"Expediency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hopeless conflict with the fundamental doctrines of American liberty and democracy. On the contrary, he implied that a religious test was far from being of necessity an evil. He laid down the sound doctrine that qualifications for office were purely matters of expediency, and then argued that it was wise to remove the religious test because, while its principle would be practically enforced by a Christian community, it was offensive to some persons to have it engrafted on the Constitution. The speech in which he set forth these views was an able and convincing ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... three days, Lord Vargrave was employed in examining the general outlines of the estate; and the result of this survey satisfied him as to the expediency of the purchase. On the third day, he was several miles from the house when a heavy rain came on. Lord Vargrave was constitutionally hardy, and not having been much exposed to visitations of the weather of late years, was not practically aware that when a man is ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VII • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... He was at this age, rich, frivolous, spendthrift; in short, a petted nobleman of the greatest monarch in Christendom. He had evident gifts; was generous to lavishness; mortgaged his estate to gratify his luxurious tastes; was given to political expediency, caring less for conviction than popularity with his sovereign; wearing his religion, if he may be said to have possessed any, as lightly as a lady's favor; lacking in reverence, he was flippant rather than irreligious, but a youth of fashion, pleasure, and luxury. Charles V, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... provisions in a basket slung upon his back. As he grew older, he was taught to sow and reap, to estimate the value of a standing crop at a glance, and, last but not least, to drive a hard bargain. For a long time the Duke debated the expediency of permitting his son to be taught to read or write; and if he did so at last, it was owing to some severe remarks by the parish priest upon the day on which Norbert took the ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... He was in some alarm about his passenger, whose luggage remained on shipboard, but of whom nothing had been heard or seen since the moment of his departure from the Consulate. We conferred together, the captain and I, about the expediency of setting the police on the traces (if any were to be found) of our vanished friend; but it struck me that the good captain was singularly reticent, and that there was something a little mysterious in a few points that he hinted ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... danger of an attack from Indians. Two of the party wished to go back; but the leader drew his revolver and threatened to shoot the first man who tried to seek safety. "We must hang together or hang separately." Logically, each man had the right to secede, and go off on his own account, but expediency made a law and we declared that any man who tried to leave did so ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... modifications, whispered the means by which he flattered himself that it might yet be averted. Miriam listened to him in silence, nor could he, with all his consummate art, succeed in extracting from her the slightest indication of her own opinion as to their expediency. They parted, Honain as sanguine ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... manufacturer, admitted it was all right in theory, but it wouldn't do as a practical measure. That finished me. I'm a woman, you know, and when a thing appears right in theory, I believe it'll be right in practice. Expediency don't count with me, you see. But tell me, do you still ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... fire, protested against the surrender of the sovereignty of America, "the dismemberment of this ancient and most glorious monarchy". He urged that England should refuse to bow before the house of Bourbon; "if we fall let us fall like men". Richmond answered him by dwelling on the expediency of acknowledging American independence; otherwise, said he, "instead of Great Britain and America against France and Spain, as in the last war, it will now be France, Spain, and America against Great Britain". Chatham rose to reply and fell back in a fit. He died on May 11. Parliament voted ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... memorandum on the Catholic question to the Secretary of State in England, which was intended to be laid before the Cabinet, and which maintained the impossibility of safely satisfying the Catholic claims, and the expediency of the Prince Regent's taking a decided part against them. A general election had taken place in September, and it is evident from the letters of Lord Liverpool and Peel that they at this time looked upon Canning and his followers with even more ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... development came step by step and grew out of real worships. It was quite different from the wholesale adoption of a body of non-national, poetical gods: yet even this development was too artificial, too much stamped with the marks of expediency and courtesy and compromise. It could not live. The personalities of such gods vanish away; their prayers become prayers to 'all gods and goddesses of the City'—theois kai theesi pasi kai pasesi; those who remain, chiefly Athena and Theseus, ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... your lesson well, my lord, and ye will do your part in this day of expediency when men are more concerned about their safety and that of their children than that of the kirk of God and the cause of righteousness. I make sure that there will be much fair talk between you and your guests, but I cannot breathe this air, and so you will excuse me from your ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... me almost impossible, Weighing the language of the noble lord, To catch its counsel,—whether peace of war. [Hear, hear.] If I translate his words to signify The high expediency of watch and ward, That we may not be taken unawares, I own concurrence; but if he propose Too plunge this realm into a sea of blood To reinstate the Bourbon line in France, I should but poorly do my duty here Did I not lift my voice protestingly ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... reality of thought to lie deeper than all systems. Those current abstractions, which make up all the morality and all the philosophy of most people, have been brought under suspicion. Mind and matter, duties and rights, morality and expediency, honour and interest, virtue and vice—all these words, which seemed once to express elementary and certain realities, now strike us as just the words which, thrown into the scientific crucible, might dissolve at once. It is thus not merely philosophy which is discredited, but just that ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... were both young, wealthy, of good family, and though the parents had planned this marriage and joined together the hands of the young couple, yet it was their good fortune that love should tie and strengthen the bond which mere expediency had formed. ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... strife ran high. The question at issue was chiefly one of religion. The rank and file of Protestant England was determined against the revival of Romanism, which a continuation of the Stuart line seemed to threaten. Charles was a Protestant only from expediency, and on his deathbed accepted the Roman Catholic faith; his brother James, Duke of York, the heir apparent, was a ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... "we have done exceedingly well, and have avoided all sort of mischief, I think, with safety and without dishonour. The votes put the question of guilt or innocence out of doubt; the withdrawing is grounded upon mere expediency, and has nothing to do with the verdict; had we given up before the third reading, it would ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... whatever for any sect or party under heaven, as such. I have no axes to grind, no logs to roll, no favors to ask. All I desire is to do what is right, and prevent what is wrong. I believe in no "expediency" that is not predicated of justice, for in all things—politics, as well as everything else—I know that "honesty is the best policy." A retributive Providence will unerringly and speedily search out all wrong-doing; hence, right is always ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... composition of a work on this subject, a distinguished friend and Brother, whose opinion I much respect, and with whose advice I am always anxious to comply, unless for the most satisfactory reasons, suggested the expediency of collecting the decisions of all Grand Masters, Grand Lodges, and other masonic authorities upon every subject of Masonic Law, and of presenting them, ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... himself. The first had imperilled her beloved child's bodily welfare to save him from what she thought an evil thing, and the Astons, father and son, had bid defiance to their hitherto straightforward policy and followed expediency instead of open ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... Hampshire. But there was something so repellent to me in the idea—something so meanly like the common herd of spies and informers in the mere act of adopting a disguise—that I dismissed the question from consideration almost as soon as it had risen in my mind. Even as a mere matter of expediency the proceeding was doubtful in the extreme. If I tried the experiment at home the landlord of the house would sooner or later discover me, and would have his suspicions aroused immediately. If I tried it ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... now consulted in his mind as to the expediency of making for Havana or proceeding on his cruise. The leak had materially diminished, and, like all old vessels, though she gave a good portion of work at the pumps, a continuation of good weather might afford an opportunity to shove her across. Under these feelings, he ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... into the habits and feelings of the people among whom he had lived. But he had been useful as a great oil-jar, from whence oil for the quiescence of troubled waters might ever and anon be forthcoming. Expediency was his god, and he had hitherto worshipped it with a ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... beneficial tendency of this great work, to particularize its manifold advantages; they are too weighty to be overlooked, either by the Legislature or the community at large, and will doubtless dictate the expediency of bringing them into effectual operation. The different modes suggested of raising the capital required for the undertaking are: 1st. From the Provincial revenue by the annual rate of a loan; 2nd. ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... the hammer of war. But your rulers began with disclaimers of Anti-Slavery designs. You cannot be surprised, if our people took your rulers at their word, or if, notwithstanding your change,—a change which they imagined to be wrought merely by expediency,—they retained their first impression as to the object of the war, an impression which the advocates of the South used every art to perpetuate in their minds. That the opponents of Slavery in England should desire the restoration of the Union with Slavery, and with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... Mr. Van Buren or Mr. Harrison was the greatest favourite of the passengers; and, on this being defeated, owing to the total ignorance of so many on board of both the parties he had named, he had suggested the expediency of establishing a society to ascertain daily the precise position of the ship. Captain Truck had thrown cold water on the last proposal, however, by adding to it what, among legislators, is called a "rider;" he having drily suggested that one ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... every considerable public meeting, and in almost every conceivable way, whether at court-house, school-house, or cross-roads, in doors and out, the subject has been discussed, and the people have emphatically pronounced in favor of a radical policy. Listening to the doctrines of expediency and compromise with pity, impatience, and disgust, they have everywhere broken into demonstrations of the wildest enthusiasm when a brave word has been spoken in favor of equal rights and impartial suffrage. Radicalism, so far from being odious, is not the popular passport to power. The men most ...
— Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass • Frederick Douglass
... reference," proceeds the Chancellor with extra distinctness, "to the young girl and boy, the two young people"—Mr. Tangle crushed— "whom I directed to be in attendance to-day and who are now in my private room, I will see them and satisfy myself as to the expediency of making the order for ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Scriptural form; but no further. I do not think the form of Church, any more than the form of civil government, is settled in the Scriptures; I believe that both are left, as Bishop Stillingfleet has shown at large, to times, places, and circumstances, to be determined upon the ground of expediency and utility—a ground on which Dr. Paley has supported the different orders of the Church of England with his accustomed clearness, ability and elegance. I know, on the contrary, that much may be said upon the same ground in favour of ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... whether the responsibility of giving the order to fire the castle attaches to Adam Gordon or to Captain Car or Ker, who was Adam's right-hand man. But when all is said on either side, it is irrational, as Child points out, to apply modern standards of morality or expediency to sixteenth-century warfare. It is curious that this text, almost contemporary with the occurrence which gave rise to the ballad, should be wholly concerned with Captain Car and make no mention of ...
— Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Third Series • Various
... these occult practices the Illumines in time became the third great masonic power in France, and the rival Orders perceived the expediency of joining forces. Accordingly in 1771 an amalgamation of all the masonic groups was effected at the new lodge ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... which I am not inclined to discuss, or to recall. I made Mr Dombey acquainted, some time since, as I have already told you, with certain points of domestic deference and submission on which I felt it necessary to insist. I failed to convince Mrs Dombey of the expediency of her immediately altering her conduct in those respects, with a view to her own peace and welfare, and my dignity; and I informed Mrs Dombey that if I should find it necessary to object or remonstrate again, I should express my opinion ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... that was enough to mark him out as a disaffected person. No doubt he also talked imprudently; for it was not the nature of this man to keep his sentiments hidden in his heart, and to talk the language of expediency. What he thought in private he advocated publicly in season and out of season; and it was quite in the natural course of things that information regarding his political opinions should be lodged against him with the Board of Excise. His political conduct was ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... on the first two propositions as expressed in the negative, in which I entirely concur, it is unnecessary for me again in to recur to them. In respect to the last, you have had an opportunity since your adjournment not only to test still further the expediency of the measure by the continued practical operation of such parts of it as are now in force, but also to discover what should ever be sought for and regarded with the utmost deference—the opinions and wishes of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... perpetual meetings with Alexa Trent were as unfair to the girl as they were unnerving to himself. Since he couldn't marry her, it was time to stand aside and give a better man the chance—and his thought admitted the ironical implication that in the terms of expediency the phrase might stand ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... back the real subject, and to make the House understand that the ballot, whether good or bad, had been knocked on the head, and that members had no right at the present moment to consider anything but the expediency or inexpediency of so much Reform as Mr. Mildmay presented to them in the ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... cannot be transition from the natural to the spiritual world. The natural has its limitations, and beyond these cannot go. So far as the natural world is concerned man can never rise above seeking for pleasure, and making expediency and social approbation the standards of life, hence there is little wonder that those ethical teachers who make nature their basis, deny the possibility of action that is unselfish and free. "The Spiritual Life," however, as Eucken says, "has an independent ...
— Rudolph Eucken • Abel J. Jones
... any means. Ordinarily decent, conservative citizens joined in counselling moderation and virtual compromise with the lawbreakers—it was nothing else—to "avoid trouble." The old love of fair play had been whittled down by the jack-knife of all-pervading expediency to an anaemic desire to "hold the scales even," which is a favorite modern device of the devil for paralyzing action in men. You cannot hold the scales even in a moral issue. It inevitably results in the triumph of evil, which asks nothing better than the even chance to ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... advantages commensurate with the sacrifices required and the hazards incurred. Unfortunately, in our times there are so many doubtful and contested rights that most wars, though apparently based upon bequests, or wills, or marriages, are in reality but wars of expediency. The question of the succession to the Spanish crown under Louis XIV. was very clear, since it was plainly settled by a solemn will, and was supported by family ties and by the general consent of ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... not the proximate, end. Moral Science a deduction from the laws of life and the conditions of existence. There have been, and still are, developing in the race, certain fundamental Moral Intuitions. The Expediency-Morality is transitional. Reference to the general ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... had better stay at home' we substitute 'You should better stay at home,' an entirely different meaning is expressed, the idea of expediency giving place to ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... as the chief human concern was rapidly declining. The interest in human society as an organism to be studied, and if need be, taken to pieces and put together again, was only just beginning. Montesquieu's great work, 'The Spirit of the Laws,' which demanded for expediency and convenience in legislation the place which modern Europe had long assigned to authority, had only appeared in 1748. Swift's satires had made serious breaches in the wall of convention by which ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Orders—there being no bishop in this country—though the boon had often been solicited from the English Church and as often denied. The trammels of State alliance and the policy of preferring political expediency to religious right prevented the authorities from venturing upon a spiritual act and granting the prayer of the petitioners. The clergy had ministered to their flocks all along in the face of intolerance and bitter opposition ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... henceforth be made in Slav. But as the Senate consisted of forty-five nobles, and these were obliged to be over forty years of age, one may say that they did not represent what was most virile in the State; at all events, this isolated tribute to expediency may for a time have been observed in that assemblage, in the world of letters it was disregarded. And this is the more wonderful when we remember that Dubrovnik had from Italy a language that was ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... For the sake of expediency we have numbered and placed a title (in English) on each ancient recipe, following the example of Schuch. This procedure may be counted against us as a liberty taken with the text. The text has remained inviolate. We have merely aimed at a rational and legible presentation—work ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... means made up his mind as to Female Suffrage, was much relieved that not a single woman in Redmarley had so much as breathed its name. His inclinations led him to follow where Mr Asquith led, but his long training in the doctrines of expediency gave him pause. He decided that he could not yet range himself alongside of the anti-suffrage party. As his old father was wont to remark cautiously, "You must see where you are first," and as yet Eloquent had not ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... questions. In behalf of that great change of national policy, the repeal of the Corn Laws, "Punch" fought most vigorously, not, however, forgetting to bestow a few raps of his baton on the shoulders of the Premier whose wisdom or sense of expediency induced such sudden tergiversation as to bring it about. O'Connell's blatant and venal patriotism was held up to merited derision, which his less wary, but more honest followers in agitation, O'Brien, Meagher, and Mitchell, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... draws them out of doors as soon as meals are discussed, with a sincere thirst of amusement, as certainly as rooks congregate in spring to discuss the propriety of building nests, or swallows in autumn to deliberate in conclave on the expediency of emigration. ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... very charming in the moonlight, very like "Midsummer Night's Dream;" but Mary Ogilvie, who was a good way behind, felt a start of dismay as the clear notes pealed back to her. She longed to suggest a little expediency; but she was impeded; for poor Miss Ray, entirely unused to long country walks and nocturnal expeditions, and further tormented by tight boots, was panting up the hill far in the rear, half-frightened, and a good deal ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of the present pacifist argument in favor of non-violence is based rather upon its expediency. Here, we are told, is a means of social action that works in achieving the social goals to which pacifists aspire. Non-violence provides a moral force which is more powerful than any physical force. Whether ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... feeling which they evoked. He remembered hearing, when a boy, the same arguments. They had served their purpose once before, with other issues, to plunge the South into war and consequent disaster. Had the lesson been in vain? He did not see the justice nor the expediency of the proposed anti-Negro agitation. But he was not in politics, and confined his protests to argument with his friends, who ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Napoleon agreed in theory. It had originally been his intention to winter in the provinces that he had now overrun, and to march against St. Petersburg or Moscow in the spring. He had, however, other matters besides those of military expediency to consider. In the first place, the Poles were exasperated at his refusal to re-establish at once their ancient kingdom, a refusal necessitated by the fact that he could not do so without taking from Austria and Prussia, his allies, the Polish districts that had fallen to their share. Then, ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... is no escape. Leaving aside all questions of justice or political expediency, the aggressor throughout has been Germany. Austria's fury over the assassination of the heir to the throne was natural. But Servia tendered ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... destroy;—and these could not be moved quite at once. 'Mr Brehgert must of course have access to my private room, as long as it is necessary,—absolutely necessary,' said Mr Longestaffe in answer to a message which was brought to him; 'but he will of course see the expediency of relieving me from such intrusion as soon as possible.' But he soon found it preferable to come to terms with the rejected suitor, especially as the man was singularly good-natured and forbearing after the ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... of the question of right, I come to the question of expediency. I listened, Sir, with much interest and pleasure to a noble Lord who spoke for the first time in this debate. (Lord Porchester.) But I must own that he did not succeed in convincing me that there is any real ground for the fears by which he is tormented. He gave us a history ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... ground for it, that had her lord once roused from the straw-yards of his prize cattle, there was a certain stubborn, irrational, old-world prejudice of pride and temper in him that would have made him throw expediency to the winds, then and there, with a blind and brutal disregard to slander and to the fact that none would ever adorn his diamonds as she did. So that Cecil had not only her fair fame, but her still more valuable jewels in his keeping when he started from the Star and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... delight, telling her, immediately upon her entrance, that Mr. Smith came from the country, and could tell beautiful stories. Mrs. Shipton thanked him gratefully for being so kind to her little ones, and began to feel more comfortable about the expediency of having admitted him into their ...
— The Boy Artist. - A Tale for the Young • F.M. S.
... ll. 13, 14 [Stz. 25]. "And for they knew, the French did still abet The Scot against vs." —The discussion between Westmorland and Exeter on the expediency of first attacking Scotland is found in Holinshed. In the rude old play, "The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth," on which Shakespeare founded his "Henry IV." and "Henry V.," the argument for attacking Scotland first is put into the mouth ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... brawling, blasphemy and rude tumult, in the suburbs of New York, on Sundays, within the last few years, that I have never seen in any other part of the world on similar occasions; and serious doubts of the expediency of the high-pressure principle have beset me, whatever may be the just constructions of doctrine. With the last I pretend not to meddle; but, in a worldly point of view, it would seem wise, if you cannot ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... mercies, rather than venture among the horns of the herd. She is not an amiable cow; but she has a very intelligent face, and seems to be of a reflective cast of character. I doubt not that she will soon perceive the expediency of being on good terms with the rest of ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... circumstances of the case would, in the opinion of the world, have justified the use of force on our part in the first instance. Cautionary rigour is at all times invidious; and has this additional objection to it, that the severity of a preventive course, when it best succeeds, leaves its expediency ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... resolutions indorsing the policy of the Administration. In the Legislature his efforts were equally successful, and the opponents of the Administration were forced to abandon their constitutional objections to the treaty, and to content themselves with a simple denial of the expediency of the measure at that time. President Washington attached so much importance to these services that he offered to his old friend and comrade the position of Attorney-General of the United States, but Marshall declined ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... Indian at once, but the Manitoba Act had {75} set a precedent. Only a few thousand acres were at stake, in a boundless land where the Government stood ready to set aside a hundred million acres for a railway. The expediency of winning the goodwill of the half-breeds was apparent to Canadians on the spot, especially now that the Indians, over whom the Metis had great influence, were also becoming restless because of the disappearance of the buffalo and ...
— The Day of Sir Wilfrid Laurier - A Chronicle of Our Own Time • Oscar D. Skelton
... under moral obligation or in duty bound to do. Ought is the stronger word, holding most closely to the sense of moral obligation, or sometimes of imperative logical necessity; should may have the sense of moral obligation or may apply merely to propriety or expediency, as in the proverb, "The liar should have a good memory," i. e., he will need it. Ought is sometimes used of abstractions or inanimate things as indicating what the mind deems to be imperative or logically necessary in view of all the conditions; ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... out of neutral vessels, was revived, as a matter of course, with the renewal of the war and all American ships felt the expediency, of avoiding cruisers that might deprive them of their men. Strange as it may seem, a large and leading class of Americans justified this claim of the English, as it was practised on board their own country's vessels! What will not men defend when blinded and excited ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... comparatively easy—given compelling circumstances and an obedient soul. But to sacrifice others never becomes easy to a man who respects the rights of others. And we shall never begin to comprehend men like Joffre and Foch until we shake ourselves free from any notion we may have that military expediency makes it easy for them to order great mental ...
— Foch the Man - A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies • Clara E. Laughlin
... and so induced a willingness to listen to the preaching of a new and purer creed. And on the part of those of the Council who were organizing the revolution—among whom religion seemed to be regarded less as a vital fact than as a matter of political expediency—there was a strong disposition to encourage the spread of doctrines which obviously, by weakening the Priest Captain's hold upon the people, would increase their own strength. Therefore, Fray Antonio found himself free to preach to this heathen multitude ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... cannot expect to hold the friendship of the world, especially of England, France, and Japan, if we are to treat agreements not as inviolable contracts, but as mere matters of convenience, whose plain terms are to be ignored when matters of expediency dictate. I know that the Irish, through the Hearst newspapers, will cry out that I have surrendered to England, that I am attempting to hand over to Europe a quasi-control over the Panama Canal. As a matter of fact, we are in bad by reason of our attitude on Panama ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... added its temptations; the darkness of northern climes both rendering the typical character of Light more deeply felt than in Italy, and necessitating its admission in larger masses; the Italian, even at the period of his most exquisite art in glass, retaining the small Lombard window, whose expediency will hardly be doubted by anyone who has experienced the transition from the scorching reverberation of the white-hot marble front, to the cool depth of shade within, and whose beauty will not be soon forgotten by those ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... republic? After Sinn Fein, the Labor party? Madame Markewicz is high in the councils of both Sinn Fein and Labor. One day, lost in one of her trance-like meditations in which she states her intuitions with absolute disregard of expediency, she ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell
... engaged in trade, where we were not only useful, but absolutely necessary to our country in her dearest interests; we, with all that was near and dear to us, were sacrificed without remorse, to the infernal deity of political expediency! We fell to gratify the wishes of dark envy, and the views of unprincipled ambition! Your foes, Sir, were avowed; were too brave to take an ungenerous advantage; you fell in the face of day.—On ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... take the line of least resistance, and when thousands of votes of small landowners are to be won through the advocacy of an exemption, exemptions there will be. The whole system of taxation is wrong, it seems to me, and though, as a matter of expediency, sometimes from conviction, many people advocate the opposite course, I have long felt that taxation should not be imposed according to the ability to pay so much as according to benefits received ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... restrained by ecclesiastical censures through the see of Canterbury, to which province they are subject by law, they will be for ever rising in arms against the king, to the disquiet of the whole realm of England." Gerald's answer to this was complete, except from the point of view of political expediency. "What can be more unjust than that this people of ancient faith, because they answer force by force in defence of their lives, their lands, and their liberties, should be forthwith separated from the body corporate of Christendom, and ...
— The Itinerary of Archibishop Baldwin through Wales • Giraldus Cambrensis
... Friar Lawrence was lying in a ditch, while I was behind an oak. We were near enough to discern the niece, and consequently we feared to be recognised. The situation was neither dignified nor romantic. My friend was sanguine, though big ardour was slightly damped by the ditch water. I doubted the expediency of trying the boat-house, but he urged the risk of her disappointment, which made the ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... Slavery and Its Remedy;" "the Rev. J.D. Paxton's 'Letters on Slavery'; the Rev. S.J. May's letters to Andrew T. Judson, 'The Rights of Colored People to Education Vindicated'; Prof. Elizur Wright, Jr.'s, 'Sin of Slavery and Its Remedy'; Whittier's 'Justice and Expediency'; and, above all, Mrs. Lydia Maria Child's startling 'Appeal in favor of that class of Americans called Africans' were the more potent of the new crop of writings betokening the vigor of Mr. Garrison's Propagandism," says that storehouse ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... subjugate his will and his inclination to the prevailing laws and principles and beliefs, and he must sacrifice his private aims and desires to the common interest, even when his reason and will may not be convinced. That is a simple matter of compromise, and the sacrifice is made as a matter of expediency and duty rather than as a matter of emotion. But there are other natures to whom it is essential to live by emotion, and to whom it is a relief and delight to submerge their private inclinations in some larger national or religious emotion. We have seen of late, in ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Lady Mabel. It seemed to her to be very odd,—unless certain people had made up their minds as to the expediency of ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... creased and worn bill. Spreading it out, he offered it to the man beside him. To loot an army warehouse was fair play as he saw it. Morgan's command had long depended upon Union commissaries for equipment, clothing, and food. And a horse trade was something forced upon him by expediency. But he still shrank from this ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... about fifty years after the apostles. He wrote, therefore, within a hundred years of the apostle John. But he was a man of peculiar views, extravagant in his opinions, an enthusiast in everything. He proves that the practice of infant baptism was established, by arguing against the expediency of baptizing children, and unmarried persons, lest they should sin after baptism. His argument, with respect to both these classes of persons, is the same. His language is, "If any understand the weight of baptismal obligations, they will ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... have rendered the Europeans vile in the estimation of the Japanese. This is the error which must be destroyed by some means or other, even if it should be necessary to pick a quarrel with them, as we have already done with the Chinese. At the same time that I admit the expediency of so doing, I by no means assert that ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... if we may judge from what we know of him, his own peculiar and somewhat detestable way of refusing. Once when his daughter had asked a perfectly simple favour in a matter of expediency, permission, that is, to keep her favourite brother with her during an illness, her singular parent remarked that "she might keep him if she liked, but that he had looked for greater self-sacrifice." These were the weapons with which he ruled his people. ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... publicly begged pardon for a sin which he never committed. The play was "The Rival Queens," the part assigned to Evans that of Alexander, but 'twas some time before this Alexander could be induced to crave the forgiveness of the excitable Dublinites. Finally he yielded to expediency, and, coming forward to the centre of the stage, expressed his contrition. At this, a puppy in the pit cried out "Kneel, you rascal!" and Evans, now thoroughly exasperated, tartly answered: "No, you rascal! I'll kneel to none but God, ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... general disfavor with which American pacifist tendencies were regarded in Germany. Nine-tenths of the American nation are pacifists, either through their education and sentimental prepossession in favor of the principle, or out of a sense of commercial expediency. People in the United States did not understand that the German people, owing to their tragic history, are compelled to cultivate and to uphold the martial spirit of their ancestors. The types of the German officer ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... by meat must apparently be reduced to that of a condiment food destined to produce in a measure the whipping-up which is useful, and sometimes indispensable to the system. We cannot here discuss the expediency of action and the harmlessness of the dose of substances reputed stimulating. But one can ask oneself whether, to attain this object of stimulation, carnivorous feeding is indispensable, and if vegetarianism could not supply ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... outgrow the mischief, but perhaps it may shorten my life. I tell you this because I want you to see what is before us. I have no right to expect you to link your life with mine under these circumstances, and your guardian is very doubtful as to the wisdom and expediency of it.' ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... how far injurious; but in what way its benefits may be enhanced, and its mischiefs, if any, be abated. He who should demonstrate that it has a pernicious tendency, would but the more strongly enforce our propositions; since he would thereby show the expediency of diminishing that tendency and of mitigating that evil which the public will forbids to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... pedestal, expedite, expediency, expedition, quadruped, impediment, biped, tripod, chiropodist, octopus, pew; (2) centiped, pedicle, pedometer, velocipede, sesquipedalian, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... foe had vanished. Though Montagu had obtained from Oxford some glimpse of the desire which the more sagacious and temperate Lancastrians already entertained for that alliance, and though Louis had already hinted its expediency to the earl, yet, till now, Warwick himself had naturally conceived that the prince shared the enmity of his mother, and that such a union, however politic, was impossible; but now indeed there burst upon him the full triumph of revenge and pride. Edward of York ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Contrivances I was able to attain my Ends and to establish the Welfare of my Countrymen. Do you blame me? It is not the business of a Ruler to be truthful, but to be politick; he must fly even from Virtue herself, if she sit in a different Quarter from Expediency. It is his Duty to sacrifice the Best, which is impossible, to a little Good, which is close at hand. I was willing to lay down a Multitude of foolish Laws, so that, under their Cloak, I might slip in a few Wise ones; and, had I not shown myself to be both Cruel and Superstitious, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... the world with such an unworldly man as Mr. Ellenwood was announced soon after Mrs. Dabney's return to her native city. Superficial observers, and deeper ones, seemed to concur in supposing that the lady must have borne no inactive part in arranging the affair; there were considerations of expediency which she would be far more likely to appreciate than Mr. Ellenwood, and there was just the specious phantom of sentiment and romance in this late union of two early lovers which sometimes makes a fool of a woman who has lost ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shield of respectability to present to all questioners, he advertised out of pride and civic spirit; if he had a past, J. Walter Mong had a nose, sharpened by long training in picking up such scents; and so he advertised out of expediency. ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... no doubt, a clever man in his way, but he was not a man of high principle. He hated trouble of any sort, and expediency was usually his guide. Still he had had much experience in teaching, and Aunt Annie was quite equal to the task of sounding his knowledge of ...
— A Little Hero • Mrs. H. Musgrave
... herself. She had just settled that of her own accord, and, without committing herself or others, had suggested a really sensible plan by which all trouble would be avoided in future. That was the common-sense way of looking at it. He would lay the plan before the colonel, have him judge of its expediency and its ethics—and even the question whether she already knew the real truth, or was self-deceived. That done, he would return to his own affairs in Sacramento. There was nothing difficult in this, or that ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... about really difficult points. It is so much easier to say at once that all drinking ought to be suppressed, than to consider how, in actual circumstances, sobriety can be judiciously encouraged; and by assuming a good self-evident law and denouncing your opponents as immoral worshippers of expediency, you place yourself in an enviable position of moral dignity and inaccessibility. No argument can touch you. These abstract rules, too, have the convenience of being strangely ambiguous. I have been almost pathetically affected when I have observed ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... asked me last night whether my thoughts had been directed to the topic which is uppermost just now in so many minds in regard to the religion of the future, and I ventured to tell her that it would be found to be contained in the generalised expediency ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... arriving at land of some description upon the course we were pursuing, and having every reason to believe, from present appearances, that we should not find it the sterile soil met with in the higher Arctic latitudes, I warmly pressed upon him the expediency of persevering, at least for a few days longer, in the direction we were now holding. So tempting an opportunity of solving the great problem in regard to an Antarctic continent had never yet been afforded to man, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to hold both the Servians and Bosnians in check, by pitting the one against the other, was of doubtful expediency; and, as the event proved, tended materially to weaken the imperial cause by depriving it of the aid of the Bosnian irregulars, who had acquired a name for reckless daring second to none. The outbreak of the Russian war was the signal for another attempt to obtain ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... from a germ of the Divine life within, or am I shaping my path to obtain some immediate result of expediency? Am I endeavoring to compass effects, amidst a tangled web of foreign influences I cannot calculate; or am I seeking simply to do what is right, and leaving the consequences to the good ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... whether the past had been spent well, and how the future could be spent better. So, as time went on, he pushed his books further and set himself to this consideration. For a while he sat looking at his own doings only by the light, as it were, of two candles—the one, of expediency; the other, of rectitude. Had he been wise? ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... alone would supersede the expediency of announcing any definite and irrevocable resolution. You are among the small number of those who know my invincible attachment to domestic life, and that my sincerest wish is to continue in the ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... prize fellowships is that they are the only means by which a child of the working-class can raise himself to the highest positions in the land. My answer to this would be that, in the first place, it is of questionable expediency to invite the cleverest members of any class to leave it—instead of making their abilities available in it, and so raising the whole class along with, and by means of, their own rise. Second, these prize fellowships will continue, and must continue, to ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 1: On Popular Culture • John Morley
... of his Lieder to appear in print; the songs numbered op. 9, which would appear to antedate them in composition and publication, were not written until a decade later, when they were issued under an arbitrary opus number as a matter of expediency. Their proper place in MacDowell's musical history is, therefore, about synchronous with the mature and characteristic "Eight Songs" of op. 47. From the five songs now published in one volume as op. 11 and 12, the progress of MacDowell's ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... mutilation for anarchists convicted of killing or inciting to kill—mutilation followed by death. For those who merely deny the right and expediency of law, plain mutilation—which might advantageously take the form of removal ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... agreed with his wife, on grounds of expediency. "Never make a row if you can help it," was the peaceable principle to which this gentleman committed himself. "Send word that the children have caught colds, and get ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... arrangements for the removal of his master's wardrobe from the George and Vulture. This request Mr. Samuel Weller prepared to obey, with as good a grace as he could assume, but with a very considerable show of reluctance nevertheless. He even went so far as to essay sundry ineffectual hints regarding the expediency of stretching himself on the gravel for that night; but finding Mr. Pickwick obstinately deaf to ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... Presently he said: "If it were restored to you, Davenport's moral right to it would still be insisted on. The restoration would be merely on grounds of expediency." ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... as Dutch sentiment at the Cape appeared already to be thoroughly hostile to us, it would be dangerous to alienate the British Africanders also by making a martyr of their favourite leader. But whatever arguments may be founded upon expediency, it is clear that the Boers bitterly resented, and with justice, the immunity ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... head, a sound judgment, and a good heart, could adjust a scheme that would satisfy all; at least it would satisfy colonists by its justice, and reconcile the peers and the people of England by its expediency, for the day Great Britain parts with these colonies, depend upon it, she descends in the scale of nations most rapidly. India she may lose any day, for it is a government of opinion only. Australia will emancipate itself ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... looked harassed and perplexed, and showed himself glad of being joined by any ally whom he could trust. In truth, harsh and narrow as he was, Paulett was too good and religious a man for the task that had been thrust on him, where loyal obedience, sense of expediency, and even religious fanaticism, were all in opposition to the primary principles of truth, mercy, and honour. He was, besides, in constant anxiety, living as he did between plot and counterplot, and with ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... truth, being a body of principles applicable primarily to legislation and only secondarily to ethics, its doctrines hold far more obviously true in the field of politics than in the field of morals. On any wide view of large public questions expediency will be found to be only another name for justice. It can be neither the interest nor the duty of any nation to legislate in a way which produces more of suffering than of happiness. A policy opposed to the interests or the welfare ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... that of food, of which they would fain have more, and gaze with wistful eyes upon their captors, who are feasting on the remnant of what was until lately their own property. But the latter jeeringly suggest to them the expediency of their devouring each other, since they seem to have a preference for ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... the exhibits showed the work of separate institutions for the sexes. A comparison of that kind would be profitable only from a pedagogical point of view and is of minor consideration in our American system of education. Woman's place in the schoolroom is defended by tradition, expediency, and merit; and instead of surrendering in the face of foreign criticism their positions as instructors, women teachers are to-day broadening their field of labor by serving as instructors in many ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission
... his usual adroitness and boldness. Assuming that the President had made no express recommendation, he devoted his speech mainly to a strong argument of party expediency, repelling without reserve and denouncing without stint the work of the Lecompton Convention. "Stand by the doctrine," said he, "that leaves the people perfectly free to form and regulate their institutions for themselves, in their own way, and your party will ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... many so-called Christian legislators and Christian people would go to this "heathen" philosopher and learn of him—learn that to do right is always and ever the highest safety, the highest expediency, the ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... of France and of England towards the Acadians was based upon political expediency rather than upon any definite or well-conceived plan for the development of the country. The inhabitants, born to serve rather than to command, had honestly striven according to their light to maintain respect for constituted authority. But the state of unrest into which they were ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... the "eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, that his ears are open to their cry, and that he is able to succour them, being tempted;" and, therefore, he pondered the matter well in his own heart, and consulted often with his father on the expediency of removing William from the guardianship of ...
— Watch—Work—Wait - Or, The Orphan's Victory • Sarah A. Myers |
