of bugles in a dubious cause; one's blood responded before one's brain; and but for Raffles, little as his friends were to me, and much as I repudiated ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... Loris, if you think he will join us. I know Pomeroff too well. Although he has had much to suffer from the arbitrary rulings of the Czar, the recollection of former favors will not permit ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... Yet, like the expressions of a dream, they often seem senseless. But they have a meaning as soon as they are 'psychanalyzed.' All the mistakes in answering the second time, for example, have a reason, if we can only get at it. They are not arbitrary answers, but betray the inmost subconscious thoughts, those things marked, split off from consciousness and repressed into the unconscious. Associations, like dreams, never lie. You may try to conceal the emotions and unconscious actions, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... "Well—I never!" exclaimed the teacher, whose parents had come from New England. She was entirely at a loss to know how to treat this unprecedented situation, and like other potentates with a long habit of arbitrary authority, she covered her perplexity with a smart show of decision. "You children go right straight home, along out of the building this minute," she commanded. "You know you're not allowed to loiter around after school-hours. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... presently dug it right across the whole width of the way. Yet for the moment, there was nothing but wild rejoicing: a sort of scientific mafficking. We had been so oppressed by the notion that everything that happened in the world was the arbitrary personal act of an arbitrary personal god of dangerously jealous and cruel personal character, so that even the relief of the pains of childbed and the operating table by chloroform was objected to as an interference ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... focussed, with its less clearly defined fringe: Bergson's sweeping assumption of the existence of a further vast field of virtual knowledge in order to account for it, does, at first sight, seem arbitrary and unwarranted and in. need of considerable justification before it can be accepted. For him the problem then becomes, not to account for our knowing as much as we do, but to see why it is that we do not know a great deal ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... some degree of Law and Justice were recognised. At some times he would propitiate his crew with donatives of Rum, or even of Money; but the next day he would have his Cruelty Fit on again, and use his men with ten times more Fierceness and Arbitrary Barbarity. But to this Bible and a volume of Nautical Tables our Library was confined; and as he troubled himself very little about the latter, I was set to read to him sometimes after dinner from the Good Book. But he was ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... and investigating the vessel's movements. It has been a duty requiring much tact and firmness, for many of the sealers are British, and the gravest international dissension might have arisen from any unwarrantable or arbitrary interference with their acts. The extent of the duty devolving upon the cutters is indicated by some figures of their work in a single year. The territory they patrolled covered sixty degrees of longitude and twenty-five of latitude, and the cruising distance of the fleet ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... state government. It consisted of five members, whose functions were to remain only during the first struggles of the country for independence; but this body had now assumed a permanent right to dictatorial control, whilst there was no appeal from their arbitrary conduct, except to themselves. They arrogated the title of "Most Excellent," whilst the Supreme Director was simply "His Excellency;" his position, though nominally head of the executive, being really ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... I shall speak of, they will be such as appear to illustrate most plainly the various elements of the craft; one need not range widely to find them, nor does it matter if the selection, from any other point of view, should seem arbitrary. Many great names may be passed over, for it is not always the greatest whose method of work gives the convenient example; on the other hand the best example is always to be found among the great, and it is essential ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... investigation, by far, than the inevitable wars which followed the retirement of Diocletian, or the confused schisms and crimes of the lascivious court of Constantine. I am compelled, however, to notice the terms in which the last arbitrary dissolutions of the empire took place, that they may illustrate, instead of confusing, the arrangement of the nations which I would fasten ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... three Races, namely, Carriers, Runts, and Barbs, which are manifestly allied to each other. Indeed, certain carriers and runts pass into each other by such insensible gradations that an arbitrary line has to be drawn between them. Carriers also graduate through foreign breeds into the rock-pigeon. Yet, if well-characterised Carriers and Barbs (see figs. 19 and 20) had existed as wild species, ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... thorax; and, on the other hand, men with feminine mammae, feminine larynges, and a feminine type of pelvis. Because we meet with such atypical instances, we are not therefore justified in inferring that it is by a mere arbitrary sport of nature that in the woman a great mammary development is normally associated with the development of the ovaries, and that in man the growth of the beard is associated with the development of the testicles. But just as in ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... literature by "the critical method," which in history may be defined as the "science of what is credible," and in literature as "the science of what is rational," is to invite fiasco. The theologian in such a state sees no obstacle to accepting an arbitrary list of documents with all the strange stuff they may contain, and declaring them to be sound historical material, while he applies to all the strange stuff of a similar kind surrounding them the most rigorous principles of modern science. Or he has to make believe that ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of such a problem? Our American girls, if treated as it is perfectly correct to treat French or German girls, are thwarted and perverted into something which has all the faults of the German and French girl, without her excellencies. Our girls will not blindly obey what seem to them arbitrary rules, and we can rule them only by winning their conviction. In other words, they will rule themselves, and it therefore behooves us to see that they are so educated that they shall do this wisely. They are ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... the laws of labor, of production and of commerce. The subdivision of these high social and moral arrangements by nations or by limited unions of nations (enlargements which are reductions) is artificial, arbitrary, and malignant. The so-called inseparable cohesions of national interests vanish away as soon as you draw near to examine them. There are individual interests and a general interest, those two only. When you say "I," it means ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... popular wave; I would have him more so. But I would have him less dogmatic. All forms of dogmatism are dangerous for men whose business it is to publish, not to criticize, contemporary literature. But an unsound and arbitrary dogmatism is the worst. If the editor is to give the people what they want instead of what they have wanted, he must have more confidence in himself, and more belief in their capacity for liking the good. He should be dogmatic only where he can be sure. Elsewhere let him follow the method ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... cartel; when the number of persons who sought to be introduced, for the purpose of offering their felicitations upon this unexpected event, confirmed what had been before said by my friends; and afforded a satisfactory proof that even arbitrary power, animated by strong national prejudice, though it may turn aside or depress for a time, cannot yet extinguish in a people the broad principles of justice and humanity generally prevalent in the ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... HIS MIRACLES. No miracles, in the orthodox sense of the term, have ever occurred. The scientific examination of the Scriptures banishes them altogether. Neither are miracles possible, otherwise we should see them every day. They would be acts of arbitrary authority on God's part; and if he performed them he would destroy the harmony and connection of natural laws. Christianity was not introduced by miracles. It was inaugurated, and even originated, by underlying causes of a ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... the teacher varies in different schools. It is now less common than formerly for the appointment and dismissal of the staff to be entirely in the hands of the Headmistress; and assistants are thus safe-guarded against possible unfair and arbitrary action. The Headmistress,[6] however, has almost invariably a preponderating voice in the selection of her staff—as is right if the school is to be a living organism, not merely one of a series of machines with interchangeable parts; but the power of dismissal, if in her hands, ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... he was resolved to leave no stone unturned, no possibility untried in the effort to save his friend, well-nigh the saddest part of the whole business to him was the realisation that the prisoner had not only broken those custom laws (of which Sir Adrian himself disapproved as arbitrary) but also, as he had been warned, those other laws upon which depend all social order and security; broken them so grievously that, whatever excuses the philosopher might find in heat of blood and stress of circumstances, given ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... and development. Such notions were excluded by the fundamental doctrines of the dominant religion which bounded and bound men's minds. As the course of history was held to be determined from hour to hour by the arbitrary will of an extra-cosmic person, there could be no self-contained causal development, only a dispensation imposed from without. And as it was believed that the world was within no great distance from the end of this dispensation, there was no motive to take much interest in understanding ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... King adds, that traditions exist which represent the mythic heroes bearing "engraved on their signets the same devices that decorated their shields." It would seem that the argument from such traditions would rather indicate the signet-devices to have been arbitrary, than the shield-devices to have been unalterable. While I readily admit the very interesting devices of antiquity to possess decided heraldic attributes, Icannot consider Mr. King to have shown that, as a general rule, they were held by the ancients themselves to have ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... interval he had been transformed into an intriguing politician. Parliament, which had not been called for four years, met in 1593, and there was an immediate collision with the Crown. Elizabeth's tone was much more despotic than of old. Petitions for the settlement of the succession were met by the arbitrary imprisonment ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... Flannery of Cumberland county (Kentucky) uses an oval ball, of some material known only to himself, which he suspends between the forks of a short switch. As he walks, holding this extended, the indicator announces the metal by arbitrary vibrations. As his investigations are said to be attended with success, possibly the oval ball is highly magnetized, or contains a lode-stone whose delicate suspension is affected by the current magnetism, metallic veins being usually a magnetic centre. Any mass of soft ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... leave room for a garden, in order to meet the requirements of the people In the mad rush for wealth we have overlooked the natural state, but we see a healthy reaction setting in. With the improvements in steam and electricity, the revolutionizing of transportation, the cutting of the arbitrary telephone charges, it is becoming possible to live at a distance from our business. May we not expect in the near future to see one portion of our cities devoted entirely to business, with the homes of the people so separated ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... restraint. If it bind the artist by determinate rules, it is in order to free him from routine, to recall him to the general law of being and of his own individuality. It is in order that he may study himself, in the place of submitting to arbitrary prescriptions. In such study every marked personality will find itself in its ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... higher world to be intimate with the character of Fenelon, the cherished model of politicians, ecclesiastics, and men of letters, the witness against one century and precursor of another, the advocate of the poor against oppression, of liberty in an age of arbitrary power, of tolerance in an age of persecution, of the humane virtues among men accustomed to sacrifice them to authority, the man of whom one enemy says that his cleverness was enough to strike terror, and another, that genius poured in torrents from his eyes. For the minds that are greatest ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... rack until I could find or invent a better reason I should perhaps say it was because he was so infernally cock-sure, so convinced that he and he alone had the power of distinguishing between the true and false; also that he was so arbitrary and arrogant and ready to trample on ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... believe it violated by an indecorous worship. Would you, in the name of tolerance, again create an inquisition which would not have, like the other, the excuse of fanaticism? What, gentlemen, would you transform into arbitrary proscribers the founders of liberty? You will judge, you will exile, you will imprison, en masse, men amongst whom, if there are some guilty, there are still more innocent! Crimes are no longer individual, and guilt would be decreed by category; but were they all and all equally guilty, ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... of the new proprietors or tenant farmers and of the peasant proprietors were determined by decisive and invariable rules. Thus the agricultural population enjoyed under the Mussulmans a security and ease which replaced the tyrannical annoyances and arbitrary exactions of the Christian agents of the treasury of Constantinople; for, in fact, little by little, there had disappeared under these Greek agents the sound principles of the old administration that had ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... "to the people of Great Britain" saying: "We think the Legislature of Great Britain is not authorized by the Constitution to establish a religion, fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets, or to erect an arbitrary form of government in any quarter of the globe." "By another act the Dominion of Canada is to be extended, modeled and governed, as that being disunited from us, detached from our interests by civil as well as religious prejudices, that by their numbers ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... work everywhere. Kugler's Handbook of the German and Dutch Schools, edited by Sir Edmund Head, has not been superseded, I think. It is with great hesitation that I name Mr. Ruskin in the catalogue of guidebooks: he is so arbitrary and paradoxical, lays down the law so imperiously, and contradicts himself so insolently, that a learner attempting to follow him in his theories will be hopelessly bewildered. Yet nowhere are the eternal, underlying truths upon which art rests so clearly ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... China continues to lose arable land because of erosion and economic development. Beijing says it will intensify efforts to stimulate growth through spending on infrastructure - such as water control and power grids - and poverty relief and through rural tax reform aimed at eliminating arbitrary local levies on farmers. Accession to the World Trade Organization helps strengthen China's ability to maintain strong growth rates but at the same time puts additional pressure on the hybrid system of strong political controls and growing market influences. ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... found means to whisper in the king's ear, that the principles of loyalty in the Church of England, were wholly inconsistent with the Revolution.[7] Hence began the early practice of caressing the dissenters, reviling the universities, as maintainers of arbitrary power, and reproaching the clergy with the doctrines of divine-right, passive obedience and non-resistance.[8] At the same time, in order to fasten wealthy people to the new government, they proposed those pernicious expedients of borrowing money ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... writer observed: 'The creationist theory does not necessitate the perpetual search after manifestations of miraculous power and perpetual "catastrophes." Creation is not a miraculous interference with the laws of Nature, but the very institution of those laws. Law and regularity, not arbitrary intervention, was the patristic ideal of creation. With this notion they admitted, without difficulty, the most surprising origin of living creatures, provided it took place by law. They held that when God said, "Let the waters produce," "Let the earth produce," ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... finished the constitutional party and overthrew Redmond's power. We had incurred the very great odium of accepting even temporary partition—and a partition which, owing to this arbitrary extension of area, could not be justified on any ground of principle; we had involved with us many men who voted for that acceptance on the faith of Redmond's assurance that the Government were bound by their written word; and ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... They have not evidence To attaint him legally, and they avoid The avowal of an arbitrary power. They'll let the Duke resign without disturbance. I see how all will end. The King of Hungary Makes his appearance, and 'twill of itself Be understood that then the Duke retires. There will not want a formal declaration; The young King will administer ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... theory of the ultimate elements of the universe, the entire universe is composed of individual centres, or monads. To these monads he ascribed numberless qualities by which every phase of nature may be accounted. They were supposed by him to be percipient, self-acting beings, not under arbitrary control of the deity, and yet God himself was the original monad from which all the rest are generated. With this conception as a basis, Leibnitz deduced his doctrine of pre-established harmony, whereby the numerous independent substances ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... while Don Pizarro is giving instructions to Rocco, a packet of letters is delivered to him, one of which informs him that Don Fernando is coming the next day to inspect the prison, as he has been informed that it contains several victims of arbitrary power. He at once determines that Florestan shall die, and gives vent to his wrath in a furious dramatic aria ("Ha! welch ein Augenblick!"). He attempts to bribe Rocco to aid him. The jailer at first ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... already stated, to the important post of burgomaster; many, of the influential citizens were banished, without cause or, trial; the upper branch of the municipal government, consisting of the clerical delegates of the colleges, was in an arbitrary manner abolished; and, finally, the absolute sovereignty of, the Province, without condition, was offered to the Queen, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... forbearance and respect would have been shown to those who remained "steadfast and immovable" in the traditional faith of British monarchy and British connection, notwithstanding a corrupt and arbitrary party was in power for the time being; but the very reverse of this was the case on the part of those who professed, as one cardinal article of their political creed, that "all men are born free and ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... possibility. These possibilities, founded upon the Divine essence and discerned by the Divine intelligence, are the Archetype Ideas, among which the Divine will has to choose, when it proceeds to create. The denial of this doctrine in the Nominalist and Cartesian Schools, and their reference to the arbitrary will of God of the eternal, immutable, and absolutely necessary relations of possible things, is the subversion ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... for even a tennis-court, but so much love and ingenuity had been lavished on its arrangement that it had an astonishing air of space. The flower-covered trellis at the end had an air of being there because it chose, and not in the least because it marked an arbitrary division of land. The one big tree made an oasis of shade, and had a low circular seat round its trunk, and the flowers bloomed in grateful recognition ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
Copyright © 2025 Diccionario ingles.com
|
|
|
