"Technicality" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... priced catalogue, scans the pages, and makes notes of the highest figures, which are as often as not misprinted by him in the organ by which he is employed. He does not say that a lot which was worth L20 went for L2, or that one which would usually fetch L2, brought L20 by reason of some mentioned technicality, because he does not know. A man who has devoted his life to the study of books and prices is aware that there are occasions when very ordinary property realises silly prices, and that there are others when the rarest ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... lot of people I knew were absolutely convinced this report was the key—the final proof. Even if all of the thousands of other UFO reports could be discarded on a technicality, this one couldn't be. These people believed that this report in itself was proof enough to officially accept the fact that UFO's were interplanetary spaceships. And when some people refused to believe even this report, the frustration ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... their fathers had paid for, and which they had tilled and improved, could belong to an absentee who had never turned a spade on it, had never seen it, all simply because he had the advantage of a legal technicality and a document emblazoned with a seal ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... making flags. After he had established a paying business on his invention, the information came to him that a New York rival was using the same invention and "cutting" his business. Bowman brought suit for infringement, but, as he informed the writer, the suit went against him on a legal technicality, and being unable to carry the case through the appellate tribunals, the destruction of his ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... the preliminary shocks to the visitor—to ring for the messenger boy of tradition and behold in his uniform a venerable gentleman with perhaps a flowing white beard. I still think Jimmie Time and Boogles were beating the law—on a technicality. Of course Jimmie was far descended into the vale of years, and even Boogles ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... two subjects that arise most frequently and that embrace the widest range of facts. A few pleasures bear discussion for their own sake, but only those which are most social or most radically human; and even these can only be discussed among their devotees. A technicality is always welcome to the expert, whether in athletics, art or law; I have heard the best kind of talk on technicalities from such rare and happy persons as both know and love their business. No human being ever ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... going to betray Ned, but she was going to betray him under the seal of confession, and entertained no thought that the priest would avail himself of any technicality in her confession to betray her. She was, nevertheless, determined that her confession should be technically perfect. She went into the confessional to confess her sins, and one of the sins she was going to confess was her culpable negligence ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... to write, and who seek inspiration elsewhere than in regularity of habits and the work-table, have their efforts marked from the first by sterility. Obscure or famous, rich or poor, an artist must be an artisan and practise these fruitful virtues—patient application, conscientious technicality, absorption in work. When he seated himself at his table Dorsenne was heart and soul in his business. He closed his door, he opened no letters nor telegrams, and he spent ten hours without taking anything but two eggs and some black coffee, as he did on this particular day, when looking ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... right to abortion should be taken quite away from legal technicality and legal controversy. Up to the viability of her child it is as much a woman's right as the removal ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... over. Save for a technicality or two, I was a free man. Alison rose quietly and prepared to go; the men stood to let her pass, save Sullivan who sat crouched in his chair, his face buried in his hands. Hotchkiss, who had been tapping the desk with his pencil, looked up abruptly ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the welfare of all classes, they will doubtless be acceptable to our readers. We are not friendly to the introduction of purely professional matters into the pages of the MIRROR, but the following extracts are so far divested of technicality as to render their utility and importance obvious ...
— The Mirror, 1828.07.05, Issue No. 321 - The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction • Various
... complex, and what we need to aim at is a character, not an excrescence. Some people's goodness is like a wart or a wen. Their virtues are cases of what medical technicality calls hypertrophy. But our goodness should be like harmonious Indian patterns, where all colours blend in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... depredation of roving robbers. At times they threatened towns on the coast, and at others they attacked ships on mid-ocean; and they seem to have followed their lawless pursuits at will. When caught, there was little delay in bringing them to trial and securing a conviction; and trivial technicality in forms played no part in reaching results. At times there were multiple executions, and in the community there was no morbid sentimentality shown for the miserable wretches. Not the least of their torture was sitting in the meeting-house on the Sunday before execution and listening ...
— Piracy off the Florida Coast and Elsewhere • Samuel A. Green
... him. The hour for the ceremony is close at hand. M'Carstrow, satisfied that rules of law are very arbitrary things in the hands of officials-that such property is difficult to get out of the meshes of legal technicality-that honour is neither marketable or pledgeable in such cases, must move quickly: he seeks the very conscientious attorneys, gets them together, pleads the necessity of the case: a convention is arranged, Graspum ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... be claimed as an anticipation of what he had done. Every conceivable phase of ingenuity that could be devised by technical experts was exercised in the attempt to show that Edison had accomplished nothing new. Everything that legal acumen could suggest—every subtle technicality of the law—all the complicated variations of phraseology that the novel nomenclature of a young art would allow—all were pressed into service and availed of by the contestors of the Edison invention in their desperate effort to defeat his claims. It ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... which we now have hundreds of yards of makeshift machine-woven goods. In any case it is a great comfort to see the actual floor; and the said floor may be, as you know, made very ornamental by either wood mosaic, or tile and marble mosaic; the latter especially is such an easy art as far as mere technicality goes, and so full of resources, that I think it is a great pity it is not used more. The contrast between its grey tones and the rich positive colour of Eastern carpet-work is so beautiful, that the two together make satisfactory decoration for ...
— Hopes and Fears for Art • William Morris
... Keith went to the courthouse. There he sat in the enclosure reserved for lawyers and listened to the proceedings, his legal mind alert and interested in the technical battles. At no time in the world's history has sheer technicality unleavened by common sense been carried further than in the early California courts. Even in the most law-ridden times elsewhere a certain check has been exercised by public opinion or the presence of business ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... career, in its way, is interesting to us. He has spent already six years in prison for manslaughter, and a year for a brutal assault upon a constable. Guiseppe was tried in his native country for a particularly fiendish murder, and escaped, owing, I believe, to some legal technicality. That, however, has nothing to do with the matter. These men have sworn to fight to the death, and the girl, I understand, is willing to return to Jim if he should be successful, or to remain with Guiseppe if he should show himself able to retain her. The fight between these men, ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... returned one of the Stewards; "the best horse won, and that's what racing's for. It would be a pity to spoil such a grand race on a technicality." ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... very real it was to this man of faith and prayer. The immortal life is the life. These earthly years but lead us thither. Such was his faith. In excess of world-wisdom we say, "Eternity is here and now." Well and good. But if we lose for a kind of technicality the dear old trust in a higher and nobler life beyond the swift-coming night of death, what have we gained? Said our beloved preacher, our "Saint of the Pacific Coast," as he lay dying, "I see a great future before me." Without that vision he would ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... thus placating the just wrath of the Father and purchasing the release of the elect. A sufficient refutation of that dogma, as to its philosophical basis, is found in its immorality, its forensic technicality. As a mode of explaining the Scriptures, it is refuted by the fact that it is nowhere plainly stated in the New Testament, but is arbitrarily constructed by forced and indirect inferences from various obscure ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... captured, Mr. Lincoln," I concluded, "And if a technicality will help him out, he was actually within his own skirmish line at the time. The Rebel skirmishers had not fallen back on each side ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of the witnesses, Hon. R. C. Badger, as placing the elections, even in Republican townships, wholly under the control of the Democrats, who thereby "have the power to count up the returns and throw out the balance for any technicality, exactly as Garcelon & Co. did in Maine." This creates much dissatisfaction, because they believe they are cheated out of their votes. The Negro values the ballot more than anything else, because he knows that it is his only means of defense and protection. A law which places all the returning ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... Walter Jerrold, in the event of his marrying Helen Stillinghast, his warehouse, then occupied by Stillinghast & Co., and whatever merchandise it contained. It was all put into legal form by the attorney—no technicality was omitted that might endanger the prompt execution of his wishes—not a letter or dot left out. Mr. Fielding ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... refused to resign itself to collective suicide merely because of the technicality ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Harry S. Truman • Harry S. Truman
... this. In due time the Ellen B. was full of square timbers. The Captain notified the owner of Blue Blazes that he might take his blankety-blanked horse out of the Ellen B.'s fore-hold. The owner declined, and entrenched himself behind a pure technicality. The Captain had hired from him the use of a horse; would the Captain kindly deliver said horse to him, the owner, on the dock? It was a spirited controversy, in which the horse-owner scored several points. But the schooner captain by no ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... adventurer, John Paul Jones, and the period is of course the American Revolution. In his literary art, likewise, Cooper has never been equaled by his imitators. Provided he could create the desired effect, he dared to let the reader remain in ignorance of the details he introduced. Enough of technicality was brought in to satisfy the professional seaman, but not so much as to distract the attention of the landsman from the main movement of the story. Contented with this the author did not seek to explain to the latter what he could not well understand without having served personally ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... Clerk, half reading, half extemporizing, and shuffling his papers to conceal certain slips of technicality; 'you are charged with trespassing in pursuit of game at Essant Hill—that you did use a wire on the estate—on land in the occupation of Johnson.'—'It's a lie!' cries a good-looking, dark-complexioned woman, ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... were set flying, a technicality that I shall not attempt to explain; she had no flying-jib, nor any of those pipe-stem spars that are got aloft only in port, to make a ship look more like the devil than she otherwise would, and are always sent down and stored away when she goes to sea. Ships, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... makes the topic interesting in spite of its obvious and irrepressible technicality. Occasionally he renders ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... plainly visible through the flimsy web of attorney logic and quibbling technicality, not very ingeniously woven to conceal them. One of these facts was, that the people of Kansas were heartily and almost unanimously averse to slavery; the other was, that the Government was trying by every means in its power to impose ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... literally and symbolically, before his "Great Mystery." When he fails in obedience either to natural law (which is supreme law), or to the simple code of his brother man, he will not excuse himself upon a technicality or lie to save his miserable body. He comes to trial and punishment, even to death, if need be, unattended, and as cheerfully as to a ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... had a great interest for Philip Hexton, and he promised himself plenty of amusement when his time of leisure came. At present it was all work—extremely hard work, for, until he could thoroughly master every technicality in the pit, he felt himself to be at a great ...
— Son Philip • George Manville Fenn
... Angel Jake," Mr. Parker proceeded confidentially. "He was sentenced to death once for shooting a policeman, but there was some technicality—he was tried in the wrong ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... House of Commons is what I may call an expressive function. It is its office to express the mind of the English people on all matters which come before it. Whether it does so well or ill I shall discuss presently. The third function of Parliament is what I may call—preserving a sort of technicality even in familiar matters for the sake of distinctness—the teaching function. A great and open council of considerable men cannot be placed in the middle of a society without altering that society. It ought to alter it for the better. It ought to teach the nation what it ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... prosecution by a compromise. Still another was compelled to flee the country for a series of forgeries, finding refuge in a South American State with which we had no treaty of extradition. Still another was indicted for frauds which wrecked a National bank, and escaped conviction by a technicality. Still another was compelled to flee from the Commonwealth by the detection of some notorious frauds. And now more recently, in 1898, another has been arrested, a fugitive from justice, and brought back to Massachusetts, having wrecked two banks ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... labor is replete with interest, inspiration, even romance. But because it has become so saturated with technicality as to become almost a popular bugaboo, let us attempt no special study, but rather cull from its voluminous records those simple facts and perspectives which will reveal to us this greatest of all story books, our old earth, as the volume of ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... invitation he outlined for her the succeeding chapters with terse military accuracy; and what she liked best and best understood was avoidance of that false modesty which condescends, turning technicality into pabulum. ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... beg his pardon, Mr. RICHARD KING—says, as quoted in the Times, "That he can only assume that Mr. RAIKES purposely availed himself of a technicality to cover a statement which was a palpable suggestio falsi," he throws something unpleasant into the teeth of RAIKES. It is as well to remember that ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... beginning, evasive; but the real idea entertained clearly shines through the thin veil drawn over to conceal it. The questions pertain to the source, or authorship, of the "laws of spiritual life;" and this would generally be understood to be God. But on a technicality the spirits refuse to answer. The question is made plainer, and the answer is that "spirits are not bondaged by persons;" that is to say that spirits have nothing to do with personalities, and that no ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... some legal technicality. I don't understand it. I've heard of it before. Some judgment has been given against him, and the money-lender has power to make him pay with the first cash he gets, or something of that kind. They've found out that he's been paying other people, ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... freed from a husband you must think yourself free—just as you must think yourself free from any other bondage. I thought myself free several years before I applied for a legal separation; so that when I did apply it was to me merely a technicality. ...
— Happiness and Marriage • Elizabeth (Jones) Towne
... discipline, inferior indeed, but only inferior, to that of the great school of Literae Humaniores, the best intellectual training in the world. When they are divided, it may be feared that law becomes a mere technicality, if not a mere bread-study, and that history is at ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... already done. this practically and set an example of simplicity. But it has the same power over its rules of proceeding" on the expulsion of the President, and there can be no reason for simplicity in the one case not equally applicable in the other. Technicality is as little consonant with the one as with the other. Each has for its object the PUBLIC SAFETY. For this a Senator is expelled; for this, also, the President is expelled. Salus Populi Suprema Lex. The proceedings in each case must be in ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... directly. I have never once turned to the right or to the left, but gone straight to the issue. I have from the outset declared my perfect readiness to meet the charges of the crown. I did not care when or where they tried me. I said I would avail of no technicality—that I would object to no juror—Catholic, Protestant, or Dissenter. All I asked—all I demanded—was to be "put upon my country," in the real, fair, and full sense and spirit of the constitution. All I asked was that the crown would keep its hand off the panel, ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... time that our Tabernacle in Brooklyn became the storm centre of a law-suit which threatened to undermine us. It was based upon a theory, a technicality of law, which declared that the subscriptions of married women were not legal subscriptions. Our attorneys were Mr. Freeman and Judge Tenney. Theirs was a battle for God and the Church. There were only two sides to the case. Those against the Church and those with the Church. In the preceding eight ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... by the court-stenographer was carefully gone over and debated. Every little technicality was examined and passed on unanimously, and after an hour's session the ...
— The Mysterious Murder of Pearl Bryan - or: the Headless Horror. • Unknown
... Carlow oil fields, urging Harkless to take shares in Mr. Watts's company while the stock was very low, two wells having been sunk without satisfactory results. H. Fisbee explained with exceeding technicality his reasons for believing that the ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... Germany, may begin to prick up its ears, and to think that this is one of the easily-read philosophies of modern times, of which Taine and Michelet have the secret. It is not so: abstractions stated with scientific precision in their elliptic slang or technicality are not and cannot be made easy reading: the strong hands of condensation which Schwegler pressed down upon the material he controlled so perfectly have not left it lighter or more digestible. The reader of this manual, for instance, will be invited to consider the Eleatic argumentation ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... so many "patriotic" German technicalities) from native roots, are free to qualify and develop a final meaning distinct from their original intention. In the growing and changing body of science this counts for much. The indigenous German technicality remains clumsy and compromised by its everyday relations, to the end of time it drags a lengthening chain of unsuitable associations. And the shade of meaning, the limited qualification, that a Frenchman or Englishman can attain with a mere twist ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... extent and novelty of Beauty, as to convey the sentiment of spiritual interference. It will be seen that, in bringing about such result, he secures all the advantages of interest or design, while relieving his work of all the harshness and technicality of Art. In the most rugged of wildernesses—in the most savage of the scenes of pure Nature—there is apparent the art of a Creator; yet is this art apparent only to reflection; in no respect has it the obvious ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... America. Upon it would have rested his reply, had he ever made a reply, to the Virginia contention that while his theory might apply to each individual State, it could not apply to the group of States. He would have treated such a reply, whether fairly or unfairly, as a legal technicality. He would have said in substance: here is a congregation to be benefited, this great mass of all the inhabitants of all the States of the Union; accident, or destiny, or what you will, has brought them together, ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... his Lordship, has been also more careful; and from the pages of both we suppose that there might be selected a round hundred of phrases which could be fairly considered as having been used by Shakespeare with a consciousness of their original technicality and of their legal purport. This is not quite in the proportion of three to each of his thirty-seven plays; and if we reckon his sonnets and poems according to their lines, (and both Mr. Rushton and Lord Campbell cite from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... "I lose on a technicality. I ought to lose. Now if I had bet you a new hat that you would want to keep on reading instead of that ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... view of a great political question is usually a contracted one, of little practical value, and unbecoming a statesman. "The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." Yet we must not mistake for technicality a careful interpretation, distinctly warranted by the terms employed, of a public instrument. Every public instrument, by which the governed delegate powers to those who govern, should ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... he protested, "don't you see? If the case ever comes into court, even if I get off, every one will know that it is through a technicality. The evidence is too strong. Half the world at least ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the very mighty heart of all legal formality and technicality—the Statutes at large—some amusing as well as instructive things might be found. Let me offer a guiding hint to the investigator ambitious of entering on this arduous field. The princely collector will, of course, put himself in possession of the magnificent edition of the Statutes issued by ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... mere technicality one class of citizens can be deprived of the rights and immunities guaranteed by the organic law of the nation, what is to prevent any other class from sharing the same fate? If less than one fourth of the male citizens ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... Technicality, however, is to be avoided as far as possible. Anthropology may need, like other new sciences, new terms for its new ideas, but the old words of plain English express all the very important elements of human nature. To the master of anthropology it is easy to take any word ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, March 1887 - Volume 1, Number 2 • Various
... impatience broke from him. "Laws! In some states, yes. In others, no. It is a mere technicality—a trifle! There is about it a bit of that which you call red tape. It amounts to nothing—to that!" He snapped his fingers. "A few months' residence in another state, perhaps. These American laws, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... he think of Joanne as Culver Rann's wife. She was his wife. It was merely a technicality of the law—a technicality that Joanne might break with her little finger—that had risen now between them and happiness. And it was this that he knew was the mountain in his path, for he was certain that Joanne would not ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... were much dissatisfied with the decision; for they believed that they had adduced evidence to support their case and did not relish losing it on a technicality. Appeal was made, therefore; but the appeal court upheld the ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... his conscience into his legal practise to a greater degree than is common with lawyers. He held (with Blackstone) that law is for the purpose of securing justice, and he would never make use of any technicality for the purpose of thwarting justice. When others maneuvered, he met them by a straightforward dealing. He never did or could take an unfair advantage. On the wrong side of a case, he was worse than useless to his client, and he knew it. He would ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... indignation swept the college that the star player should be ruled out of the big game of the year on a technicality, but Coach Brock, in issuing a brief statement, stood by his guns, declaring that discipline was necessary and the owners of the car, on further cross-examination, could not prove that anything was or had been wrong with the car. It was natural that such an ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... key words of contemporary thought, such as Liberalism, Individualism, Socialism, in the light of this broad generalisation we have made; and then we shall find it easier to explain our intention in employing as a second technicality the phrase of The Great State as an opposite to the Normal Social Life, which ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... barest chance that there might be some legitimate way out. If he challenged the Old Man on an illegal order, he just might get his ears pinned back. He'd simply have to go back to his office and try to hunt out a technicality. He nodded. ...
— Final Weapon • Everett B. Cole
... have produced only caricatures so gross as to be unrecognizable, and so obscure as to be unintelligible. Mr. Murray's little book alone may claim to be (within its limits) a complete survey of the field, simply worded, and yet not unmindful of due technicality. It is also up to date, though in dealing with so progressive a subject it is impossible to say how long it is ...
— Pragmatism • D.L. Murray
... damages to 10-cent reputations; who's as ready to shield Vice from the sword of Justice as to defend Virtue from stupid violence; who's ever for sale to the highest bidder and keeps eloquence on tap for whosoever cares to buy; who would rob the orphan of his patrimony on a technicality or brand the Virgin Mary as a bawd to shield a black-mailer—well, he cannot be put into the penitentiary, more's the pity! but it's some satisfaction to believe that, if in all the great universe of God there is a hell where fiends lie howling, ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... remember on what technicality my application was dismissed. My mother is under the impression that it was plainly refused on account of my religion, the authorities being unwilling to appropriate money for the tuition of a Jewish child. But little it matters now what the reason was; the result is what ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... about his rheumatism, to inspect the roof, and to allege that nothing was needed, gave way to my most frequent emotion in those days, a burning indignation, and took the matter into my own hands. I wrote and asked him, with a withering air of technicality, to have the roof repaired "as per agreement," and added, "if not done in one week from now we shall be obliged to take proceedings." I had not mentioned this high line of conduct to my mother at first, and so when old Pettigrew came down in a state of great agitation with my letter in ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... Officers' interpretation of the text, the Imperial Government might find itself on the horns of a dilemma. Either it must beat an undignified retreat, or it must make war upon the Transvaal for a mere technicality, a proceeding which would gain for the Republic a maximum, and for the Imperial Government a minimum of sympathy and support. Therefore, he said, "Keep the Conventions in the background. If we are to fight let it be about something that is essential to the peace ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... vast aptitude for details, he liked county business for its own sake, and understood every technicality. With little or no personal ambition, he had assisted in every political and social movement in the county for half a century, and knew the secret motives of every individual landowner. With large wealth, nothing to do, and childless, he took a liking ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... proposed withdrawal of Tammany, which seemed to them to smooth the way for the acceptance of their credentials, but the resolution came with startling suddenness. It narrowed the question of their admission to a mere technicality and cut off debate. Tilden, appreciating the ambuscade into which he had fallen, exhausted every expedient to modify the parliamentary situation, knowing it to be in the power of the convention to accept another delegation regardless of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... individuality, individuity^; particularity, peculiarity; idiocrasy &c (tendency) 176; personality, characteristic, mannerism, idiosyncrasy; specificness &c adj.^; singularity &c (unconformity) 83; reading, version, lection; state; trait; distinctive feature; technicality; differentia. particulars, details, items, counts; minutiae. I, self, I myself; myself, himself, herself, itself. V. specify, particularize, individualize, realize, specialize, designate, determine; denote, indicate, point out, select. descend to particulars, enter into ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... examples of adaptation in the English political system. A collection of rules that appear cumbrous and antiquated, and that even now are well-nigh incomprehensible when described in all their involved technicality, have been pruned away until they furnish a procedure almost as simple, direct, and appropriate as any one could devise." Government of England, I., 277-278. The procedure of the House of Commons on public bills is described in Lowell, Government ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... the money and the interest, | too." | | C. A. BOGARDUS. | | "Nothing should ever tempt | "I hope nothing ever will tempt us—nothing will ever tempt us | us to scale the debt of the to scale down the sacred debt | nation through a legal of the nation through a | technicality. Whatever may legal technicality. Whatever may | be the language of the contract be the language of the contract | the United States should the United States will discharge | discharge its obligations all its obligations in the | according to the contract." currency ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... the dust I took I had washed out with my own hands. He got that mine away from me on a technicality, Quincy, and you ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... the great cathedrals were undertaken, and the architect of Paris boldly grappled with the double aisle on a scale requiring a new scheme. Here, in spite of the most virtuous resolutions not to be technical, we must attempt a technicality, because without it, one of the most interesting eccentricities of Chartres would be lost. ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... me," and he bowed to indicate the dead man's sister. "I offered to see to the matter for her, putting up some collateral of my own until Mr. Carwell's affairs could be straightened out. It is a mere technicality, I imagine, and can have nothing to do with—with the present matter, even though Miss ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... most plausible objection to the old theory is, that it is encumbered with much useless technicality and tedious prolixity, which are avoided by the simple process of exploding the passive verb, and reducing the number of the moods to three, and of the tenses to two. It is certain, however, that if we reject the names of the perfect, pluperfect, and ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... the regular and formal jurisdiction of Prize Courts. Strike the Prize Court out of modern maritime law and the whole system falls, and capture on the sea becomes pure barbarism,—distinguished from piracy only by the astuteness of a legal technicality. The Southern Confederacy could give no guaranty. Just as it undertook to naturalize foreign seamen upon the quarter-deck of its roving cruisers, so it undertook to administer a system of maritime law which precluded the most solemn and important of its provisions— a judicial ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... overpowering eloquence of Demosthenes, but he was a master of all the wisdom of antiquity. Even civil law, the great science of the Romans, became interesting in his hands, and is divested of its dryness and technicality. He popularized history, and paid honor to all art, even to the stage. He made the Romans conversant with the philosophy of Greece, and systematized the various speculations. He may not have added to the science, but no Roman, after him, understood so well ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... property of the widow as claimed. On a technical point of law raised by the executor this finding of the jury was temporarily rendered ineffective, but, on an appeal to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, this technicality was overruled and an absolute judgment awarded in favor of the widow.[A] This was on January 23, 1903. Still not content, the executor appealed to the highest court in the State, the Court of Appeals at Albany, which, on January 26, 1904, finally and absolutely affirmed the decision of ...
— Thirteen Chapters of American History - represented by the Edward Moran series of Thirteen - Historical Marine Paintings • Theodore Sutro
... distinctions between noble and burgess, between burgess and peasant; it gave the most exalted place to lucidity, simplicity and system; but it committed its devotees to no specific improvement, and did not directly threaten any venerable or lucrative technicality. Natural law may be said to have become the common law of France, or, at all events, the admission of its dignity and claims was the one tenet which all French practitioners alike subscribed to. The language of the prae-revolutionary jurists in its eulogy is ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... higher algebra. Females who took an interest in boxing had come into Mr. Burrowes' life before—-in his younger days, when he was a famous featherweight, the first of his three wives had been accustomed to sit at the ringside during his contests and urge him in language of the severest technicality to knock opponents' blocks off—but somehow he had not supposed from her appearance and manner that Sally was one of the elect. He gaped at her, and the relieved Fillmore sidled off like a bird hopping from the compelling gaze of a snake. He was not ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... subtlest and most influential of the managers of the national machine of the opposition party, submitted several names to him. He selected Henry J. Simpson, Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio—a slow, shy, ultra-conservative man, his brain spun full in every cell with the cobwebs of legal technicality. He was, in his way, almost as satisfactory a candidate for the interests as Cromwell would have been. For, while he was honest, of what value is honesty when combined with credulity and lack of knowledge of affairs? They knew what advisers he would select, men trained ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... nation do wrong to another without paying for the damage, whatever it may be, direct or indirect,— always provided it be susceptible of estimate? Here I content myself with the remark, that, while in the settlement of international differences there is no place for technicality, there is always ...
— The Duel Between France and Germany • Charles Sumner
... Cilley and William J. Graves. The former was at the time a Representative in Congress from Maine, and the latter from Kentucky. In its main features, this duel is without a parallel. It was fought upon a pure technicality. The parties to it never exchanged an unkind word, and were in fact, almost up to the day of the fatal meeting, comparative strangers to ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... amendment was adopted by a large majority in Iowa and was promptly set aside by the supreme court upon a technicality. The wet and dry question has been a vexed political issue ever since. The state now has prohibition by statutory enactment. A constitutional amendment is pending, having passed the Legislature of 1914, and is due to ...
— Woman Suffrage By Federal Constitutional Amendment • Various
... employed by a subsidiary of the Eastern Lumber & Railway Company, had been deprived of his wages on a technicality of the law by the corporation attorneys. This man had a large family and hard circumstances were forced upon them by this misfortune. One of his little girls died from what the doctor called malnutrition—plain starvation. Smith filed suit and openly stated that the lawyers of the corporation ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... headquarters, and it will go on the permanent records of all three of this ship's crew—including my personal opinion of the decision." He looked up at Dal. "But be very careful, my young friend. Next time you may not have a technicality to back you up, and I'll be watching for the first plausible excuse to break you, and your Green Doctor friend as well. One misstep, and you're through. And I assure you that is not just an idle threat. I ...
— Star Surgeon • Alan Nourse
... helplessness, and what incapacity rule paramount in the expedition of any current business in the strictly military part of the War Department. It is worse than any imaginable red-tape and circumlocution. And all this, being considered a speciality and a technicality, is in the exclusive hands of the adjutant general, a master spirit among the West Pointers. Generally, all relating to the thus celebrated organization of the army is an exclusive work of the West Point wisdom—is handled by West Pointers; and, nevertheless, the ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... to avoid technical expressions on the one hand, and ambiguous phraseology (sometimes resulting from the attempt to avoid technicality) on the other. I have, in fact, sought to present my subjects as I should wish to have matters outside the range of my special branch of study ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... ago also it was said that one large nation would Boss the world; later that Soviets would do it. Both the Boss nation and the Soviets seem to be reconsidering the contract. The world is a perversely complicated technicality. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... having made a prolonged inspection of my shrinking back. "I guess you'll do, but you are only getting through on a technicality—there's one ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... taxation. We have prevented war in at least two instances, and thus demonstrated the possibilities of our power in preserving universal peace. For the Government to interfere with our work because of a technicality would result in an ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... I ain't tired. Mr. Hingston is real good to me; he lets me rest plenty; and he says I'll make a first rate miller. I helped to dress the burrs this morning—the millstones, you know," the boy explained, proud of the technicality. "Oh, I tell you I just like it there," he said, and he laughed out ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... the book—not alone the story but the style and choice of words—is assumed to be his. If he is a careful worker he has probably weighed every word that has gone into the phrasing. He therefore does not relish having his style meddled with, even for such a technicality as the filling out of a ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... negotiate you know, ter find out if she's married or di-vorced," he concluded quickly, as if abandoning for the moment his business manner in consideration of Rupert's inexperience. "We're to find out her standin', Roop," he began again with a more judicious blending of ease and technicality, "and her contracts, if any, and where she lives and her way o' life, and examine her books and papers ez to marriages and sich, and arbitrate with her gin'rally in conversation—you inside the house and me out on the pavement, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... my eyes and rebellion in my heart, and do you suppose that I regard my oath as other than an additional incentive to plot the downfall of the infamous tyrant and robber who hounded me into swallowing it, and who, to-day, keeps the girl I love out of her mother's property, that, on a mere technicality, was laid hold of, and thrown into chancery, by a villainous and traitorous relative, long in the secret service of the government at home, when he found the poor, young thing an orphan, and without ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... would take the studio—a technicality which she knew Stefan had entirely forgotten—and notified the hotel office that their room would ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... a trial the odds are too much in his favor. If the lawyer wants to fight the judge, he has a great deal at stake; he may awaken so strong a prejudice that the judge knowing the rules of the game better than he does, may beat him on a technicality. On the other hand it is a mistake for the lawyer to be subservient and too cringing. Being a bully, the judge is apt to take advantage of his position. The best policy is to appeal to his human ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... shares. The money received for these was subsequently used in relieving other shareholders who lost their all. When the crash came, Hamelin was arrested along with Saccard, and, after trial, was sentenced to five years' imprisonment and a fine of three thousand francs. By a technicality of law they were allowed a month to appeal, during which they were at liberty. With the connivance of Eugene Rougon, they fled the country, Hamelin going to Rome, where he secured a situation as ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... regret that in common language we have no easy, convenient words for many of these forms, and instead of being learnt easily and naturally in play, they are left undistinguished, and have to be studied later under circumstances of forbidding technicality. It would be quite easy to teach the child in an incidental way to distinguish cube, cylinder, cone, sphere (or ball), prolate spheroid (which might be called "egg"), oblate spheroid (which might be called ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... improvement, that we keep it up for the sake of these. As we are not to hear, speak, or read the language, we do not need absolutely to know the meaning of every word: we may, perhaps, dispense with much of the technicality of its grammar. The vocables and the grammar would be kept up exactly so far as to serve the other purposes, and no farther. The teacher would have in view the secondary uses alone. Supposing the language related to our own by derivation of words, and ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... proudly. "In the first place I believe—we believe—that the English are capable of keeping her in prison on a technicality merely because she is there already. They are worshippers of legal form and red tape, my husband says. And as to meddling, why is it not our duty as an earnest and Christian people to remonstrate against the continued incarceration of ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... I tell you. Nothing more. The words echoed in Gregory's mind. Slade did not understand. Mascola was to the revenue man only one of many. A man to be arrested and tried. Perhaps acquitted on a mere technicality of law or a perjured alibi. Slade did not know the Italian. Had Dickie Lang not said that Mascola laughed at the courts? Gregory's jaw set tighter as he descended the trail. To-night, orders or no orders, he would bring Mascola to justice by the ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... himself; and though he may perform admirably and win the applause of some critics who love form unduly, he fails in the great issue and wins only superficial success or fails utterly, without seeing why. The real experience has a magnetism of its own and will win above mere technicality whenever it ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... the trial of Mayor Schmitz began. It dragged through the usual delays which clever lawyers can exact by legal technicality. Judge Dunne, sitting in the auditorium of the Bush Street synagogue, between the six-tinned ceremonial candlesticks and in front of the Mosiac tablets of Hebraic law, ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... preserved silence that I might shield your memory—for I thought you dead! You do not know that I never breathed a syllable of that letter which you sent to me on the day of my trial—that I have allowed the world to believe I was saved by a legal technicality! You have not heard, perhaps, that a daughter of Judge Conway is beloved by your brother, and that her father rejects with scorn the very idea of forming an alliance with my son—the son of one whom he regards as the murderer ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... rushing from a house, Saying, "Snub up your boat I pray, [The customary canal technicality for "tie up."] Snub up your boat, snub up, alas, Snub up while ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
