"Immutability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fell calmly upon the mother and son and, in their stillness, their contemplation, the two faces were like those on an old canvas, preserved from time and change in the trance-like immutability of art. In colour, the two heads chimed, though Augustine's hair was vehemently gold and there were under-tones of brown and amber in his skin. But the oval of Lady Channice's face grew angular in her son's, broader and more defiant; so that, palely, ...
— Amabel Channice • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... in the hypotheses relative to the origin of existing varieties of animals and plants, propounded by Lamarck, Darwin, and other naturalists of the "advanced school," there is a general belief in the immutability of species. The individuals of an existing species, say dogs, can never acquire the peculiar features of another species; nor can their descendants, if we except hybrids, ever become animals in which the characteristics of the dog tribe are irrecognisable. By various influences, such as, for example, ...
— The Stock-Feeder's Manual - the chemistry of food in relation to the breeding and - feeding of live stock • Charles Alexander Cameron
... auspices could this great structure be erected than under those of that Aristotelian Realism, which was at bottom a dialectic between the Platonic Realism and Nominalism; and which was represented as capable of uniting immanence and transcendence, history and miracle, the immutability of God and mutability, Idealism and Realism, ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... haggard cheeks, the lips clamped together in unfaltering resolve, the scars of lifelong battle, and the brow whose sharp outline seems the monument of final victory,— this, at least, is a face that needs no name beneath it. This is he who among literary fames finds only two that for growth and immutability can parallel his own. The suffrages of highest authority would now place him second in that company where he with proud humility ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... intellectual processes as are carried on silently and spontaneously in the mind of a party or school, of necessity come to light at a later date, and are recognised, and their issues are scientifically arranged." Consequently, though dogma is unchangeable as truth is unchangeable, this immutability does not exclude progress. In the Church, such progress is nothing else than the development of the principles laid down in the beginning by Jesus Christ Himself. Thus—to take a simple illustration—in three different councils, the Church has declared and proposed three ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... they talked with Christ of his death at that time when he was in the greatest height of glory, that ever he admitted in this world, that is, his transfiguration. And we are afraid to speak to the great men of this world of their death, but nourish in them a vain imagination of immortality and immutability. But bonum est nobis esse hic (as Saint Peter said there), It is good to dwell here, in this consideration of his death, and therefore transfer we our tabernacle (our devotions) through some of those steps which God the Lord made to his issue of death that day. Take in the whole day from ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... the British statesmen were voicing the policy of the European concert taken as a whole. In the first place, the Foreign Secretary was led into believing that Turkey might prove victorious against the Balkan coalition, and the warning about the immutability of the Balkan frontiers was only for Turkey, in case her victorious armies were to cross the boundaries into Bulgaria, Servia, Montenegro, ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... be of importance to the Swedish government, to have the proposition worded in such a way that it would remove the doubts of the Diet regarding an isolated solution of the Consular question. In the matter of the immutability of the identical laws, it had sought an effectual guarantee that the independent Consular office would not disloyally—when the time was ripe for it—be provided by Norway with its own Minister for Foreign affairs. This question had been shirked ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... the surface, the present universal war drives home more than one anthropological truth in striking fashion; and of these verities none is more profound than that relating to the essential immutability of mankind and ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... of Lord Elmwood; he married Lady Elmwood contrary to his determination, because he loved; and for the sake of this beloved object, he had, contrary to his resolution, taken under his immediate care young Rushbrook; but the magic which once enchanted away this spirit of immutability was no more—Lady Elmwood was no more, ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... immutability of character in some animals, it is {122} undeniable, that domestic varieties have little stability, and much tendency to reversion, whatever be the true explanation of ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... even the endowments of genius. But further than this I do not accept it. I want to believe that my soul is immortal. Emerson's 'Duration of the Attributes of the Soul' does not satisfy me. I desire something more than an immutability, or continued existence hereafter, in the form of an abstract idea of ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... gave to my love all the security of immutability, the calm of certainty, the overflowing ecstasy of joy that would never be impaired. I took no note of time, knowing that I had before me hours without end, and that each in succession would give me back her inward presence. I might be separated from her during ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... elements, head set, eyes wary, shoulders squared. He had fought wind and sun, rain and drought, scourge and flood. He had risen before dawn and slept before sunset. In the process he had taken on something of the colour and the rugged immutability of the fields and hills and trees among which he toiled. Something of their dignity, too, though your town dweller might fail to see it beneath the drab exterior. He had about him none of the high lights and sharp points of the city man. He seemed to blend in with the background ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... as come in she must, what would be the result? All had premonitions of strange shifting of destinies. As it was yesterday so it was to-day in that gracious shrine of immutability. But every one knew in his heart that as it was to-day so would it not be to-morrow. The very word "war" seemed as out of place as the suggestion of Hell in Paradise. Yet the throb of the War Drum came over the broad land of France and over the ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... believe in the immutability of species often maintain that, even in the most variable forms, the characters which they consider of specific value are unchangeable. To give an example from a conscientious writer,[753] who, relying on the labours of M. Naudin and {359} referring to the species of ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... a rapturous declaration of the immutability of God's law, and the eternal destinies of man. The world was full of change, but man, who seemed to change most, changed least. The stars that hung above had seen the beginning and the end of ages. Before man was, they were. The old river that flowed past the old ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... language be laid down, distinct in its minutest subdivisions, and resolved into its elemental principles. And who upon this survey can forbear to wish, that these fundamental atoms of our speech might obtain the firmness and immutability of the primogenial and constituent particles of matter, that they might retain their substance while they alter their appearance, and be varied and compounded, yet ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... to us in our present state of existence, and which puts an end to so many of our joys, is entirely removed by our union with God in the Beatific Vision. "We shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as he is." One of the essential attributes of God is immutability, or the total absence of change, or even of the power to change. He is the selfsame forever. He is, as St. James beautifully expresses it, "The Father of lights, with whom there is no change nor shadow of alteration."* By our union with Him we are "made partakers of the Divine Nature," ...
— The Happiness of Heaven - By a Father of the Society of Jesus • F. J. Boudreaux
... What is it to the purpose to put its semblance into words? Its significance is the heart of the matter. We see the earth as hill and valley, pasture and cloud, sky and sea. Really it is nothing of the kind, but infinitely more. It is tireless energy, yearning, force, profusion, terror, immutability in variety. What are words to such a power? It is to that I stretch out my arms. I must lie folded in that immensity, drown and sink in it, till it and I are one. I must be resumed into the divine ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett |
