"Arbitrary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the 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
... of heat on both sides. My opponent spoke of "our democratic army" (familiar phrase!) and the overbearing manner in which he connected this dictum with a number of false, irrelevant or arbitrary generalizations made me feel a momentary pang of anger and I wished he could experience a term of military service. Nevertheless, there was no actual display of bad temper or emotion and we parted with all the habitual formulae imposed by ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... from justice, the officials can, and often do, arrest his father, mother, wife and whole family, and both imprison and persecute them until the fugitive gives himself up; and such is the strength of the family tie that this arbitrary method ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... statement of four out of many calculations made, but I must state that in fixing an arbitrary standard of 36 inches for tail, I have understated the mark, for the tails of most tigers exceed that by an inch or two, though, on the other ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... made a stir: going himself to detect the knaves, he threatened and denounced them. Such, too, was the tacit opinion of the Archbishop of Bordeaux, to whom Grandier appealed. He despatched a set of rules for the guidance at least of the exorcisers, for putting a stop to their arbitrary doings; and, better still, he sent his surgeon, who examined the girls, and found them to be neither bewitched, nor mad, nor even sick. What were they then? ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... what principle, upon what rightful principle, may a State, being no more than one fiftieth part of the nation in soil and population, break up the nation, and then coerce a proportionably large subdivision of itself in the most arbitrary way? What mysterious right to play tyrant is conferred on a district of country, with its people, by merely calling it a State? Fellow-citizens, I am not asserting anything. I am merely asking questions for you to consider. And now allow me to ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... vast territory one might come across the occasional trading posts of the wide-reaching Hudson Bay Company, at each of which the resident factor ruled with the arbitrary power of ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... of honesty and charity towards each other. They seemed to be governed by that sort of tacit common-sense law which, say what they will of the inborn lawlessness of the human race, has its precepts graven on every breast. The grand principles of virtue and honour, however they may be distorted by arbitrary codes, are the same all the world over: and where these principles are concerned, the right or wrong of any action appears the same to the uncultivated as to the enlightened mind. It is to this indwelling, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... circumstance, Which often breeds affection or disdain, Yet lighting but the surface of the man, Shows not his heart. I know not what you think, And care not for your favour or your love, Save as desert may crown me. Your decree, "Red shall not marry white," is arbitrary, And off the base of nature; for if they Should marry not, then neither should they love. Yet Iena loves me, and I love her. Be merciful! I ask not Iena To leave her race; I rather would engage These willing arms in her defence and yours. Heap obligation up, conditions stern— ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... daily insulted because, after publishing thirty-two volumes of the great edition in folio and in quarto, and twelve hundred plates, one volume of the historical section is wanting? We men of letters are the servants of an arbitrary master, whom we have imprudently chosen, who flatters and pets us first, and then tyrannizes over us if we do not work to his liking. You see, my dear friend, I play the grumbling old man, and, at the risk of deeply displeasing you, place myself on the side of the despotic ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... Mr Meagles, 'I was forgetting the name itself. Why, she was called in the Institution, Harriet Beadle—an arbitrary name, of course. Now, Harriet we changed into Hattey, and then into Tatty, because, as practical people, we thought even a playful name might be a new thing to her, and might have a softening and affectionate kind of effect, don't you see? As to Beadle, that I needn't say was ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Tresler stepped on to the gravel-strewn plateau, gun in hand. He felt glad of his five-chambered companion. Those rough friends of his on the ranch were right. There was nothing so compelling, nothing so arbitrary, nor so reassuring to the possessor and confounding to his enemies, ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... prisoners, of Jews, middlemen, and sweaters, who draw their livelihood out of our starvation. We shall have to face, as the rest have, ever decreasing prices of labour, ever increasing profits made out of that labour by the contractors who will employ us—arbitrary fines, inflicted at the caprice of hirelings—the competition of women, and children, and starving Irish—our hours of work will increase one-third, our actual pay decrease to less than one-half; and in all this we shall have no hope, no chance of improvement in wages, but ever more ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... for he has quoted his figures with much assurance. I should be grateful to him if he would mention also the source of his valuable information. We have done the best we could. The preliminary drafts of the bill were based on carefully selected facts—notice please, selected facts, and not arbitrary statistics based on conjecture. If we had discovered those figures, which the quicker eye of the honorable Mr. Richter seems to have detected at a glance, and if we had believed them to be accurate, we should have gone further ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... condition in the vegetable case, and granting it in the other. If you take a few grains of wheat, and are required to plant all successive generations of their produce in the same flower-pot for ever, of course you neutralise its expansion by your own act of arbitrary limitation.[25] But so you would do, if you tried the case of animal increase by still exterminating all but one replacing couple of parents. This is not to try, but merely a pretence of trying, one order of powers against another. That was folly. But Coleridge combated this idea ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... of his 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 ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... private property. This is such a violation of the statement that the sittings are all free, that it could no longer be permitted. To require these unscriptural practices to be renounced, we have reason to apprehend, would be considered as an arbitrary act of rule, and might alienate the minds of those of our dear brethren who are still, in heart, attached to that to which they hare ...
— A Narrative of some of the Lord's Dealings with George Mueller - Written by Himself. Second Part • George Mueller
... came down from Yedo to Hyogo with an impressive array of men-of-war. By invitation of the ex-shogun they visited him at Osaka. In reply to the representatives he made an address,(315) complaining of the arbitrary conduct of those who now had possession of the imperial person, and notifying them that he was willing and able to protect their rights under the treaties, and asking them to await the action of a conference to be summoned. In consequence of the conflict ...
— Japan • David Murray
... revision of the New Testament, must be regarded as the grammar written by a young academic teacher, George Benedict Winer, as far back as 1822, bearing the title of a Grammar of the Language of the New Testament. It was a vigorous protest against the arbitrary, and indeed monstrous licence of interpretation which prevailed in commentaries on Holy Scripture of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It met with at first the fate of all assaults on prevailing unscientific procedures, but its value and its truth ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... excel only in memory, an arbitrary statement of facts to be recollected may be satisfactory, but to those who are capable of fully understanding such a science as Anthropology, arbitrary details, void of principle and reason, are repulsive. A chart of the human brain, without explanation of its philosophic basis and ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... has deigned to accept with kindness my translation of the beautiful work of Beethoven which I have permitted myself humbly to offer to her. For musicians, the original of this work marks the summit of perfection of the classical style (an extremely arbitrary designation, in my opinion) among non-symphonic instrumental compositions. Beethoven—as well as many great geniuses in the history of Art— is like the ancient Janus; one of his two faces is turned towards the past, the other towards the future. The Septet ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... very ugly and detestable form of lunacy. In truth, not only is there no lesson in the Dutchman, but the whole idea is so absurd that only the power of the music enables us to swallow it at all. The condition on which the Dutchman can be saved is purely arbitrary; what difference ought it to make to him that some one, for the sake of an idea, sacrifices herself? The "good angel" who proposed it must have been temporarily out of her senses, and the Creator ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... must otherwise have been destitute. It has also had the happy effect of releasing them from vassalage, which formerly prevailed universally, and which was in some degree necessary as a protection against the arbitrary power of the different chiefs during the existence of the ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... the slightest 'incompatibility of temper' received the relief of a divorce more rapid and easy than even Germany could afford, and the estate lost nothing by any prolongation of celibacy on either side. Of course, the misery consequent upon such arbitrary destruction of voluntary and imposition of involuntary ties was nothing to ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... a cloudy prating sophist;—further, on the ground that he is a corrupter of the young, who would persuade them to follow the art of medicine or piloting in an unlawful manner, and to exercise an arbitrary rule over their patients or ships, any one who is qualified by law may inform against him, and indict him in some court, and then if he is found to be persuading any, whether young or old, to act contrary to the written law, he is to be punished with the utmost rigour; ...
— Statesman • Plato
... of your class, Miss Dexter," Ruth said firmly, "must be entirely wrong. I did not believe that they ordered us to wear baby blue tams just out of an arbitrary desire to make us obey. Had I believed that I would not have bought a ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... Vincente Yanez Pinzon—both navigators of great courage and ability, and owners of vessels—undertook to sail on the expedition, and furnish one of the caravels required. Two others were pressed by the magistrates under the arbitrary ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... explanation of the origin of the nomenclature of the days of the week, an explanation given by ancient historians and generally received, Whewell should have stated that 'various accounts are given, all the methods proceeding upon certain arbitrary arithmetical processes connected in some way with astrological views.' Speaking of the arrangement of the planets in the order of their supposed distances, and of the order in which the planets appear in the days of the ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... the provisions had been doled out in scanty allowance; and her cruises were unreasonably protracted. The captain was the author of the abuses; it was in vain to think that he would either remedy them, or alter his conduct, which was arbitrary and violent in the extreme. His prompt reply to all complaints and remonstrances was—the butt-end of a handspike, so convincingly administered as effectually ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... i Egypten ("The Bronze Age in Egypt"), he essayed to prove the contrary arguments of the Egyptologists wrong. His main points were that the colour of the weapons in the frescoes was of no importance, as it was purely conventional and arbitrary, and that the evidence of the piece of iron from the Great Pyramid was insufficiently authenticated, and therefore valueless, in the absence of other definite archaeological evidence in the shape of iron ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... accordingly, a fleet was sent to take possession of New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant called out his troops and made ready to fight. But the people were tired of the arbitrary rule of the Dutch governors, and petitioned him to yield. At last he answered, "Well, let it be so, but I would rather be carried ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... most important. In electing to be crushed under a vehicle she acts on her own initiative. What you propose is nothing less than a curtailment of her liberty of action. How do you think the local authorities would envisage such an arbitrary step? I imagine it may cost you dear to arrogate to yourselves a power which, in this country at least, is vested in the proper authorities. You may well find yourselves in collision with the penal code of Italy which ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... to Lady Jane Grey, bishop of London, a highly arbitrary man, and a friend to neither Papist nor Puritan; he is satirised by Spenser ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... Surely this is rather arbitrary dealing! We start from our theory that the original poet described the armour of "the monuments" though they are "of the, prime," while he professedly lived long after the prime—lived in an age when there must have been changes in military equipment. We then cut out, as of ...
— Homer and His Age • Andrew Lang
... filling those numerous vacancies which had fallen in England during an interdict of six years, had proceeded in the most arbitrary manner; and had paid no regard, in conferring dignities, to personal merit, to rank, to the inclination of the electors, or to the customs of the country. The English Church was universally disgusted; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... 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 ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... microcosm which she conducted as a feudal holding under the protection of her lord. It would be an interesting study to work out the rules of this feudal relation between husband and wife in any agricultural community. They would be found as varied, as unjust and arbitrary, and as generous, as those of the old regime ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... laws of property exist probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favor of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give reciprocation of right,—that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience; and it is a problem which I give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were not framed for him as well as his slave,—and whether the slave may not as justifiably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... the regiment, and, in fact, every member of the whole of the volunteer force of the country, felt that it was a common cause, as he might be placed in a similar situation, and, consequently, if I were punished, he himself might be liable to arbitrary and unjust dismissal by a superior officer. The Court felt and knew this. Many, very many, members of the Wilts regiments, declared that they would immediately resign if I were sentenced to any fine or imprisonment; and several of my particular ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... of expression typifying and typified by Spring—the time when bursting, pressing life almost breaks bounds, when birth and the impulse to birth are in every form of life, without and within. These festivals are not arbitrary in date. They grow ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... the grand jury, at its annual session, overstepping in its zeal the limits of its powers, returned findings against "one Ashley Thorne and Robert Orde, in the pay of the United States Government, for arbitrary exceeding of their rights and authorities; for illegal interference with the rights of citizens; for oppression," and so on through a round dozen ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... precious metals. The civilized world has adopted these as the universal solvent of its vast masses of obligation. It is assumed that some standard is indispensable; it is asserted to be the imperative duty of governments, if they would not make their exactions of taxes arbitrary, unequal, and oppressive,—if they would render the dealings of individuals mutual and just,—if they would preserve the property and labor of their subjects from the merciless caprices of the powerful, and keep society ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... in secret, in a corner. There are no arbitrary difficulties made or unnecessary darkness left in His revelation. We have no right to say that He has left difficulties to test our faith. He Himself has never said so. He deals with us in good faith, doing all ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... genius of men, and destroyed every noble principle of science and virtue, was unable to resist the vigorous efforts of a free people; and Europe, as from a new epoch, rekindled her ancient spirit, and shook off the base servitude to arbitrary will and authority under which she had so long laboured. The free constitutions then established, however impaired by the encroachments of succeeding princes, still preserve an air of independence and legal administration, which distinguish the European ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... worse news? My friends, every sinner knows so well in his heart that it is worse news, more terrible news, for him, that he tries to persuade himself that death is only the arbitrary punishment of his sin; or, quite as often, that the punishment of his sin is not even death, but eternal torment in the ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... arbitrary public, I consider that I have made the amende honorable, and that we are quits; for, if you were minus a happy marriage in the last work, you have a couple to indemnify you in ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... these are the property and habitations of the cultivated and intelligent Creoles of the State. And here let me explain the term Creole, which has led to so many ludicrous, and sometimes to painful mistakes. It is an arbitrary term, and imported from the West Indies into Louisiana. Its original meaning was a native born of foreign parents; but universal use has made it to mean, in Louisiana, nothing more than simply "native;" and it is applied indiscriminately to everything native to the State—as Creole cane, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... although, according to these wise doctors, it is assumed to be utterly impossible that the same man can use two styles, or that a man at seventy will write otherwise than he did at thirty. In short, we discovered that there is nothing more arbitrary, more opinionated, and more unphilosophical than this 'philological criticism.' Applied, as these wonderful German doctors apply it, to any book ever penned, and it can be shown, 'as the result of high critical ability,' that no author ever wrote his own book. It is ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... morning. Even the leaves declared for liberty, courting individual adventure upon the wings of that daring wind. And this sense of surrounding activity worked upon Damaris, making her doubly impatient of denials and arbitrary restraints. She sent her soul after Darcy Faircloth across the waste of waters, fondly, almost fiercely seeking him. But her soul refused to travel, curiously turning homeward again, as though aware ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... only once before, when he complained of the roof leaking, but Socknersh would not have shown surprise if he had seen Old Goodman of the marsh tales standing at his door. Joanna had stern, if somewhat arbitrary, notions of propriety, and now not only did she refuse to come inside the gate, but she made him come and stand outside it, among the seed-grasses which were like ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... was put up to Garry for a decision and as he was the leader his word always went, though he was never arbitrary and generally talked things over ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... with extraordinary resources, a solution was found by requiring that such aids should not be levied except with the consent of the Great Council, which consisted of the lords spiritual and temporal. They tried to set limits to the arbitrary imprisonments that had been hitherto the order of the day, by definite reference to the law of the land and the verdict of sworn men. But these are just the weightiest points on which personal freedom and security of property rest; and ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... 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 the wall ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... prisons of the Inquisition in Italy, and particularly at Rome, were filled with victims, including persons of noble birth, male and female, men of letters, and mechanics. Multitudes were condemned to penance, to the galleys, or other arbitrary punishments; and from time to time individuals were put to death." "The following description," says the same historian, "of the state of matters in 1568 is from the pen of one who was residing at that time on the borders of Italy:—'At Rome some are every ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... beyond the internal evidence they afford. I have endeavoured to place them in the order they seem most naturally to take, with reference to colour, form, and the early influences to be observed in them, but the arrangement must necessarily be somewhat arbitrary. ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... detachment of the Thirty-ninth foot. The squadron, with the troops, then moved on to Calcutta, which surrendered on January 2d, Manickchand having evacuated the place and returned with his army to the head-quarters of the Nawab at Murshidabad. Then occurred another of Watson's arbitrary and ill-judged proceedings. Notwithstanding the orders of the Madras government, investing Clive with military and political control in Bengal, Watson appointed Coote, whose rank was that of captain, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... division between predicating a class and predicating an attribute (in quid or in quale) is a perfectly intelligible one, corresponding as it does to the grammatical distinction between the predicate being a noun substantive or a noun adjective. Nevertheless it is a somewhat arbitrary one, since, even when the predicate is a class-name, what we are concerned to convey to the mind, is the fact that the subject possesses the attributes which are connoted by that class-name. We have not here the difference between extensive and intensive predication, since, as we have ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... bosses our show"—and representing militant sacerdotalism in its most blusterous and rampant form. He was also in the habit of informing people that he was "nuts" on the Athanasian Creed, and expressing the somewhat arbitrary opinion that if the Rev. John Wesley had had his deserts he would have been exhibited in a pillory and used as a target for stale eggs. There are a few such interesting youths in Holy Orders, and the curate's friend ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... bless the land again; To stick the doctor's chair into the throne, Give law to words, or war with words alone, Senates and courts with Greek and Latin rule, And turn the council to a grammar school! 180 For sure, if Dulness sees a grateful day, 'Tis in the shade of arbitrary sway. Oh! if my sons may learn one earthly thing, Teach but that one, sufficient for a king; That which my priests, and mine alone, maintain, Which as it dies or lives, we fall or reign: May you, may Cam and Isis, preach it ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... cover the reigns of William and Mary, Queen Anne, George I, and a part of the reign of George II, or, in other words, all the time of Dutch influence. The more usual method is to leave out William and Mary, but at best the classification of furniture is more or less arbitrary, for in England, as well as other countries, the different styles overlap each other. Chippendale's early work was distinctly ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... Electric. The arbitrary or conventional potential—or briefly, the potential of a point in an electric field of force—is, numerically, the number of ergs of work necessary to bring a unit of electricity up to the point in question from a region of nominal zero potential—i. e., from the surface of the earth. ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert against the awful authority of a mob. It ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... is of a very different Turn: Her Thoughts are wholly bent upon Conquest and arbitrary Power. That she has some Wit and Beauty no Body denies, and therefore has the Esteem of all her Acquaintance as a Woman of an agreeable Person and Conversation; but (whatever her Husband may think of it) that is not sufficient for Honoria: She waves that Title to ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... comparatively small proportion of that canvas on which armies manoeuvre, and great hills pile themselves upon each other's shoulders. Fielding's characters were always great to the full stature of a perfectly arbitrary will. Already in Scott we begin to have a sense of the subtle influences that moderate and qualify a man's personality; that personality is no longer thrown out in unnatural isolation, but is resumed into its place in ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... compose the differences in Utah. He explained and justified the appointments he had made there—appointments that had been recommended by Southern senators and representatives who, because they were Southerners, were opposed to the undue extension and arbitrary use of Federal power. He had made Caleb W. West of Kentucky governor of Utah on the recommendation of Senator Blackburn of Kentucky, my father's friend. He had made Frank H. Dyer, originally of Mississippi, United States ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... heaven, through which she passed in the course of the year, her aspects to the other bodies were considered as of prime significance, in indicating benignant or malignant influences upon human life. This system, which was based upon ignorance and superstition, and upheld by arbitrary rules and unreasoning credulity, is so repugnant to all principles of science and common sense, that it would be unworthy of notice, if we did not know that to this day there are educated persons still to be seen poring over old almanacs and peering into the darkness ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... students of character generally, swell into more imposing proportions. The sea dwindles and the land broadens. Transportation and travel become difficult and hazardous. Merchant and customer, running alike a labyrinthine gauntlet of taxes, tolls and arbitrary exactions by the wolves of schloss and chateau, found it safest to make fewer trips and concentrate their transactions. The great nations, with many secondary trade-tournaments, as they may be termed, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... races, tribes, families, classes—is now acknowledged by every systematiser who forms an honest and unprejudiced judgment of the practical systematic distinction of species. From the very nature of the case there are no limits to arbitrary discretion in this department, and there are no two systematists who are at one in every instance; this one separating forms as true varieties which that one does not. (Compare on this point "History ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... Collinson should, throughout his composition, speak of Nazareth as being on the sea-shore—which is the reverse of the fact. The Praeraphaelites, with all their love of exact truth to nature, were a little arbitrary in applying the principle; and Collinson seems to have regarded it as quite superfluous to look into a map, and see whether Nazareth was near the sea or not. Or possibly he trusted to Dante Rossetti's poem "Ave," ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... reasons for the indefiniteness of Indian nomenclature: The aborigines were at the time of discovery, and indeed most of them remain today, in the prescriptorial stage of culture, i.e., the stage in which ideas are crystallized, not by means of arbitrary symbols, but by means of arbitrary associations,(18) and in this stage names are connotive or descriptive, rather than denotive as in the scriptorial stage. Moreover, among the Indians, as among all other ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... recited in this way. A wall map with simply the outline of the territory, with its rivers, will be of considerable assistance in testing the accuracy of the student's geographical knowledge. While reciting, let him locate with chalk or pointer the cities, arbitrary boundary lines, and routes he finds it necessary to mention in his recitation. It will require special attention early in the course to teach students the necessity for preparation of this sort. Like everything else, map work should be reasonable ...
— The Teaching of History • Ernest C. Hartwell
... member proposed that the matter be postponed indefinitely. "Are you willing to neglect the banner of freedom?" demanded another. Yet another thought it unnecessary to insist upon thirteen stripes, and thought they might as well fix upon nine or eleven or any other arbitrary number as thirteen. The committee pleaded for the significant thirteen, and so it went on. At length Peter H. Wendover, of New York, through whose efforts Congress was held to its duty, called the attention of the House ...
— The Little Book of the Flag • Eva March Tappan
... thing is that their followers who live by labor and expect to live by it, and believe in the doctrine of individualism, and love liberty of action, should be willing to surrender their discretion to an arbitrary committee, and should expect that liberty of action would be preserved if all property were handed over to the State, which should undertake to regulate every man's time, occupation, wages, and so on. The central committee or authority, or whatever it might ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... found:—"I bequeath to John Wilkes, late member of parliament for Aylesbury, five thousand pounds sterling, as a grateful return for the courage with which he defended the liberty of his country, and opposed the dangerous progress of arbitrary power." ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... dignity, and matchless personality are assailed, they resent it with fierce impulse, and this gives Lowe further opportunities of reminding them of his goodness. But during the long, weary years of incessant provocation, criminal retaliation was never thought of except on one occasion, when some new arbitrary rules were put ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... have been made to rate the efficiency of concrete mixers. In all cases a percentage basis of comparison has been adopted; arbitrary values are assigned to the several functions of a mixer, such as 40 per cent. for perfect mixing, 10 per cent. for time of mixing and 25 per cent. for control of water, the total being 100 per cent., and each mixer analyzed and given a rating according ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... writers, in selecting as their subject any portion of their national history or mythology, employed in their treatment of it a certain arbitrary discretion. They by no means conceived themselves bound to adhere to the common interpretation or to imitate in story as in title their rivals and predecessors. Such a system would have amounted to a resignation ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... was in Ireland in 1685, had recommended himself to his bigoted master, James II, by his arbitrary treatment of the Protestants in that country, and in the following year he was created Earl of Tyrconnel, and, being a furious Papist, was nominated by the King to the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland. In 1688 he was going to Ireland on a second expedition at the time that the advanced guard of William ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... President.—An eminent American historian,[43] writing of the power exercised by President Lincoln in time of war, said, "It is an interesting fact, that the ruler of a republic which sprang from a resistance to the English king and Parliament should exercise more arbitrary power than any Englishman since Oliver Cromwell, and that many of his acts should be worthy ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... than you, therefore you shall fag for me.' The state of things we produce by submitting to this, bad enough even at first, becomes intolerable when the mediocre or foolish descendants of the clever fellows claim to have inherited their privileges. Now, no men are greater sticklers for the arbitrary dominion of genius and talent than your artists. The great painter is not satisfied with being sought after and admired because his hands can do more than ordinary hands, which they truly can, but he wants ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... truly argued concerning some of them that they were more "men of action," and less "men of mind" than many who were included in the former volume. But all distinctions and divisions and classifications are more or less arbitrary; and there is no intention, in this one, to intimate that the "men of action" were not also "men of mind," or vice versa. The division has been made simply ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... civil and criminal, all questions of property, were determined by committees, who, being themselves the legislature, were accountable to no law, and for that reason their decrees were arbitrary, and their proceedings violent. Oppression was without redress, unjust sentence without appeal; there was no prospect of ease or intermission. The parliament had determined never ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... people." The truth of the statement is very quickly recognized by even the most surface student of American politics. The struggle which began in 1774-5 was the direct outcome of the spirit of independence. Rather than submit to a degrading government by the arbitrary will of a foreign Parliament, the Massachusetts people chose to enter upon an almost unprecedented war of a colony against the mother country. Rather than admit the precedent of the oppression of a sister colony, the other ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... 'em cultivate the Talents Nature has given them; insomuch, that we see the Liberty of their Country shine in their Orations. He goes on, but as for us, who were early taught to endure the Yoke of Domination, and have been, as it were, wrapt up in the Customs and Ways of Arbitrary Rule; who in a Word, never tasted that living and Flowing Spring of Eloquence and Liberty; we commonly, instead of Orators, become pompous Flatterers, for which reason, I believe a Man Born in Servitude, may be capable of other Sciencies, but no Slave can ever be an Orator, ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... of a lapse of sixty years, the historian who attempts to portray the era of Lincoln is still faced with almost impossible demands and still confronted with arbitrary points of view. It is out of the question, in a book so brief as this must necessarily be, to meet all these demands or to alter these points of view. Interests that are purely local, events that did not with certainty ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... 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 purely natural ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... a complete language must be, with its long and arbitrary vocabulary, its intricate system of sounds; the many forms that single words may take, especially if they are verbs; the rules of grammar, the sentence structure, the idioms, slang and inflections. Heavens, what a genius for tongues these simians have![1] Where another ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... surprisingly humanoid in most respects, but his complexion was textured so like the rich dark armchair he'd just been occupying that the Professor's pin-striped gray suit, which he had eagerly consented to wear, seemed an arbitrary interruption between him and the chair—a sort of Mother Hubbard dress on a ...
— What's He Doing in There? • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... the like arbitrary methods having amassed great treasures, and finding all things quiet at home, he raised a powerful army to invade his brother in Normandy; but upon what ground or pretext, the writers of that age are not very exact; whether it were from a principle ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... enforced by the arm of the Executive;" and another declaring "that the criminal prosecution of Susan B. Anthony by the United States, for the alleged crime of exercising the citizen's right of suffrage, is an act of arbitrary and unconstitutional authority and a blow at the liberties of every citizen of this nation." Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood, Rev. Olympia Brown and others made ringing speeches on the right of women to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment, defended ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the Moors who favored the Cid to leave the city in disguise, thus allowing Abeniaf and his allies to plunder right and left and even to murder the Moorish king. This done, Abeniaf himself assumed the regal authority, and began to govern the city in such an arbitrary way that he soon managed to offend even ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... employer collectively by co-operating; and co-operation is the only way. Evan knew that it was the only way for bankclerks to obtain their rights. The banks would not do business with an individual because they didn't have to; it was easier to dismiss him. But their offensively arbitrary methods could not be employed where a great number of clerks were concerned. If the bankclerks of Canada were united they could talk as a body, and the banks of Canada would be compelled to listen. It did not occur to Evan for a moment that the boys would go on strike: but they would have the power ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... his triumph at the polls in 1857, Lord Palmerston had been somewhat arbitrary in his demeanour, and had defied public opinion by taking Lord Clanricarde into the Government, after some unpleasant disclosures in the Irish Courts. While walking home on the 18th, after obtaining an immense majority on the India ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... be with you I cannot foretell. But you may be sure that He never works in an arbitrary way. He has a reason for everything He does. You may not understand why He leads you now in this way and now in that, but you may, nay, you must believe that perfection is stamped on His ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... tenant 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 ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... of individual taste meant emancipation from arbitrary codes and an opportunity to embrace a compass as wide as the range of literary excellence. Realizing that every reader, even the professed critic, is hemmed in by certain prejudices arising from his temperament, ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... which many have formed of punishment is that of a mere arbitrary annexation of a certain amount of suffering in the next world to a certain amount of crime committed in this—so many stripes for so many sins; and, as if obvious injustice were inflicted on men, by threatening them with coming woe for present wickedness, they exclaim, "Surely such ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... foreign power or another had not touched Americans closely, but now conditions changed. When rumors of the last treaty finally reached the United States, the planters in the Mississippi Valley became alarmed. The laws and customs regulations of the Spaniards at New Orleans were arbitrary, and their business methods antiquated, complicated, and irksome to the colonists, and there had already been friction between them, the Spaniards being aided by Indians hostile to the frontiersmen. The right ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... 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 such brains were laying up, inevitably, ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... point of view normal sexual love is the sway of a fetich—more or less arbitrary, more or less (as Binet terms it) polytheistic—and it can have little objective basis. But, as we saw when considering "Sexual Selection in Man" in the previous volume, more especially when analyzing the notion of beauty, we are justified in believing that beauty has to a large ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... long and familiar use, as has been said, come to excite in men certain ideas so constantly and readily, that they are apt to suppose a natural connexion between them. But that they signify only men's peculiar ideas, and that BY A PERFECT ARBITRARY IMPOSITION, is evident, in that they often fail to excite in others (even that use the same language) the same ideas we take them to be signs of: and every man has so inviolable a liberty to make words stand for what ideas he pleases, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke
... travelers in California put it, slaves under another name—slaves to the cast-iron power of a system which, like all systems, was capable of unlimited abuse, and which, at the very best, was narrow and arbitrary. Every vestige of freedom was taken from them when they entered, or were brought into, the settlement. Henceforth they belonged, body and soul, to the mission and its authority. Their tasks were assigned to ...
— The Famous Missions of California • William Henry Hudson
... in "obtaining a decree by which he was authorized to enter upon the possessions of his deceased debtor!" But the adherents of Charles Etienne did not readily yield to the new adventurer. They had tasted the sweets of religious liberty, and were not disposed to come within the arbitrary yoke without a struggle. Disregarding the "decree," they stood out manfully against the forces of Le Borgne. Again were Catholic French and Protestant French cannon pointed against each other in unhappy ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... keeping within the limits of tradition. The poet who deals with Siegfried and Brunhilde, or with Lohengrin or Faust, may very properly require us to accept the miracles which pertain in each case to the saga. But such a being as Schiller's Johanna is found in no saga; she is a purely arbitrary creation. A very thoughtful German critic, Bellermann, attempts to defend our love-episode by showing how Schiller took good care in the preceding scenes to depict his heroine as susceptible to the tender emotions of her sex; in other words, to depict her as a maiden who might conceivably ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... an arbitrary being dealing out rewards and punishments grows dim, for we see the regular workings of Cause and Effect. We begin to talk of Energy, the Divine Essence, and the Reign of Law. We speak, as Matthew Arnold ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... Green, Eteree; Mr Parkinson, Patini; Mr Sporing, Poliui; Petersgill, Petrodero; and in this manner they had now formed names for almost every man in the ship: In some, however, it was not easy to find any traces of the original, and they were perhaps not mere arbitrary sounds, formed upon the occasion, but significant words in their own language. Monkhouse, the midshipman, who commanded the party that killed the man for stealing the musket, they called Matte; not merely by an attempt to imitate in sound the first syllable ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... Yorkist Kings had seen that absolutism was the condition of stability; Henry perceived that, applied as they had applied it, the stability would still be wanting. He had to find a mean between the wantonly arbitrary absolutism which had been attempted a century before by Richard II. and recently by Edward IV. and Richard III. on the one hand, and on the other hand the premature application of constitutional ideas under the House of Lancaster. The actual method evolved was the concentration ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... 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" is one peremptory order that admits of no ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn
... tribute are making rich. "Averse to go to the root of the matter," one Deputy complained, "the Government punishes a woman who, on the market sells a herring five copecks dearer than the current price, yet at the same time it permits the Governors to promulgate their own arbitrary laws regulating imports and exports from their own provinces. In this way Russia is split up into sixty different regions, each one of which pursues its ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... impossible, not only by inherent defects, but also by a general disinclination to abandon the present system, which at least offers certain attractions to concrete men and women, despite its unfavourable effects upon the unborn. Women would oppose the substitution of chance or arbitrary fiat for the existing struggle for the plain reason that every woman is convinced, and no doubt rightly, that her own judgment is superior to that of either the common hangman or the gods, and that her own enterprise is more favourable to ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... what is meant in history and 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 ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... such distressing circumstances, would make him; she used all the arguments which her reason could suggest, to persuade me that it was my duty to bear with his temper, and to submit to his will, however arbitrary. But, as I was now of age, and as I had laboured incessantly in my father's business for nearly five years, and had scarcely ever left it for a day, I was mortified at his unnecessary severity, in denying me the privilege of a day or two upon such an occasion; and, besides, as my father's temper ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... 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 ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... arbitrary man is now doing me the greatest injury without even making a plea for it. His own subjects (for he is a most despotic monarch), Frenchmen, who are acquainted with the circumstances, condemn him for it; but ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery
... was of an arbitrary system of thought and training, and by so much divorced from the natural instincts of youth and age alike, the confident joy of the one, the mature acquiescence of the other—in overhearing this brief conversation suffered embarrassment amounting almost to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... to employ unnatural or arbitrary punishments. Even the smallest child has an instinctive idea of justice and resents anything which he regards as unjust. On the other hand, he learns quickly the inevitableness with which pain follows the violation of law, and ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... as to discover it. Mr. Wilson is a man who, to use Carlyle's favorite expression, has "swallowed all formulas." The principles that have generally been held to govern the use of language appear to him mere arbitrary rules, invented by the "sevenfold censorship" and the Spanish Inquisition, for the purpose of preventing the free communication of ideas. All such trammels he rejects; and, accordingly, we have to thank him, so far as mere ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... evidently point out the origin of "Jim-jam bugs" in No. IX, and the better known modern synonym for brain, "bug-house," but it indicates the arbitrary tendency of all language to create gradations of caste in parts of speech. It is to this mysterious influence by which some words become "elegant" or "poetic," and others "coarse" or "unrefined," that we owe the contempt in which slang is held ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum • Wallace Irwin
... cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:—For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:—For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:—For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:—For ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... appears, that of the Byzantine sovereigns, from the disappearance of the Theodosian race to the last Constantine who dies on the ramparts of the city made by the first, shows a great deterioration.[29] There was no acknowledged principle of succession. Arbitrary force determined it. One robber followed another upon the throne; so that the eastern despot seemed to imitate that ghastly rule, in the wood by Nemi, "of the priest who slew the slayer and shall himself ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... had been at perpetual war among themselves or with some neighbour were reduced to quietude. Communities which had been liable to sudden invasion and to all manner of arbitrary changes in their conditions of life, in their burdens of taxation, and even in their personal freedom, now knew exactly where they stood, and, for the most part, perceived that they stood in a much more tolerable and a distinctly more assured position than before. ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... rigid lines of any literary circle; nor shall I press him into the narrow frame of school or party; nor stamp upon him the distinctive label of any particular ism. He would break such fetters; his free spirit, his great individuality would overflow the arbitrary confines of "the sole Truth," "the only true principle." The waves of his soul would break down all artificial barriers and rush out to join the ever-moving ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... rightful principle may a State, being not more than one-fiftieth part of the nation in soil and population, break up the nation, and then coerce a proportionally larger subdivision of itself in the most arbitrary way?" ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... Theft legitamised by Government; that is by 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 ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... upon power as belonging of right to the strongest; the weak, or those who differ from him in opinion, he will treat with contempt and cruelty, and will think they have no rights he is bound to respect. In power, such a man will be arbitrary and cruel; out of power, he will be faithless, hypocritical and subservient. Trust him with authority, he will abuse it; trust him with money, he will steal it; trust him with your confidence, and he will betray it. Such a man—Pagan and unprincipled as he is—may nevertheless ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller |
