"Reasonableness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I can scarcely wonder at your course," she said, so quietly that he misunderstood her, and felt that she half conceded its reasonableness. Then she changed the subject, nor did she revert to ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... inherited from the past, largely fails to accomplish this. In the first place, it has been authoritative rather than scientific, which is to say that students have been induced to accept the statements of teachers and text books, and have not been trained to weigh for themselves their reasonableness and worth; a principle essentially unscientific and undemocratic, since it inculcates in the future citizen convictions rather than encourages the habit of open-mindedness so necessary for democratic citizenship. For democracy—it cannot be too often repeated—is a dynamic thing, experimental, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... returns Mr. Snagsby; "I was sure you would feel it yourself and would excuse the reasonableness of MY feelings when coupled with the known excitableness of my little woman. You see, the foreign female—which you mentioned her name just now, with quite a native sound I am sure—caught up the word Snagsby that night, being uncommon ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the Coburg character has been described as the sound judgment and quiet reasonableness associated with the temperate blood of the race. Accordingly, we find the Duchess not only submitting with gentle resignation to misfortune, but rousing herself, as her brother might have done in her circumstances—as doubtless he urged her to do—to the active discharge ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... his "Reasonableness of Christianity," says that when Christ came "men had given themselves up into the hands of their priests, to fill their heads with false notions of the Deity, and their worship with foolish rites, as they pleased; and what dread or craft once began, devotion soon made ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... or any body of people, come here with a petition, it is not the number of people, but the reasonableness of the request, that should weigh with the House. A body of Dissenters come to this House, and say, "Tolerate us: we desire neither the parochial advantage of tithes, nor dignities, nor the stalls of your cathedrals: ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... resolutely unsmiling. Under one arm she carried a roll of cheap white lawn. Annabel frequently commented on the uselessness of buying expensive materials for a girl who grew as rapidly as Diantha, though the reasonableness of this contention was slightly discounted by her recognized ability to demonstrate that the cream of things was invariably her portion, while an all-wise Providence had obviously designed the skimmed milk for the rest ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... how can He be the healer of the rest? If being a sinful man, as we all are, He made such a claim, what becomes of the reverence which is paid to Him as a great religious Teacher, and where has His 'sweet reasonableness' vanished? ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... said to Mary when he got home, "that these people have gone far beyond the line of reasonableness, when one considers that law of physics which says that the reaction goes about as far as the action. The truth is, Mary, many churches have become so formal and dead that the cry of mankind is for life, freedom, spiritual ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
... which there is oftentimes much serious questioning among ladies old and young, while yet unmarried, is thus finely defined by Jeremy Taylor:—"It is a voluntary cession that is required; such a cession as must be without coercion and violence on his part, but upon fair inducements and reasonableness in the thing, and out of love and honour on her part. When God commands us to love Him, He means we shall obey Him. 'This is love, that ye keep my commandments; and if ye love me,' says the Lord, 'keep my commandments.' Now as Christ is to the ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... confidentially, to hold communications with them, and to grant them secret conferences."[156] Lebrun then referred in contemptuous terms to the British naval preparations, and stated that he had firmly maintained the decree respecting the Scheldt. He then affirmed the reasonableness of the decree of 19th November; and scouted the notion that France harboured designs against Holland. In answer to this last he had said in effect: "That it was much to be wished that the British Ministry ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... answered so pleasantly that she and Frances had a duet they wanted to practise before playing it to their mother, that Mrs Mildmay's slight instinctive misgiving as to her elder daughter's docility and reasonableness was for the time ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... an end to metaphysical theology, and perhaps to metaphysics and theology altogether, by showing that "being," and the cognate words, originally denoted merely physical perceptions. But so, probably, did all language. So did "spirit," so did "geist," so did "power," so did even "sweet reasonableness," and "the not us which makes for righteousness." Other perceptions or ideas have gradually come, and are now denoted by the words which at first denoted physical perceptions only. Why have not these last comers as good a claim to existence as the first? Suppose ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... lecturing. As a matter of fact, nothing is farther from the truth. But the brevity of life is an insistent fact in our existence, and the inability to do good work for lack of help that is so gladly given when the reasonableness of the expenditure is presented, makes one feel guilty if an evening is spent doing nothing. The lecturing is by far the most uncongenial task which I have been called upon to do in life, but in a mission like ours, which is not under any special ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... for the moment, but soon let it sink again in her musings, and when Bennet reminded her, replied, "I can't, Bennet, it breaks my neck." Her will was not with her mother's, in a trifling matter of which the reasonableness could not but approve itself to her. How, then, was it likely to be bent to that of her Heavenly Parent, in what is ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Penrod, this question was without meaning or reasonableness. It was within neither his power nor his desire to analyze the process by which the phrase had become offensive to him, and was now rapidly assuming the proportions of an outrage. He knew only that his gorge rose at the ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... percive [tr. note: sic] stages of progress. Similarity of plan is interpreted as proof that there is a common origin. Are we to admit, in the face of all that has been said about the fixity of species (to mention only this), the reasonableness of such an assumption? Does orderliness and plan argue for development? The steam-engine is a machine of remarkable structure. It has had, in one sense of the term, a wonderful "evolution." It is based on certain principles, ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... world is always dinning in his ears. He will first of all speak of the nature and origin of justice; secondly, of the manner in which men view justice as a necessity and not a good; and thirdly, he will prove the reasonableness ...
— The Republic • Plato
... contributing, he would be forced to own that this is not quite true; and if he were also a heroic or Christian dog, the thought would perhaps take away from death its sting. The analogy may be a crude one; but the reasonableness of the universe is at least as far above our comprehension as the purposes of man surpass the understanding of the dog. Believing, however, though as a simple act of trust, that the end will crown the ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... such an atrocity. We have but to fancy one out of the thousand statues of bronze or marble which it is proposed to erect to the memory of Sir Robert Peel in our great towns and cities, surmounted with a hat of marble or of bronze, to see, at a glance, the absurdity of the thing, and the reasonableness of the demand for a change. There is a very good bust of Chaucer, with a cap on, and there is a still more excellent bust of Lorenzo de Medici, which has also a cap; but we put the question to the most conservative of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... called a compliment to your reasonableness. You perhaps remember that I gave you a hint of it the ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... unsettled; till at length he was so balanced between the impulse to go on and the impulse to go back, that a puff of wind either way would have been well-nigh sufficient to decide for him. When he allowed John's story to repeat itself in his ears, the reasonableness and good sense of his advice seemed beyond question. When, on the other hand, he thought of his poor Matilda's eyes, and her, to him, pleasant ways, their charming arrangements to marry, and her probable willingness still, he could hardly ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... appearance, it will be heard with heightened pleasure at its reappearance after intervening contrast. A psychological principle is herein involved which cannot be proved but which is self-justified by its own reasonableness and is further exemplified by many experiences in daily life. Sweet things taste the sweeter after a contrast with something acid; we like to revisit old scenes and to return home after a vacation. No delight is keener than the renewal of some aesthetic experience ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... sense it will be using your money to do something you disapprove of.' Gerald was smiling at her as though he felt that he was bringing her round to reasonableness. 'Perhaps that's ugly.' ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... occupier of the land. If, they argue, there had been no Englishmen and Scotchmen to take large farms, the small holders would not have been swept away, and "driven like a wild goose on the mountain" to make room for them. Without for the present discussing the reasonableness of this plea, I merely record the simple fact that an English or Scotch farmer is unpopular from the beginning. Here and there such a one as Mr. Simpson may manage to live the prejudice down; but that he will have to encounter it on his ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... of good tidings, to the warring inhabitants, to tribes of uncivilised Celts, and to marauding Danes and Vikings. He had driven out the serpent-worshippers, and consecrated the Black Stone of Tara to the worship of the True God; he had convinced the High King of the truth and reasonableness of the doctrine of the Trinity by the illustration of the shamrock leaf, and had overthrown the great idols and purified the land. Therefore the fair shores and fertile vales of Erin, the clustered islets, dropped like jewels in the azure seas, the mist-covered, heather-clad hill-sides, ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... scandal, he knew far too much not to be aware that there is nothing intrinsically impossible about them. It would have been rather interesting to hear him fully on this subject. But he was too busy with expatiating on the sweet reasonableness of Jesus and "the Aberglaube of the Second Advent" to trouble himself with awkward matters of this ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... then said gently but gravely: "Do you then wish me to give the charge of my sheep blindfolded and to the first comer? Ask yourself if there is reasonableness in such a request ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... minds the "proof" of a doctrine is its reasonableness and its adaptability as an answer to existing problems. And, accordingly, to such, the many arguments advanced in favor of the doctrine, of which we have given a few in the preceding chapters, together ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... writing was taken to head-quarters and read, Julian, considering the reasonableness of the complaint, ordered that their families should go to the East with them, and allowed them the use of the public wagons for the purpose of moving them. And as it was for some time doubted which road they should take, he decided, at the ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... which we are so continually reminded as that we must not pretend to judge of the reasonableness and fitness of the Divine dispensations, and there may therefore be good cause for the San Gennaro affair, though we cannot fathom it. Still, as the generality of people of education have given it up, one wonders at the orthodox few whose belief lingers on. There ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... but she had also a very large amount of general literary cultivation, as was proved by her translation of Schlegel's "Lectures on Dramatic Literature."] again. "L'Education progressive" is an admirable book. What moderation and fairness of view, what reasonableness and dignity of manner! Everything in it is of high quality—observation, thought, and style. The reconciliation of science with the ideal, of philosophy with religion, of psychology with morals, which the book attempts, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at 'Tu, Marcellus, eris,'—or of Wives for their Husbands, as Artemisia and Laodamia, sometimes amounting to Idolatry—nay, the Love of Friend for Friend, with alle its sweet Influences and animating Transports, yet exceeding the Reasonableness of that of David for Jonathan, or of our blessed Lord for St. John and the Family of Lazarus, may procure far more Torment than Profit: even if the Attachment be reciprocal, and well grounded, and equallie matcht, which often it is not. Then interpose ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... prevented his being prematurely mixed up, by false scruples of honour, in secessions which his judgment must condemn. He treated of the question in dispute with the most delicate address,—confessed the reasonableness of Lord Vargrave's former opposition to it; but contended that it was now, if not wise, inevitable. He said nothing of the justice of the measure he proposed to adopt, but much on the expediency. He concluded by offering to Vargrave, in the most cordial and flattering terms, the very ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... had filled her mind at intervals all the way across the Atlantic, and her passionate renunciation of the stage, made that miserable day when Roland deserted her, began to lose its reasonableness and therefore its sense of obligation. After her interview with Elizabeth, the question of money to carry out such intentions was practically settled, and she had, therefore, only to arrive at a positive personal ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... an impulsive speech, and a foolish one, of course, from the standpoint of sense and logic and reasonableness; but it was one that might be expected, perhaps, ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... wondrous type of beauty too, that made all those who admired its style, fall beneath her spell, her complexion was delicate, yet with the glow of health upon it, her teeth were pearly, her eyes full of sweet reasonableness, her nose that of the classic heroines of Greece, and her willowy form such as Sir Joshua Reynolds would have delighted to paint in a portrait, that would have been one more justification of the poetical phrase, "Art is long ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... awakened sinner, convinced of his sin and misery, of his own inability to help himself, of the insufficiency of all means beside Christ, of Christ's all-sufficiency, readiness, and willingness to help, of the equity and reasonableness of the conditions on which he is offered, and life through him, is now content and fully satisfied with this way, actually renouncing all other ways whatsoever, and doth with heart and hand embrace Jesus Christ, and take him as he is offered in the gospel, ...
— Christ The Way, The Truth, and The Life • John Brown (of Wamphray)
... Athenians ask the inhabitants of Melos (the island where the "Venus of Milo" was found), hitherto neutral, to own their lordship. The envoys meet, and hold a debate which Thucydides gives in full, and which, for sweet reasonableness of form, would have satisfied Matthew Arnold. "The powerful exact what they can," said the Athenians, "and the weak grant what they must." When the Meleans say that sooner than be slaves they will appeal to the gods, the Athenians reply: "Of the gods we believe ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... which the service of truth ought to be: every "thou shalt" has been hitherto directed against us. Our objects, our practices, our quiet, prudent, mistrustful mode—all appeared to mankind as absolutely unworthy and contemptible.—In the end one might, with some reasonableness, ask one's self if it was not really an esthetic taste which kept mankind in such long blindness: they wanted a picturesque effect from truth, they wanted in like manner the knowing ones to operate strongly on their senses. Our modesty was longest against the taste of mankind.... ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... possible, urging him to append to the Reading as it then stood some fragmentary portion, at least, of the chapter descriptive of the flight, so that the remorseful horror of Sikes might be more fully realised. Of the reasonableness of this objection, however, Dickens himself was so wholly unconvinced, that, in the midst of his arguments against it, he wrote, in a tone of good-humoured indignation, "My dear fellow, believe me that no audience on earth could be held for ten minutes ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... tone of almost elaborate reasonableness, expanded his view that it was impossible for husband and wife to have two different sets of friends;—let alone every other consideration, he explained, it wasn't convenient for them not to be about together, and as for ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... happened; and if he could not get her without marrying her he would do that; the future could look after itself. It might end in disaster; he did not care. When he got hold of an idea it obsessed him, he could think of nothing else, and he had a more than common power to persuade himself of the reasonableness of what he wished to do. He found himself overthrowing all the sensible arguments which had occurred to him against marriage. Each day he found that he was more passionately devoted to her; and his unsatisfied love became ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... to work with," said Marston, who saw the reasonableness of the old fen-man's remark, for the side of the boat had gone down very low once or twice, and the effect of dragging a portion of the laden net on board might have been sufficient to admit the water. "I'll give way, ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... invasion."—Nixon's Parser, p. 123. "If I say, 'I gallopped from Islington to Holloway;' the verb is intransitive: if, 'I gallopped my horse from Islington to Holloway;' it is transitive."—Churchill's Gram., p. 238. "The reasonableness of setting a part one day in seven."—The Friend, Vol. iv, p. 240. "The promoters of paper money making reprobated this act."—Webster's Essays, p. 196. "There are five compound personal pronouns, which are derived from the five simple personal pronouns ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... in that deep, masterful tone which, like a true woman, she both loved and dreaded. "It's the height of reasonableness. Why, dear, the great primal reason of all things speaks through me. And I won't let you throw away a year of our love. Johnnie, it isn't as though we'd been neighbours, and grown up side by side. I came from the ends of the earth to find you, ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... most thoughtful romances, In the Days of the Comet. From the fact that it does not occur, may we not fairly suspect that the Invisible King is a creation of the same mythopoeic faculty which engendered the wonder-working comet with its aura of sweet-reasonableness? ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... postponed a whole week for Calesford: the utmost possible strain; and her presence was understood to represent the Countess of Fleetwood, temporarily in decorous retirement. Chillon was assured by her that the earl had expressed himself satisfied with his wife's reasonableness. 'The rest will follow.' Pleading on the earl's behalf was a vain effort, but she had her grounds for painting Lord Fleetwood's present mood to his countess in warm colours. 'Nothing short of devotion, Chillon!' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... but admit the reasonableness of these remonstrances; but where should a chamber and bed be sought? It was not likely that a new attempt to procure accommodation at the inns would succeed ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... leave. For his part he had not a moment's doubt that her good sense, relieved from the immediate pressure of her feelings, which were in themselves but too divine for the needs of this world, would convince her of the reasonableness of all he had sought to urge upon her. As soon as she was able, and judged it safe to admit a visitor, his aunt would be happy ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... systems within systems and policies within policies. It is not enough that you have set out to suppress something or to encourage something. You must follow his particular way. He is in terror of compromise and sees profligacy in sweet reasonableness. He knows the tragic failure of other movements with vacillating policies. This one must be saved at all costs. 'Twere better to smash the whole movement than proceed along undesirable lines. He would scorn victory that came through avenues not recognized by him. Certain words ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... streets, and on the sea-shore. Let me not be told that the multitude do actually receive religion on authority, or on the word of others. I reply, that a faith so received seems to me of little worth. The precious, the living, the effectual part of a poor man's faith, is that of which he sees the reasonableness and excellence; that which approves itself to his intelligence, his conscience, his heart; that which answers to deep wants in his own soul, and of which he has the witness in his own inward and outward experience. All other parts of his belief, those which he takes on blind trust, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... of the divinity because the organs bestowed on us are too small and feeble; when I refused to pronounce whether that which I can not apprehend exists or not, was that my fault, or theirs? There may be divine forces which created and govern the universe; but never talk to me of their goodness, and reasonableness, and care for human creatures! Can a reasonable being, who cares for the happiness of another, strew the place assigned to him to dwell in with snares and traps, or implant in his breast a hundred impulses ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... generous or meagre with the supplies. He may use his "authority" as a vague power far on into their adult life, if he is a forcible character. But it is at its best a shorn splendour he retains. He has ceased to be an autocrat and become a constitutional monarch; the State, sustained by the growing reasonableness of the world, intervenes more and more between him and the wife and children who were once ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... student wishes to be "shown." Herein lies the racial differences of method of imparting knowledge. And so we have recognized this fact and have heaped up proof after proof from the pages of Western Science, in order to prove to you the reasonableness, from the Western point of view, of the doctrine of Physical Unfoldment as taught for ages past by the Yogi gurus to their chelas. You have now the Eastern Teachings on the subject, together with the testimony of Western Science to the ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... of the 'Summa' was not altogether original. From the earliest days of the Church, men of genius had insisted on the reasonableness of Christian belief by showing that, though supernatural in its origin, it did not conflict with either the facts or the laws of human knowledge. And as these had found their highest expression in Greek philosophy, it was natural that this ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... well as piety, and have spent as much time in the exercise of both. The real causes of the decay of the interests of religion are set forth in a clear and lively manner, without unseasonable passions; and the whole air of the book, as to the language, the sentiments, and the reasonableness, show it was written by one whose virtue sits easy about him, and to whom vice is thoroughly contemptible. It was said by one of this company, alluding to that knowledge of the world the author seems to have, the man writes much like a gentleman, and goes to Heaven with ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... but others of his people, equally intoxicated, insisted on my remaining. I sat down a little, but seeing that the chief was still alarmed, I said to his people, "The chief objects and I can't stay:" they saw the reasonableness of this, but I could not get my cowardly attendants to come on, though one said to me, "Come, I shall show you the way: we must speak nice to them." This the wise boys think the perfection of virtue, speaking nice means adopting a childish treble tone of ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... incomprehensible affection, heavily as he burdened and exploited her; and though she took all company pretty much as it came, she had a much keener sense now than in her youth of the practical advantages of good behaviour to a woman, and of the general reasonableness of the bourgeois point of view with regard to marriage and the family. Her youth had been stormy; her middle age tended to a certain conservative philosophy of common sense, and to the development of a ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... complacency in your small dexterity: better, infinitely better, that you should be wholly uninterested in pictures, and uninformed respecting them, than that you should just know enough to detect blemishes in great works,—to give a color of reasonableness to presumption, and an appearance of acuteness to misunderstanding. Above all, I would plead for this so far as the teaching of these schools may be addressed to the junior Members of the University. Men employed in any kind of ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... a little. Looking at it more quietly and reasonably, he could see that, in her position, it would be actually unmaidenly for her to come to him by herself. It was altogether another thing for this other girl, and, therefore, perhaps it was quite proper to send her. But, in spite of whatever reasonableness there might have been in it, he chafed under this propriety. It would have been far better, he thought, if she had come and told him that she could not possibly accept him, and that nothing more must be said about it. But then he did not believe, if she had given him time to say the words ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... father's possessions should be divided into two portions, the kingdom to constitute one, and the wealth and treasures the other, and that Numitor should choose which portion he would have. This proposal seemed to have the appearance, at least, of reasonableness and impartiality; and it would have been really very reasonable, if the right to the inheritance thus disposed of, had belonged equally to the younger and to the elder son. But it did not. And thus the offer of Amulius was, in effect, a proposition ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... dear, and I want you to be happy. You will be, if only you can get the right point of view. Try! Won't you, dear?" As he finished speaking with this appeal, Hamilton leaned forward anxiously, pleadingly. Deep down in his heart he felt a glow of pride over the mildness and the reasonableness with which he had presented the case in its true light to this irrational, ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... dissatisfied with the work of RONSARD and his disciples, to find their language crude and undigested, their grammar disordered, their expression too exuberant, lacking in dignity, sobriety, and reasonableness. There was a growing disposition to exalt the claims of regularity, order, and a recognized standard. A strict censorship was exercised over an author's vocabulary, grammar, and versification. Individual freedom was brought under the curb of rule. The man who voiced especially ...
— French Lyrics • Arthur Graves Canfield
... Stephen related with a will. He believed that in doing so he established word by word the reasonableness of ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... right." Theodora tossed her book into a chair behind her. "It means exactly what I want. It isn't common sense, nor knowledge, nor reasonableness; it's just gumption and nothing else. It's what Miss Hulburt hasn't," she added, as she glanced up the street. "Here she comes, Hu. How we used to hate her, when we were in her room! Why, she's stopped papa, and he's coming back with her. Babe must ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... might have seen no indication in the wide solitude about that there would ever be here a human population or a human industry. Buford was schooled enough to be more just in his estimate, and he saw the reasonableness of what his new acquaintance had said. Unconsciously his eye wandered over to the portly form of the negress, who sat fanning herself, a little apart from the others. He smiled again with the quizzical look on his face. "How about that, Aunt Lucy?" ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... continual round of society and going out brought heavier expenses on him that he could well support. And thus, little by little, poor Geoffrey's dream of matrimonial bliss faded into thin air. But, fortunately for himself, he possessed a certain share of logic and sweet reasonableness. In time he learnt to see that the fault was not altogether with his wife, who was by no means a bad sort of woman in her degree. But her degree differed from his degree. She had married for freedom and wealth and to gain a larger scope wherein to exercise those ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... above is an abridgment—"I rasser see chalousie vissout cause, san cause vissout chalousie;" and that even while I was witness of the profound ferocity of his jealousy when roused, and more and more as time passed on, I was impressed with its sweet reasonableness. ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... the voice of instinct, that voice which I had tried to stifle, almost unconsciously, by force of habit and training.... Oh, that blatant, piercing voice! It seemed to me to rend the darkness, to scoff at my heart and my sweet reasonableness! It was as though I saw all my kindly dreams of tolerance and indulgence fly into a thousand splinters! Never had I so clearly realised their brittleness. My anger was all the greater because it was still trammelled ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... me," he said, "when they try to prove the reasonableness of hell, that unless you show sinners how they're goin' to be tormented, they'd never repent. Now, I say that if a man has to be scared into religion, his religion ain't ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... He seems to have attained a sort of optimism strangely at variance with his earlier views; to have declared that running through all these conflicts, revolutions, and evolutions there is and has been a certain national sense, a sort of collective reasonableness, which is constantly making itself felt, and being expressed in its best form by the leaders of opinion, the aristocrats of nature; that the torrent runs, as it were, between solid banks; that in the long run ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... hard conditions, Peter, but I see the reasonableness of them all, and promise—at least I promise ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the discussion of vivisection we are confronted by the plea of utility. If, to some extent, we may admit the reasonableness of the argument, yet such admission must be with certain definite reservations. The infliction of extreme pain either upon human beings or on animals for objects other than their own benefit—how far is it to be justified if some useful end is thereby ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... flattery to a man's foibles than of credit to his discretion and his judgment. But at the time when the quarrel between Great Britain and her colonies was fast becoming imbittered, the same kindliness, coupled with a calm reasonableness of temper, ruled his feelings and guided his action. Although by political creed a moderate Tory, he had none of the wrong-headedness of the party zealot; and the growing alienation between those whom he, like ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... observe the increased prudence and reasonableness of the great States; their general union, and the deference which in the hour of danger they all show to the opinion ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... dangerous. And it's all turns—I can't see a hundred yards in front.' He has a wild idea of trying to force the County Council to sand-paper the road, or of employing the new Territorial Army to remove the hill. But he dismisses that idea—he is so reasonable. He accepts all. He sits clothed in reasonableness on the machine, and accepts all. 'Ass!' you exclaim. 'Why doesn't he get down and inflate that tyre, for one thing? Anyone can see the sparking apparatus is wrong, and it's perfectly ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... the round-up, but when Rebstock made it known that the fight was over sending out Du Sang, the rage of the rustlers turned on Du Sang. Again, however, no man wanted to take up personally with Du Sang the question of the reasonableness of Whispering Smith's demand. Instead of doing so, they fell on Rebstock and demanded that if he were boss he make good ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... commonly affect the rights of foreigners, that they fall within the considerations which are relative to the public peace. The most important part of them are, by the present Confederation, submitted to federal jurisdiction. The reasonableness of the agency of the national courts in cases in which the State tribunals cannot be supposed to be impartial, speaks for itself. No man ought certainly to be a judge in his own cause, or in any cause in respect ...
— The Federalist Papers
... truths—spiritual, moral, intellectual—then, of course, the way to prove Christianity is to show the consistency of that body of truths with one another, their consistency with other truths, their derivation from admitted principles, their reasonableness, their adaptation to men's nature, the refining and elevating effects of their adoption, and so on. If we think of Christianity, on the other hand, as being first a set of historical facts which carry the doctrines, then the way to prove Christianity is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... was far behind in austerity, perchance through bodily weakness, would disparage and blame himself, attributing his failure to slothfulness of mind rather than to natural frailty. So each excelled each, and all excelled all in this sweet reasonableness. But the spirit of vain glory and pleasing of men—what place had it among them? For they had fled from the world, and were dwelling in the desert, to the end that they might show their virtues not to men, but to God, from whom also they hope to receive ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... way, is a doctrine of evolution—rationally proclaims its heaven but a higher stage of development through pain, and teaches that even in paradise the cessation of effort produces degradation. With equal reasonableness it declares that the capacity for pain in the superhuman world increases always in proportion to the capacity for pleasure. (There is little fault to be found with this teaching from a scientific standpoint,—since we know that higher evolution must involve an increase of sensitivity ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... vanishing star, a literary man turned composer, a pathological case. But, as I have said, a serious idea runs through all this concerto for slapstick and seltzer siphon, and to me, at least, that idea has a plentiful reasonableness. We are getting too much melodrama, too much vivisection, too much rebellion—and too little music. Turn from Tschaikowsky's Pathetique or from any of his wailing tone-poems to Schubert's C major, or to ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... but it is urged that I went out, after several hours' cool and calculated thought, at midnight; that I caught the murdered man unawares, drove the knife into his body, and then ran away and left it there. Now, think of this, gentlemen, and remember that my life or death depends upon the reasonableness of it, depends upon this link in the chain of circumstantial evidence. It has been urged again and again that whatever I am, I am not a fool, that I am capable of careful and connected thought, that I commenced my career in Brunford in a very small way, and that in a few years I have made it to be ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... And the reasonableness of this view grows the clearer to us the more we realise the purposive character of the evolutionary process. The unmistakeable purpose of that process is the production of the higher from the lower; all through ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... awkward they found the tete-a-tete. How they shrank from their hands touching, while he reproached her for aiding and abetting May in trying to shirk going to St. Ambrose's; and she had borne his reproaches and admitted the reasonableness of his arguments, with all the meek candour of Dora, while still making a last stand ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... for nearly a year, altogether, while they were waiting on Raymond, who had a profitable play, and was in no hurry for the recrudescence of Sellers. Howells tells how he eventually took the manuscript to Raymond, whom he found "in a mood of sweet reasonableness" at one of Osgood's luncheons. Raymond said he could not do the play then, but was sure he would like it for the coming season, and in any case would ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... at least, the reasonableness of the proposed allowance for the expenses of the banking and insurance departments of the business, we have before us the problem how to equitably adjust the burden among the great variety ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 787, January 31, 1891 • Various
... the delinquent or offending company (after it shall have been first duly cited, proceeded against by due process of law before the commission sitting as a court, and afforded opportunity to introduce evidence and to be heard, as well against the validity, justness or reasonableness of the order or requirement alleged to have been violated, as against the liability of the company for the alleged violation), such fines or other penalties as may be prescribed or authorized by this Constitution or by law. The commission may be vested with such additional powers, and ...
— Civil Government of Virginia • William F. Fox
... services rendered by this philosophy. It was a powerful factor in the negative and dissolving criticism of doctrines having nothing but tradition and class interest behind them; it accustomed men to freedom of discussion and to the notion that beliefs had to be submitted to criteria of reasonableness. It undermined the power of prejudice, superstition, and brute force, by habituating men to reliance upon argument, discussion, and persuasion. It made for clarity and order of exposition. But its influence was greater in destruction of old falsities ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... have felt the force of this remark. Their learned men have been employed in writing volumes on the subject, the principal aim of which appears to be that of impressing on the minds of the people the comparative authority of the Emperor over his subjects and of a parent over his children. The reasonableness and justice of the latter being once established, that of the former, in a patriarchal government, followed of course; and the extent of the power delegated to the one could not in justice be withheld from the other. And for the better allaying of ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... I reply? He had me on the matter of reasonableness. Besides, my head ached. And the funny thing, as I admitted it to myself, was that evolution teaches in no uncertain voice that man did run on all-fours ere he came to walk upright, that astronomy states flatly that the speed of the revolution ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... whom I have tried to talk about this matter, but I have had no success. He is very peculiar in his views and feelings. He agrees to every thing that I say, and admits the wisdom and reasonableness of it all, but he goes ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... apprehensions! He did not share them with his mother, who, with more or less misgiving, began to guess how things were for herself; he knew instinctively that Mrs. Richie's gentle, orderly mind could not possibly understand Elizabeth, still less appreciate the peculiar charm to his inherent reasonableness of her sweet, stormy, undisciplined temperament. Nannie Maitland could not understand either, and yet it was to Nannie—kind, literal little Nannie, who never understood anything abstract, that David revealed his heart. She was intensely ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... knew very well, that he was frequently charged with obstinacy. Yet an obstinate man, in the evil sense of that word, he was not. For several years it fell to my lot to discuss a multitude of questions with him, and reasonableness was one of his most striking characteristics. He was one of those very rare strong men who recognize adequately their own limitations. True, when he had finally made up his mind in a matter fully within his own province, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... [37] The reasonableness of this step is so obvious that it should scarcely need insistence. "The instruction of school-boys and school-girls is most adequately effected by an elderly doctor," Naecke remarks, "sometimes perhaps the school-doctor." "I strongly advocate," says Clouston ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... of Selenis, who would thus give her an opportunity of seeing young Aranda once more. It was agreed that I was to rejoin her in the spring of the following year, to perform the great operation which was to make her be born a man. She had not the slightest doubts as to the reasonableness of this performance. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... and reasonableness of the great main positions of Christian faith and service are constructively presented. Careful attention is also given to the practical application of Christian principles to the perplexing problems ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... attempts to convey, in an indirect manner, the reasons for his being summoned to that day's conference. However, hints and insinuations were alike thrown away upon one who had determined neither to use eye's nor ears but as interest pointed out the reasonableness of so doing; and accordingly, unable longer to repress my impatience, I exclaimed abruptly, "Pray, sir, do you know who I am?" "Yes, madam," replied he, with a profound bow, and look of the deepest humility, "you are the comtesse du ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... exhorted to perseverance in study. Amidst all the pleasures of novelty which his travels supplied, and in the dignity of his publick station, he preferred the tranquillity of private study, and the quiet of academical retirement. The reasonableness of this choice has been always disputed; and in the contrariety of human interests and dispositions, the controversy ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... her air of perfect reasonableness. "I know he isn't good-looking. Not half so good-looking as you are. But I like him. I like his slender little body and his clever, faded face. There's a quality about him, a distinction. And look at his eyes. Your mind doesn't come rushing and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... has been made, was regarded by contemporary and subsequent criticism as an imitator of Sterne in his oddly titled novel "Beytrge zur Geschichte des teutschen Reiches und teutscher Sitten,"[58] although the general tenor of his essay, in reasonableness and balance, seemed to promise a more independent, amore competent and felicitous performance. Kurz expresses this opinion, which may have been derived from criticisms in the eighteenth century journals. The Frankfurter Gelehrte ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... his depravity, his waste of life, his perversion of noble mental powers: yet in many respects he was in advance of his age. He advocated, in the House of Lords, toleration to Dissenters. He wrote a 'Short Discourse on the Reasonableness of Men's having a Religion, or Worship of God;' yet, such was his inconsistency, that in spite of these works, and of one styled a 'Demonstration of the Deity,' written a short time before his death, he assisted Lord Rochester in his atheistic ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... He said this, because recent experience had shown that if they had formed illegal associations, collected funds, and spoken to government in the language of intimidation, they would have received attention. Of the reasonableness of their complaints no man could doubt who knew their situation. Rents were paid from the capital of the farmer; and numbers of tenants had already been driven from their farms in bankruptcy and beggary. The capital of others, also, was daily ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hands or Eliza's, you know that I am safe, through the protection of an American, a most worthy man, who joins to uncommon tenderness of heart and quickness of feeling, a soundness of understanding and reasonableness of temper rarely to be met with. Having been brought up in the interior parts of America, he is a most natural, unaffected creature. I am with him now at Havre, and shall remain there till circumstances point ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... not propose to discuss the reasonableness of his or your demands, but it seems that a statement of his ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... looking up at him with a mild reasonableness in her eyes, "as I knew that he was innocent I was not going to expose him to ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... will see the reasonableness and moderation of my conditions, and remain, yours faithfully, ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... The reasonableness of the narrative of the fall is seen in view of the condition of man after he had sinned with his condition when he left the hand of the Creator. Compare Gen. 1:26 with 6:5, and Psa. 14. If the fall of man were not ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... we cannot positively imagine today what the different hypothesis could have been, for the category of trans-perceptual reality is now one of the foundations of our life. Our thoughts must still employ it if they are to possess reasonableness and truth. ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... trained and formed to have a connected view or grasp of things, it will display its powers with more or less effect according to its particular quality and capacity in the individual. In the case of most men it makes itself felt in the good sense, sobriety of thought, reasonableness, candour, self-command, and steadiness of view, which characterize it. In some it will have developed habits of business, power of influencing others, and sagacity. In others it will elicit the talent of philosophical speculation, and lead the mind forward to eminence in this ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... of Groton Duely Assembled and Taking into Consideration y'e Reasonableness of said Petition have Voted their Willingness, That the prayer of y'e Petition be Granted as per their Vote herewith humbly presented appears, with this alteration namely That they Include the River (viz't Nashua River) over w'ch ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... the neutrality which she had proclaimed and with apparent reasonableness she was able to hold that the letter of the Triple Alliance did not compel her to enter the conflict. Laughing in her sleeve she could even give it out that her sympathetic neutrality would sufficiently guarantee to her allies certain ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... precise habits sheltered themselves from a changing world, had been an arena for the jolly, exciting combats of outspread individualities. And in the second place it recalled a slight difficulty between Tom and his father. Osmond Orgreave was a most reasonable father, but no father is perfect in reasonableness, and Osmond had quite inexcusably resented that Tom on his marriage should take away all Tom's precious books. Osmond's attitude had been that Tom might in decency have left, at any rate, some of the books. It was not that Osmond had a taste for book-collecting: it was merely ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... my present purpose is explanation and illustration only, and not formal demonstration, what is about to be given will be mostly in the nature of mere statement, unaccompanied by any other evidence of its truthfulness than may be found in the self-supporting reasonableness ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... he would make Miss Boyce stay and talk to him. What harm—to her or to Raeburn? Raeburn would have chances enough before long. Why admit his monopoly before the time? She was not in love with him! As to Mrs. Grundy—absurd! What in the true reasonableness of things was to prevent human beings from conversing by night ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... uniformity, and universality, and therefore is properly a rule. It is also called a rule, to distinguish it from advice or counsel, which we are at liberty to follow or not, as we see proper; and to judge upon the reasonableness or unreasonableness of the thing advised. Whereas our obedience to the law depends not upon our approbation, but upon the maker's will. Counsel is only matter of persuasion, law is matter of injunction; ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... amiable terms with Tonson, presumably because Dryden invariably was in debt to Tonson. On one occasion Dryden asked for an advance of money, but Tonson refused upon the grounds that the poet's overdraft already exceeded the limits of reasonableness. Thereupon Dryden penned the following lines and sent them to Tonson with the message that he who wrote these lines ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... not our work with children reach out more to work with adults, to those who buy and sell and make books for the young? Is it not time for the successful teller of stories to children to use her gifts in audiences of grown people, persuading these molders of the children's future of the reasonableness of our objection to the third rate since it is the enemy of the best? May it not be politic, at least, for the librarian to descend from her disdainful height and make friends with "the trade," with bookseller and publisher who, after all, have ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... Old and New Testament are careless about dates and numbers, and do not seem to be made accurate by any special gift. I should, therefore, incline to the opinion that the historic books of the Bible have no authority except that of their reasonableness and conformity to what we might believe on other grounds. As fragments of history, coming from so remote a past, they are invaluable, when we treat them as simple, honest records of what was then ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... properly an infectious complaint, in spite of the horror in which the Cagot furniture, and the cloth woven by them, are held in some places; the disorder is hereditary, and hence (say this body of wise men, who have troubled themselves to account for the origin of Cagoterie) the reasonableness and the justice of preventing any mixed marriages, by which this terrible tendency to leprous complaints might be spread far and wide. Another authority says, that though the Cagots are fine-looking men, hard-working, and good mechanics, yet they bear in their faces, and ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... probably have gone forthwith to Selby, told him the secret, and enlisted his aid; but Mr. Baruch did not work like that. He allowed chance a week in which to show its reasonableness; and not till then, nothing having happened, did he furnish himself, one afternoon, with an excuse, in the form of a disputed customs charge, and cross the narrow landing ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... the procurator, Pontius Pilate (A.D. 26). Jesus announced himself as the Messiah, the founder of a kingdom "not of this world;" the members of which were to be brethren, having God for their Father. He taught in a tone of authority, yet with "a sweet reasonableness;" and his wonderful teaching was accompanied with marvelous works of power and mercy, as "he went about doing good." He attached to himself twelve disciples, among whom Peter, and the two brothers James ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... and fair-minded when facts were before him. The army, he wrote to Hood, is harassed to death, and he notices that it suffers from sickness far more than do the seamen. He repeats the request for more seamen, and, although he seems to doubt the reasonableness of the demand, evidently thinks that they should be furnished, if possible. Hood accordingly sent an additional detachment of three hundred, raising the number on shore to the five hundred suggested by Moore. "I had much rather," he wrote, "that a hundred ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... the passage about the atonement escaped notice for twenty years, till a notable divine, Archbishop Magee, in entire ignorance of the suppression, quoted the passage from one of the earlier editions as a strong testimony to the reasonableness of the Scriptural doctrine of the atonement from a man whose intellectual capacity and independence were above all dispute. "Such," he says, "are the reflections of a man whose powers of thinking and reasoning will surely not be pronounced inferior to those of any, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... The reasonableness of this rule is apparent the moment that its effects upon offspring are comprehended. The child inherits the joint organization of the parents. It can never be better than the sum total of the parental organizations. It may be better or worse ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... the whole environment. There may be only one avenue between the new life and the old, it may be but a small and subterranean passage, but this is sufficient to keep the old life in. So long as that remains the victim is not "dead unto sin," and therefore he cannot "live unto God." Hence the reasonableness of the words, "Whatsoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend at one point, he is guilty of all." In the natural world it only requires a single vital correspondence of the body to be out of order to insure Death. It is not necessary to have consumption, diabetes, and ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond |
