"Arbitrarily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Words arbitrarily formed by a constant and settled analogy, like diminutive adjectives in ish, as greenish, bluish, adverbs in ly, as dully, openly, substantives in ness, as vileness, faultiness, were less diligently sought, and sometimes ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson
... uncertainty of their tenure, both as conquerors and aliens, and also as the nominal vassals of the Holy See. The rights of suzerainty which the Normans had yielded to the Papacy over their southern conquests, and which the Popes had arbitrarily exercised in favour of the Angevine princes, proved a constant source of peril to the rest of Italy by rendering the succession to the crown of Naples doubtful. On the extinction of the Angevine line, however, the throne ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... ungovernable. Guilty, or not guilty?" The brown eyes that had been wont to blaze so fiercely now looked pleadingly into the Woman's face, and the sable muzzle was pressed more closely against her. "They started you off all wrong, Jack. They let you become headstrong, and then tried to force you arbitrarily into their ways, instead of persuading you. If you had been a human being, all this would have been considered Temperament, but being only a dog it was Temper, and was dealt with as such." McMillan gravely extended his paw in appreciation of ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... little by little, laws were established, not arbitrarily, but laws resulting from a long experience, and during all the sixteenth century admirable music was written, though deprived of melody, properly speaking. Melody was reserved for dance music which, ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens
... and grouping of the players and chorus-singers come also within the province of the orchestral conductor; particularly for concerts. It is impossible to indicate arbitrarily the best method of grouping the performers in a theatre or concert-room; the shape and arrangement of the interior of these places necessarily influence the course to be taken in such a case. Let us add, that it depends, moreover, upon the number of performers ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... prisoners had been a Japanese trapezist and juggler. He was very old. He said, and we agreed, he was about 75 years of age. But the German authorities arbitrarily assessed his age at 54 years, and such it had to be so long as it suited their purpose. He had toured the vaudeville theatres and music halls in Germany for over 20 years, but he was rounded up, and despite all his protestations ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... not declare arbitrarily that evolution is untrue; neither will we allow scientists to decide what we shall believe. But we shall appeal to the facts, and evolution must stand or fall by the evidence. "Evolution is not to be accepted until proved." It is not yet proved ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... of the radio set into place. The set seemed to be already arbitrarily tuned. He turned it on. There was a monotonous series of flashes, with the singing note of a buzzer in them. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... say, are expressions, or voluntary significations of our Passions: but certain signes they be not; because they may be used arbitrarily, whether they that use them, have such Passions or not. The best signes of Passions present, are either in the countenance, motions of the body, actions, and ends, or aims, which we otherwise know the man ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... to Arbuthnot, now arbitrarily called the "Prologue to the Satires," is a performance consisting, as it seems, of many fragments wrought into one design, which, by this union of scattered beauties, contains more striking paragraphs ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... practice, he spoke of it thus:—"A plantation," says he, "of between seven and eight hundred acres has been governed by fixed laws and a Negro-court for about five years with great success. In this plantation no overseer or white servant is allowed to lift his hand against a Negro, nor can he arbitrarily order a punishment. Fixed laws and a court or jury of their peers keep all in order without the ill effect of sudden and intemperate passions." And in the year 1790, about a year after the last part ...
— Thoughts On The Necessity Of Improving The Condition Of The Slaves • Thomas Clarkson
... her to analyze their rights in detail until she had established the premises upon which their claims must rest. It is true she contends for their political emancipation. "I really think," she writes, "that women ought to have representatives instead of being arbitrarily governed without having any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government." And she also maintains their ability for the practice of many professions, especially of medicine. But this she says, as it ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... through this servant he loyally obeys his own natural laws. A man in building a bridge could never complain when he recognized that it was his obedience to the laws of mechanics which enabled him to build the bridge, and that he never could have arbitrarily arranged laws that would make the bridge stand. In the same way, one who has come to even a slight recognition of the laws that enable him to be naturally civilized and not barbarously so, steadily gains, not only a realization of the absolute futility of resisting the laws, but a growing respect ...
— As a Matter of Course • Annie Payson Call
... illumination from the presence of God and other spirits. Artificial divination is also of two kinds: the one argues from natural causes, as in the predictions of physicians relative to the event of diseases, from the tongue, pulse, etc. The second the consequence of experiments and observations arbitrarily instituted, and is mostly superstitious. The systems of divination reduceable under these heads are almost incalculable. Among these were the Augurs or those who drew their knowledge of futurity from the flight, and various other actions of birds; the ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... was started, not from a disrespect to those rules, but we imagin'd, if Captain C——p was restor'd to the absolute command he had before the loss of the Wager, that he would proceed again on the same principles, never on any exigency consult his officers, but act arbitrarily, according to his humour and confidence of superior knowledge; while he acts with reason, we will support his command with our lives, but some restriction is necessary for our own preservation. We think him a gentleman worthy to have a limited ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... delicate negotiations, we have probably never had his equal in diplomatic initiative, or in the thorough preparation and presentation of cases. He did not meet occasions merely but made them, not arbitrarily but for the world's good. Settling the Alaskan boundary favorably to the United States at every point save one, crumbling with the single stroke of his Pauncefote treaty that Clayton-Bulwer rock on which Evarts, Blaine, and ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... Richter says this legislation does not go far enough. If he will have patience, we may perhaps be able to satisfy him a little later—one should not be hasty or try to do everything at once! Such laws are not made arbitrarily out of theories and as the result of asking "what kind of law would it be wise to make now?" They are the gradual outgrowth of earlier events. The reason why we come to you today only with an accident-insurance law is because this branch of the care of the poor ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... eyes of imagination and faith. With all its weird unearthliness, there is hardly another book in the whole range of human literature which is marked with such unswerving veracity as the "Divine Comedy." Nothing is there set down arbitrarily, out of wanton caprice or for the sake of poetic effect, but because to Dante's imagination it had so imposingly shown itself that he could not but describe it as he saw it. In reading his cantos we forget ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... his characterization, if he interferes with his people after they are once created and attempts to coerce them to his purposes instead of allowing them to work out their own destinies. He may be untruthful in his plotting, if he devises situations arbitrarily for the sake of mere immediate effect. He may be untruthful in his dialogue, if he puts into the mouths of his people sentences that their nature does not demand that they shall speak. He may be untruthful in his comments on his characters, if the characters belie the comments ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... the manner of Sir George Grey and his coadjutors—if the esprit de corps, which is now so beneficially and beneficently exhibited, is to be suppressed, what reasonable hope remains that men who have been arbitrarily deprived of all real interest in City matters will still devote their time, their energies, and their fortunes to purposes which only remunerate them with toil, anxiety, and personal discomfort? The inevitable tendency of the proposed Bill is to reduce the entire administration ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... mistress; her glance was no longer soft and pleading, but determined. The imperious manner of the queen, instead of intimidating the pale and gentle girl, awakened her to the consciousness of her own dignity. "Majesty," she said, with cool decision, "love is not given by command, it cannot be bestowed arbitrarily." ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... upon the sense in which the word "experience" is used. The assumption need not necessarily be challenged except where, as is very often the case, an arbitrarily limited definition of experience is intended. From this general assumption flows the subjective theory of morals; from it is derived the conviction that the rationalistic values in religion are the only real, or at least ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... of some systematic design upon the territorial organization of Europe, inspire and determine the foreign policy of governments. Let one or other of these impulses prevail, and governments have disposed arbitrarily of the fate of nations. War has ever been their ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... islands naked savages, without books, education, or courts of justice. The people were slaves, governed arbitrarily by chiefs. It was a nation of debauchees, thieves and drunkards. There were no marriage laws. Two-thirds of the children born were destroyed. If an infant was ailing or troublesome, the mother scooped a hole in ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... understood as implying that the symbolical language of Scripture is identical with the hieroglyphics of ancient monuments. There may be different kinds of symbolic representations; but they are not arbitrary, as is spoken language, and can not be arbitrarily applied; a fixed law ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... Patrol Service identified themselves by means of invisible rays flashed in certain sequences, from the two nose, or forward, projectors. These code signals were changed every enar, a period of time arbitrarily set by the Council; about eighteen days, as time is measured on the Earth, and divided into ten periods, as at present, known as enarens. These were further divided into enaros, thus giving us a time-reckoning system for use in space, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... the United States to protect citizens in the several States against higher or different qualifications for electors for representatives in Congress than for members of the Assembly, then it must be equally imperative for the national government to interfere with the States, and forbid them from arbitrarily cutting off the right of one-half the people to become electors ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... flash of memory. Not too many months before not the Prelim psycho, but the big machine at the Assignment Center had decided his own future arbitrarily, fitting him into the crew of the Solar Queen as the ship where his abilities, knowledge and potentialities could best work to the good of the Service. At the time he had resented, had even been slightly ashamed ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... statutes enacted in pursuance of its provisions, I shall endeavor carefully to carry them into effect. The declaration of the party now restored to power has been in the past that of "opposition to all combinations of capital organized in trusts, or otherwise, to control arbitrarily the condition of trade among our citizens," and it has supported "such legislation as will prevent the execution of all schemes to oppress the people by undue charges on their supplies, or by unjust rates for the transportation of their products to the market." This purpose will be steadily ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... turn will divide and ruin them; for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... the forest. Chacao was formerly the principal port in the island; but many vessels having been lost, owing to the dangerous currents and rocks in the straits, the Spanish government burnt the church, and thus arbitrarily compelled the greater number of inhabitants to migrate to S. Carlos. We had not long bivouacked, before the barefooted son of the governor came down to reconnoitre us. Seeing the English flag hoisted ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... eagerly exert all our strength in working at it; although we knew that as soon as the game is over, the object will exist for us no longer, and that, on the whole, we cannot say what it is that makes it so attractive. Nay, it seems to be an object as arbitrarily adopted as that of checkmating our opponent's king; and, nevertheless, we are always intent on the means of attaining it, and think and brood over nothing else. It is clear that the reason of it is that our intellect is only capable of looking outside, and ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... history of all absolute kingdoms will inform us; and since, as Aristotle observes, [Greek: hae oikonomikae monarchia], the government of a family is naturally monarchical, it is, like other monarchies, too often arbitrarily administered. The regal and parental tyrant differ only in the extent of their dominions, and the number of their slaves. The same passions cause the same miseries; except that seldom any prince, however despotick, has so ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... was born at Venice about 1278, and was elected doge in 1354. For many years the government of the republic, under an oligarchy, had been arbitrarily dominated by the Council of Ten, an assembly that, after serving a special purpose for which it was created, was declared permanent in 1325 and became a formidable tribunal. Professing to guard the republic the Ten in fact destroyed its liberties, disposed of its finances, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... quiet. It cannot be supposed that they should intend, had they a power so to do, to give to any one, or more, an absolute arbitrary power over their persons and estates, and put a force into the magistrate's hand to execute his unlimited will arbitrarily upon them. This were to put themselves into a worse condition than the state of nature, wherein they had a liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others, and were upon equal terms of force to maintain it, whether invaded by a single man, or many in combination. ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... fit the register of the line has always been a source of trouble. In the days of the manuscript makers devices such as crowding letters, reducing their size, or omitting them altogether were freely used and words were arbitrarily divided when the scribes so desired. During the greater part of the time every scribe divided as he pleased, often in ways which seem very strange to us, like the Greek custom of dividing always ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton
... arbitrarily called the Prologue to the Satires, is a performance consisting, as it seems, of many fragments wrought into one design, which, by this union of scattered beauties, contains more striking paragraphs than could, probably, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... given by Protestants is satisfactory; but it is deduced from a diligent comparison of the words in question with forms of expression used in Scripture, and especially by Christ upon other occasions. No writer would arbitrarily and unnecessarily have thus cast in his reader's way a difficulty which, to say the least, it required research and erudition ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... it will be seen that I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluctuating forms. The term variety, again, in comparison with mere individual ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... involving an amount of more than $6,000,000, were distributed with a view to influence votes in the House of Representatives upon the Lecompton Bill. Some of the lesser ones, such as those for furnishing mules, dragoon horses, and forage, were granted arbitrarily to relatives or friends of members who were wavering upon ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... builded thereon. Now with disconcerting finality he realised the thing he was doing. It was not a mere agent of divine punishment he was calling to action; but a fellow human being, an equal, with whose affairs he was arbitrarily meddling. Whatever the motive that had inspired his coming, however justifiable in itself, his interference, as a mere spectator, was under the circumstances unjustified and an impertinence. This he realised ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... forms a new point of departure for the work of the Creative Spirit; and in proportion as we see this more and more clearly, the more we shall find ourselves entering into a new order of life in which we become less and less subject to the old limitations. This is not a reward arbitrarily bestowed upon us for holding dogmatically to certain mere verbal statements, but it is the natural result of understanding the supreme law of our own being. On its own plane it is as purely scientific as the law of chemical reaction; only here we are not dealing with the interaction of secondary ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... large income," she said, after a moment's silence, changing the subject arbitrarily, and thereby reducing her companion to a temporary state of ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... his afternoon's decision, he said to himself, not only "Ought I to let her go?" but "Shall I let her go?" And the influence of the latter question in his mind caused him unconsciously to grasp her hand arbitrarily, as if he meant to detain her. Instantly there came into her eyes the look he had seen in them when in the sanctuary of Edfou she had stood face to face with him—a look ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... are spoken of as specially human, ανθρωπινα {anthrôpina}); as compared with 'the other animals', he is kindly and capable of civilization. The Latin word humanus took over this double meaning, which is somewhat arbitrarily marked in English by the spellings human and humane. Now it is clear that, for a being subject to error and death, wisdom (σοφια {sophia}) in the full sense is impossible; that is for God alone. On the other hand, man cannot be content, like 'the ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... not be inferred that the above classification is made arbitrarily. There are many arguments which may be advanced limiting the eugenic applicability of certain of these diseased conditions. These, however, do not directly come within the province of the mother. They may be safely left to special state regulation. We simply make the assertion that no mother would ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... foreign trade, except that to France, was brought into the hands of a few rapacious engrossers, and all prospect of future improvement in commerce was forever sacrificed to a little temporary advantage of the sovereign. These companies, though arbitrarily erected, had carried their privileges so far, that almost all the commerce of England was centred in London; and it appears that the customs of that port amounted to one hundred and ten thousand pounds a year, while those of all the kingdom beside ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... interjected new elements into the controversy in assailing as unlawful the jurisdiction of British prize courts over neutral vessels seized or detained. Briefly, Great Britain arbitrarily extended her domestic law, through the promulgation of Orders in Council, to the high seas, which the American Government contended were subject solely to international law. So these Orders in Council, under which the British naval authorities acted in ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... amazing contempt for or indifference to the material demands of life, and on the other possessed a certain artless selfishness which gave him courage, whenever he wished to promote objects undoubtedly pure and noble, to deal arbitrarily with other lives, even where it could hardly redound to their advantage. I shall have more ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... than nouns should be treated as a compound, generally solid, when arbitrarily associated ...
— Compound Words - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #36 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... the elaborate preparations being made to cover the great event, of the special writers, experts, broadcasters, cameramen, I was thankful indeed I was no longer a newspaperman, arbitrarily to be ordered aloft or sent aboard some erratic craft offshore on the bare chance I might catch a comprehensive or distinctive enough glance of the action to repay an editor for my discomfort. Instead, I sat contentedly ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... haven't anything at all to do with it," he pronounced emphatically. It was a direct charge. I distinctly felt called upon to refute it. But while I was striving to collect my thoughts he went on, somewhat arbitrarily, I thought: "You don't think we're all blind, do you, Mr. Smart?" "We?" I murmured, a curious ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Thomas's peculiar mysticism. The external world was not to him the embodiment of invariable forces, and therefore capable of revealing a general law in a special instance; but rather a system of symbols, signatures of the Plastic Nature, to which mysterious truths were arbitrarily annexed. A Pythagorean doctrine of numbers was therefore congenial to his mind. He ransacks heaven and earth, he turns over all his stores of botanical knowledge, he searches all sacred and profane literature to discover anything that is ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... some things are arbitrarily fixed by law or custom, such as stamps, professional fees, ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... have been had no bearing whatsoever upon the efficiency of those same fingers. Washing not only took time from other important pursuits, but also was mildly unpleasant. Nevertheless, my mother was not even open to reasonable argument on the matter. Arbitrarily, with the despotism of an early Roman Emperor, she rendered a dictum to the effect that I must wash, and soapy and submissive I had to be before I could come to the table. Again, any reasonable child can tell you that pleasure is the main object of eating; therefore, in all logic, ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... dalliance with us fleeting individual creatures, fit it to cope with that which in mankind is permanent and universal. It can through the symbol give us incomparably the type. Wise is that sculptor who, when portray an individual he must, treats arbitrarily the mere actual husk, and strives but to show the soul. Of course, he must first catch that soul. What M. Rodin knew about the character and career of Mr. George Wyndham, or about the character and career of Mr. Bernard Shaw, was not, I hazard, worth knowing; ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... Life. In its large sense, its real sense, it is a matter of inter-relation between individuals and groups, covering all emotions, all processes, all experiences. Out of this vast field of human life fiction arbitrarily selects one emotion, one process, one experience, as ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... proportion of the population, or played any larger part in American society, as I have defined it, than the differences between the marriage laws of England and Scotland do in our own island. M. Bourget, quite arbitrarily and (I think) with a trace of the proverbial Gallic way of looking at the relations of the sexes, has attributed the admitted moral purity of the atmosphere of American society to the coldness of the American temperament and the sera juvenum Venus. It seems to me, however, that ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... The assessment is spread over an area extending back from one to six miles from the improved road. The assessment area is generally divided into about four zones parallel to the road. The zone next the road is assessed at a rate arbitrarily determined as a fair measure of the benefit, and each succeeding zone is assessed at a somewhat lower rate. Generally about three-fourths of the total assessment is placed on the half of the assessment area ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... members of the Hansa bureaus had the streets barricaded by powerful fellows who permitted no one to interfere with the valuable privilege of priority conceded to the Hanses in the matter of barter. Naturally enough the purchasing price of goods was arbitrarily set by the latter under these conditions, while the fixing of the selling price, in the absence of all competition, was ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... correspondence is in general continuous; that is, by taking two elements of one form sufficiently close to each other, the two corresponding elements in the other form may be made to approach each other arbitrarily close. In the case of point-rows this continuity is subject to exception in the neighborhood of ...
— An Elementary Course in Synthetic Projective Geometry • Lehmer, Derrick Norman
... other proof. Frequently a proposition is presented in abstract terms as a proof of the same in concrete, as, in Moliere's parody, 'L'opium endormit parcequ'il a une vertu soporifique.' So, some qualities of a thing selected arbitrarily are termed its nature or essence, and then reasoned from as though not able to be counteracted by any of the rest. 'Question-begging appellatives,' particularly, are cases of Petitio Principii, e.g. the styling any reform an innovation, which it really ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing
... property," Congress, by abolishing slavery, would say "private property shall not be taken; and those who have been robbed of it already, shall be kept out of it no longer; and since every man's right to his own body is paramount, he shall be protected in it." True, Congress may not arbitrarily take property, as property, from one man and give it to another—and in the abolition of slavery no such thing is done. A legislative act changes the condition of the slave—makes him his own proprietor instead of the property of another. It determines a question of original right ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... made to the success of industry by these several factors and what their relative rewards should be are debatable questions. But however views may differ on these questions it is clear that the common interest cannot be advanced by the effort of any one party to dominate the other, to dictate arbitrarily the terms on which alone it will cooperate, to threaten to withdraw if any attempt is made to thwart the enforcement of its will. Such a position is as un-American as it ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... position—in short, the duties of a girl in her position?" Mrs. Wilson's come-down at this point was an example of a solemn warning to the elocutionist who breaks out of bounds. She was obliged to fall back arbitrarily on her key-note in the middle of the performance. "Have I said this to you, Mr. Wilson, ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... not shutting the door. Nothing, therefore, could be more clearly demonstrated than that the Scotch are strongly justified in leaving the door open when they quit an apartment. Doubts, indeed, may be entertained as to the values arbitrarily put on the respective items in the account: but to venture into this remote part of the inquiry would be to plunge us into the depths of metaphysics. Even supposing we were to make the matter as clear as the sun at noonday, there would still be sceptics. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... he used his Veto for the first time have never yet been correctly stated. A well meant but unskilful attempt had been made to complete a reform which the Bill of Rights had left imperfect. That great law had deprived the Crown of the power of arbitrarily removing the judges, but had not made them entirely independent. They were remunerated partly by fees and partly by salaries. Over the fees the King had no control; but the salaries he had full power to reduce or to withhold. That William had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of Erastianism, respecting the present administration, which the Presbytery testify against, is the king and parliament their arbitrarily imposing several of their acts and statutes upon ministers and preachers, under ecclesiastical pains and censures; while this Revolution Church, by their silent submission and compliance therewith, have, at least, interpretatively ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... type, nor does the genius. There is no line of demarcation between either of these extremes and the so-called "normal" child. The number of mentally defective individuals in a population will depend upon the standard arbitrarily set up as to what constitutes mental deficiency. Similarly for genius. It is exactly as we should undertake to classify all people into the three groups: abnormally tall, normally tall, ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... could be certain that punishment for her own petty errors might not be wreaked upon her innocent child? For the faith of the day did not demand that the sinner receive upon himself the recompense for his deeds; the mighty Ruler above could and would arbitrarily choose as the victim the offspring of an erring parent. Says Winthrop in the History of ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... of Asia also stood very greatly in need of some assistance on account of earthquakes, and he therefore paid into the public treasury from his own resources their annual tribute and assigned them a governor for two years chosen by lot and not arbitrarily selected. ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... are not arbitrarily severed, but grow out of each other, we must briefly notice the mental conditions of the period in Germany which preceded the rise of rationalism; next indicate the new forces, the introduction of which was the means of generating ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... that, despairing to maintain it by reason, he seeks to uphold it by passion; that not being able to convince by fair means, he would bear down by noise and clamour: that not skilling to get his suit quietly, he would extort it by force, obtruding his conceits violently as an enemy, or imposing them arbitrarily as a tyrant. Thus doth he really disparage and slur his cause, however good and defensible ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... for a special and costly determination of the longitude of a point which can be fixed arbitrarily, provided this be done within certain limits, as for instance by satisfying the conditions of passing through a strait or an island. We may be content with fixing the position of the point adopted in an approximate manner. The position thus obtained would be connected with certain ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... criticize and compare moral judgments, to arrange existing codes in a certain order as lower and higher, to frame some notion of what constitutes progress. He may hold before himself, in outline, at least, an ideal of conduct, and not one taken up arbitrarily but based upon the phenomena of the moral consciousness as he has observed them. And in the light of this ideal he may judge of conduct; his appeal is ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... books for children" the great Karl Heinzen is indebted for his recipe for the "humanizing of society," just as he is indebted for the latter pompous phrase not to the philosopher and Pomeranian Ruge, but rather to a "Peruvian" grown grey in wisdom. And Mr Engels calls all this arbitrarily-contrived, ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... deny the force of these objections. In 1841 Lower Canada had been compelled to join a union in which the voting power of Upper Canada was arbitrarily increased. If this was due to distrust, to fear of "French domination," French-Canadians could not be blamed for showing an equal distrust of English domination, and for refusing to give up the barrier which, as they believed, protected their peculiar institutions. Ultimately the solution was found ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... regarding the origin of the rainbow, supposed to have been dictated immediately by the Holy Spirit; and, according to that, the "bow in the cloud" was not the result of natural laws, but a "sign" arbitrarily placed in the heavens for the simple purpose of assuring mankind that there was not ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... garment and the linen embroidery with the priestly office and the furniture of the tabernacle, and consider how the rush has been to all time the first natural carpet thrown under the human foot. Then next observe the three virtues definitely set forth by the three families of plants—not arbitrarily or fancifully associated with them, but in all the three cases marked for us by Scriptural words: 1st. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity; in the grass for food and beauty—"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... to the law of the holy Olaf? or have you gone to work more arbitrarily in this than is written down in ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... officers,—after property had lost its weight and consideration, along with its security,—after voluntary clubs and associations of factious and unprincipled men were substituted in the place of all the legal corporations of the kingdom arbitrarily dissolved,—after freedom had been banished from those popular meetings[25] whose sole recommendation is freedom,—after it had come to that pass that no dissent dared to appear in any of them, but at the certain price of life,—after ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... our knowledge extends, the more difficult do we find it to assign its exact limits to any genus. Gaps in our collections are being continually filled up, to the effacement of our dividing lines of demarcation. We are thus compelled to settle the limits of species and variety arbitrarily, and in a manner about which there will be constant disagreement. Naturalists are daily classifying new species which blend into one another so insensibly that there can hardly be found words to express the minute differences between them. The gaps ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... master has wronged him intolerably, he can take sanctuary at the Temple of Theseus, and claim the privilege of being sold to some new owner. A slave, too, has still another grievance which may be no less galling because it is sentimental. His name (given him arbitrarily perhaps by his master) is of a peculiar category, which at once brands him as a bondsman: Geta, Manes, Dromon, Sosias, Xanthias, Pyrrhias,—such names would be repudiated as an ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... acquainted with life, and knew that Eros never mingles more arbitrarily in the intercourse of a young couple than when, after a long separation, there ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... world! I do not know how to put it up." But God answered: "Go, get busy with its setting-up, and while thou art busy at it, it will rise of its own accord." And so it came to pass. Hardly had Moses put his hand upon the Tabernacle, when it stood erect, and the rumors among the people that Moses had arbitrarily put up the Tabernacle without the command of God ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... the four corners of the earth as nothing else could. From a theoretical, it is but an extension of the principle I tried to show you. Eating, drinking, every act of life is holy, is sanctified by some relation to heaven. We will not arbitrarily divorce some portions of life from religion, and say these are of the world, the flesh, or the devil, any more than we will save up our religion for Sundays. There is no devil, no original sin, no need of salvation from it, no need of a mediator. Every Jew is ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... designed the facade of a palace that the Pope had a mind to build in Rome, a thing new and original to those who have seen it—not bound to any laws, ancient or modern, as in many other works of his in Florence and in Rome—proving that architecture has not been so arbitrarily handled in the past that there is not room for fresh invention ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... could tolerate no deviation from them. Deeply did he regret any association that might tend to weaken the respect for such principles with which he had sought to inspire the mind of his daughter. In them he knew lay the power that was to protect her in the world. But he could not interfere, arbitrarily, with his wife; that he would have considered more dangerous than to let her act in freedom. But he felt concerned for the consequence, and frequently urged her not to be too intimate with ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... sceptre which shall not depart from Judah, the lawgiver is mentioned, for whom many would, quite arbitrarily, substitute the commander's staff. Is. xxxiii. 22 is explanatory of this passage; "For the Lord our Judge, the [Pg 68] Lord our Lawgiver, the Lord our King, He will save us"—where the lawgiver is put ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... winter continued to close down, and they were held back by numerous and unavoidable delays. At Windy Arm, Stine arbitrarily dispossessed Kit of the steering-sweep and within the hour wrecked the boat on a wave-beaten lee shore. Two days were lost here in making repairs, and the morning of the fresh start, as they came down ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... of any size, folded in two equal parts, makes two leaves of folio size; folded evenly once more, four leaves of quarto size. But book-publishers use these words arbitrarily. With them a sheet about 19 by 24 inches is supposed to be the proper size, unless otherwise specified. A folio leaf is, consequently, about 12 by 19 inches; a quarto leaf, about 9 by 12 inches: an octavo leaf, about ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... course, there was another and a brighter side to the picture. There were men of high intellect and courage who had not hesitated to state their views and plead for truth and justice, men who, when in office, had been arbitrarily suspended and removed. There were many who had risked their futures, many too who, after years of labour, were well entitled to rest and retirement, yet had come forward with all the ardour of youth to do battle for great principles and ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... obscured and which academicians have depreciated." France, he said, has something better, and he declared in conclusion, "The needs of the people will no longer be spied upon in order that the commercial classes may arbitrarily take advantage." [49] ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... like me, at which good people hold up their hands in horror. Faugh!—I tell you I'm sick of such cowardly cant. A pretty example the Almighty's set me of justice and mercy! Handsome encouragement He has given me to be virtuous and sober! Much I have for which to praise His holy name! Arbitrarily, without excuse, or faintest show of antecedent reason, He has elected to curse. And the curse will cling forever and ever, till they lay me in a coffin nearly half as short again as that of any other man, and leave the hideousness of my deformity to be obliterated and purged ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... chartered companies did not have to resort to the adroit, disingenuous, subterranean methods which the English land magnates used in perpetuating their seizure, as so graphically described by S. W. Thackery in his work, "The Land and the Community". The land in New England was taken over boldly and arbitrarily by the directors of the Plymouth Company, the most powerful of all the companies which exploited New England. The handful of men who participated in this division, sustained with a high hand their claims and pretensions, and augmented ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... harmonically justified, as much as possible. Instead of accenting a composition in accordance with sense and rhythm, he exaggerated and prolonged the notes and intervals that were pleasing to his ear; he did not even hesitate to repeat them arbitrarily, when an expression of ecstasy frequently passed over his face. Since he disposed of the dissonances as rapidly as possible and played the passages that were too difficult for him in a tempo that was too slow compared with the rest of the piece, his conscientiousness not permitting him ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... with as much sang-froid as a miller substitutes steam for water-power forgets that society is not a machine; that it was not made to order like a newspaper editorial, and that to attempt by a radical process to make it other than what it is—to change its genius arbitrarily—were as fatuous as trying to transform a wolf into a watchdog by a chemical process or surgical operation. But while the radical "reformer"—the man who would ignore the lessons of history and launch boldly out upon the ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... Gallic liveliness had enabled her to keep the secret close from the girls as well as from Hans, any betrayal to them being likely to reach Mirah in some way that would raise an agitating suspicion, and spoil the important opening of that work which was to secure her independence, as we rather arbitrarily call one of the more arduous and dignified forms of our dependence. And both Mrs. Meyrick and Deronda had more reasons than they could have expressed for desiring that Mirah should be able to maintain herself. Perhaps "the little mother" was rather helped in her secrecy by some ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... were nearest at hand. The attempt of some historians of a philosophical turn of mind to fit each race into a category and to give each race a sharply defined sphere of influence has been carried too far, and has discredited the effort to interpret arbitrarily the genius of the different races and to assign arbitrarily their functions. It remains true, however, that, in a broad sense, each race has had a peculiar quality of mind and spirit which may be called its genius, and ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... are impressed with the fact that most disagreements between people—whether between adults or between children, or between children and adults—are due to misunderstandings. As soon as parents resolve not to treat their children arbitrarily,— that is, on the basis of their superior strength and authority,—they adopt a plan of "reasoning" with them. This plan might work very well, if the parents only understood the children's way of reasoning, if they but ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... a stern word, by which Moses characterizes it as a great sin that they arbitrarily married two wives or more, exchanged them, or snatched them from others, after the manner of Herod, who possessed himself of his brother's wife. It is this unbridled reign of evil lust that Moses ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... short year later, when some of those same boys learned, to their great disgust and rage, that the Confederate Congress had passed a sweeping conscription law, and that their one year's enlistment had been arbitrarily lengthened to three. Then they began to see ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... life we know three; two have already been passed through by humanity, and the third is that we are passing through now in Christianity. These philosophies of life are three in number, and only three, not because we have arbitrarily brought the various theories of life together under these three heads, but because all men's actions are always based on one of these three views of life—because we cannot view life otherwise than in ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... he merely telegraphs the word 'Hamlet.' If he wishes to say 'Bills of lading go forward by this mail, Invoices will follow,' he has only to telegraph 'Heretic.' For the most part, the compilers of these codes seem to have used the words arbitrarily, for the word 'Ellwood' has no visible connection with the words 'Blue Velvet,' which it represents; neither is there connection between 'Doves' and 'French Brandy,' nor between 'Collapse' and 'Scotch Coals,' though there does seem to have been a gleam of significance when they ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... Requisitions could be made to meet the needs of the moment, and these needs were naturally interpreted to suit the cravings and the tastes of the governor of the moment.[120] Cato not only cut down the expenses that had been arbitrarily imposed on the unhappy natives of Sardinia,[121] but seems to have been the author of a definite law which fixed a limit to such requisitions in the future.[122] But it was easier to frame an ordinance than to guarantee its observation, ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... eyes. Within an hour the cottage itself would meet the same fate, and the people were already rushing in and out. Or pass to another aspect of nature. For a season every year the unveiled Indian sun in a sky of polished steel glares with cruel pitiless eye. The light is fierce. Then, arbitrarily, as it seems, the rains may be withheld, and the hard-baked, heat-cracked soil never softens to admit the ploughshare, and hundreds of thousands of the cultivators and field hands are overtaken by famine. At one time during the famine of 1899-1900, it will be remembered that six ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... clearly an untenable proposition that political action should depend on indefinite possibilities. A completely vague factor would be thus arbitrarily introduced into politics, which have already many unknown quantities to reckon with; they would thus be made more or less dependent ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... of a popular character. But it was necessary that he should possess a Senate merely to vote men; a mute Legislative Body to vote money; that there should be no opposition in the one and no criticism in the other; no control over him of any description; the power of arbitrarily doing whatever he pleased; an enslaved press;—this was what Napoleon wished, and this he obtained. But the month of March 1814 resolved the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... of this situation, will perceive that there is good ground to calculate upon a regular and peaceable execution of the laws of the Union, if its powers are administered with a common share of prudence. If we will arbitrarily suppose the contrary, we may deduce any inferences we please from the supposition; for it is certainly possible, by an injudicious exercise of the authorities of the best government that ever was, or ever can be instituted, to provoke and precipitate the people into ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison |
