"Immutable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... interpretation. No other rule would ever have been thought of, if the Devil had let the minds of men alone. By this rule the true Sabbath would always have been maintained a perfect safeguard against idolatry in the earth; the law would have held its place as a perfect, immutable, and eternal rule of conduct, a safeguard against the antinomianism of all ages and the Spiritualism of to-day; the view that the dead remain unconscious in the grave till the resurrection, would always have been held, and then there could have been ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... that are too familiar to us all. It brings Paul nearer us to feel that he, too, knew these ups and downs. The force that drove this meteor through the darkness varied, as the force that impels us varies to our consciousness. It is the prerogative of God to be immutable; men have their moods and their fluctuations. Kindled lights flicker; the sun burns steadily. An Elijah to-day beards Ahab and Jezebel and all their priests, and to-morrow hides his head in his hands, and says, 'Take me away, I am not better than my fathers.' There ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... advantage, that I shall keep it to the utmost of my power to your destruction. Take this for your final answer, and forbear any farther solicitations; for if you trouble me with any more messages of this nature, I will burn the paper and hang up the bearer. This is the immutable resolution, and shall be the undoubted practice of him who accounts it his chiefest glory to be his majesty's ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part E. - From Charles I. to Cromwell • David Hume
... divine instrument. Science discovers these laws of power, motion, and transformation; industry applies them to the raw matter which the earth yields us in abundance, but which becomes valuable only by knowledge; art teaches us the immutable laws of beauty and symmetry, and gives to our productions forms in accordance ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 457 - Volume 18, New Series, October 2, 1852 • Various
... one's tastes may alter—in fact they do. One's very conception of virtue is at the mercy of some felicitous temptation which may be sprung on one any day. All these things are perpetually on the swing. But a temperamental difference, temperament being immutable, is the parent of hate. That's why religious quarrels are the fiercest of all. My temperament, in matters pertaining to solid land, is the temperament of leisurely movement, of deliberate gait. And there was that little Fyne pounding ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... of necessities have known a change not less remarkable. What yesterday we believed to be fallacy, to-day we know to be the truth. What seemed the fixed and immutable purpose of God only a few short months ago, we have already discovered to have been founded only in human passion or ambition. What seemed eternal has passed away, and what appeared to be evanescent has assumed stability. ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... too many occasions on which a law, immutable in all ages, and common to all nations, requires that private interests should be sacrificed to a great general interest, and that even humanity should be forgotten. It is for posterity to judge whether this terrible ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... with the victors; but in spirit we may even now. There is but an interval of time between us and the success at which we aim. In all other respects the links of the chain are complete. Identifying ourselves with immortal and immutable principles, we share both their immortality and immutability. The vow which unites us with truth makes futurity present with us. Our being resolves itself into an everlasting now. It is not so correct to say that we shall be victorious as that we are so. When we will in unison with the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... view would remove all difficulties out of the way of evolution, in so far as the sterility of hybrids is concerned. For it would thus appear that this sterility has nothing to do with any supposed immutable or fixed limits of species, but results simply from the same principle which prevents old friends, no matter how intimate in youth, from returning to their old intimacy after a lapse of years, during which they have been subjected to widely different influences, inasmuch as they will each have ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... degree of artistic unity. This plastic force, which selects and binds together our unconnected dream-images, has frequently been referred to as a mysterious spiritual faculty, under the name of "creative fancy." Thus Cudworth remarks, in his Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality: "That dreams are many times begotten by the phantastical power of the soul itself ... is evident from the orderly connection and coherence of imaginations which many times are continued in a long chain or series." One may find a good deal ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... Des Cartes proceeded to apply it. The basis of certitude being consciousness, he interrogated his consciousness, and found that he had an idea of a substance infinite, eternal, immutable, independent, omniscient, omnipotent. This he called an idea of God: he said, "I exist as a miserably imperfect finite being, subject to change—ignorant, incapable of creating anything—I find by my finitude that I am not the infinite; by my liability ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... anything of which we can see the reason or conceive the obligation, but against an unexplained injunction of the Supreme Will. The rebellion in heaven, as Milton describes it, was a rebellion not against known ethics or immutable spiritual laws, but against an arbitrary selection and an unexplained edict. We do not say that there is no such thing as positive morality,—we do not think so; even if we did, we should not insert a proposition so startling at the conclusion of a literary criticism. But we are sure that wherever ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... self-expression; and on Sundays, I dare say, he goes, like Cezanne, to lean on M. le Cure, who leans on Rome, while his concierge receives the pure gospel of Syndicalism, which, also, is based on absolute truths, immutable, ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... all-embracing acknowledgment. Therefore, and with distinct pleasure, I wish to say that the active encouragement of casual, but trusted acquaintances, the inspiring indifference of unconvinced intimates, and the kindly scepticism of indulgent relatives, who, perforce, could do naught but obey an immutable law of blood-related minds—all these influences have conspired to render more sure the accomplishment ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... with the highest aims of reason, and not merely technical, or according to certain accidentally-observed similarities existing between the different parts of the whole science. For this reason, also, is the division immutable and of legislative authority. But the reader may observe in it a few points to which he ought to demur, and which may weaken his conviction of ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... Parliamentary and Municipal Elections Act of 1872, the Local Government Acts of 1888 and 1894, and the Parliament Act of 1911. In the fourth place there is the Common Law, a vast body of legal precept and usage which through the centuries has acquired fundamental and immutable character. The first three elements mentioned, i.e., treaties, solemn political engagements, and statutes, exist solely, or almost so, in written form. The rules of the Common Law, however, have not been reduced to writing, save in so far as they are contained in reports, legal opinions, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... myself, the other is above me. That which is myself is very imperfect, prejudiced, liable to error, changeable, headstrong, ignorant, and limited; in short, it possesses nothing but what is borrowed. The other is common to all men, and superior to them. It is perfect, eternal, immutable, ever ready to communicate itself in all places, and to rectify all minds that err and mistake; in short, incapable of ever being either exhausted or divided, although it communicates itself to all who ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... compromise with our immoral desires to get results without work, to buy without paying for what we receive. Nature keeps no running accounts and suffers no man to get in her debt; she deals with us on the principles of immutable righteousness; she treats us as her equals, and demands from us an equivalent for every gift or grace of sight or sound she bestows. She rejects contemptuously the advances of the weaklings who aspire to become her beneficiaries without having made good their claim by some service ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... be mentioned which are judged to be good or bad only because their consequences are known to be so, whilst the great catholic acts of life are entirely (and, if we may so phrase it, haughtily) independent of consequences. For instance, fidelity to a trust is a law of immutable morality subject to no casuistry whatever. You have been left executor to a friend—you are to pay over his last legacy to X, though a dissolute scoundrel; and you are to give no shilling of it to the poor brother of X, though a good man, and a wise ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... revealed religion must be inferior and subordinate to natural—that the Scriptures must be criticised like any other book, and no part of them be accepted as a revelation from God which does not harmonise with the eternal and immutable reason of things; that, in point of fact, the Old Testament is a tissue of fables and folly, and the New Testament has much alloy mingled with the gold which it contains; that Jesus Christ is not co-equal with ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... and, amidst the endless and complicated fluctuations of our system, seem placed by its Creator as guides and records, not merely to elevate our minds by the contemplation of what is vast, but to teach us to direct our actions by reference to what is immutable in His works. It is, indeed, hardly possible to over-appreciate their value in this point of view. Every well-determined star, from the moment its place is registered, becomes to the astronomer, the geographer, the navigator, ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... advance of the season; the faces of friends with something not to be named, but visible, strange, and, for the most part, disheartening. It was the old story for ever and ever; all things changed always; but the chime was immutable. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... strong as were the political motives which led to it, was a violation of the immutable laws of God. Like all wrong-doing, however seemingly prosperous for a time, it promoted final disaster and woe. Doubtless Napoleon, educated in the midst of those convulsions which had shaken all the foundations of Christian ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... other conditions of the treaty before this minister arrives and is heard? This is a case which forms a strong appeal to the candor, the magnanimity, and the honor of this people. Much is due to courtesy between nations. By a short delay we shall lose nothing, for, resting on the ground of immutable truth and justice, we can not be diverted from our purpose. It ought to be presumed that the explanations which may be given to the minister of Spain will be satisfactory, and produce the desired result. In any event, the delay for the purpose mentioned, being ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 2: James Monroe • James D. Richardson
... "expression" in singing? No great artist—no matter what the vehicle or medium through which his art finds manifestation—does anything at random. "The wind bloweth where it listeth" only in appearance; in reality, it is governed by immutable law. Similarly, the outward form of an art is only apparently dictated by caprice and freedom from rule. The effective presentation of every art is based on well-defined and accepted principles. And it is with the earnest desire to throw light on this most important phase of vocal art, that I present ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... with the help of a few friends and disciples, founded, in 1830, the Brahmo Samaj or Society of God. In the trust deed of the meeting-house it was laid down that the society was founded for "the worship and adoration of the eternal, unsearchable and immutable Being who is the Author and Preserver of the Universe, but not by any other name, designation or title peculiarly used by any men or set of men; and that in conducting the said worship and adoration, no object, animate or inanimate, that has been or is or shall hereafter become ... an object ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... right, and therefore good, for this. That the next life is not contrary to this life. That the same moral laws hold good in heaven, as on earth. Mark this well; for it must be so, if morality, that is right and goodness, is of the eternal and immutable essence of God. And therefore, mark this well again, there is but one true, real, and right life for rational beings, one only life worth living, and worth living in this world or in any other life, past, present, or to come. And that is the eternal ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... happiness was pyramided. Munificent as life was to me, I added to that munificence. It was a great hour—one of my greatest. But I paid for it, long afterwards, as you will see. One does not forget such experiences, and, in human stupidity, cannot be brought to realise that there is no immutable law which decrees that same things shall produce same results. For they don't, else would the thousandth pipe of opium be provocative of similar delights to the first, else would one cocktail, instead of several, produce an equivalent glow ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... the breezes which streamed through the narrow defiles of the hills. None but sailors, well practised in treading the deck of a rolling ship, could possibly have maintained their footing: for the boatswain, the wooden leg, and the fisherman, kept up their horses inexorably to their duty of an immutable gallop; the hearse and its plumes flew through the solitary valley; the post-chaises, carrying a similar crew on their upper decks, flew after the hearse; and in the rear of the whole, with all the sail ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... taken a lively interest in the advancement of medical science, firmly believing in the immutable principles that govern the administration of homeopathic medicine as well as the curative effect. He has always been anxious to induce young men that proposed to study the science of medicine to follow the example of the illustrious Hahnemann. His lectures in the Cleveland ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... beneficent influence. This effect has often been called an answer to prayer, and has been attributed by the ignorant to what they call a "special interposition of Providence," instead of to the unerring action of the great and immutable divine law. ...
— Thought-Forms • Annie Besant
... whether she was born in the house of Abraham, or rescued from those who may have stolen her from her home, or given by her parents to the wealthy and childless Sarai. She was Sarah's handmaid—a relation, according to the customs of the East (almost immutable) nearly as dear as that of a child. She was the personal attendant, the constant companion of her mistress; and by her was doubtless instructed in the principles of the true religion, while she was thus accustomed to the accomplishments ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... could, for he believed in it—though in other matters he went a little farther! Empedocles sticks to the old four elements. Heraclitus is all for fire. Melissus imagines that whatever exists is infinite and immutable, and ever has been and ever will be. Plato thinks that the world has always existed, while the Pythagoreans attribute everything to mathematics.[279] "Your wise man," continues Cicero, "will know one whom to choose out of all these. Let the others, ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... their causes, is the object of all science; and by this object, as it is accomplished or incomplete, the progress of any particular science must be determined. The order of the moral is in reality as immutable as the laws of the physical world; and human actions are linked to their consequences by a necessity as inexorable as that which controls the growth of plants or the motion of the earth, though the connexion between cause and effect ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... limited in its scope and exercised in exact conformity with ancient usage. Thus the analogy between the magical and the scientific conceptions of the world is close. In both of them the succession of events is assumed to be perfectly regular and certain, being determined by immutable laws, the operation of which can be foreseen and calculated precisely; the elements of caprice, of chance, and of accident are banished from the course of nature. Both of them open up a seemingly boundless vista of possibilities to him who knows ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists until recently entertained, and which I formerly entertained—namely, that each species has been independently created—is erroneous. I am fully convinced that species are not immutable, but that those belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledged varieties of any one species are the descendants of that species. Furthermore, I am also convinced ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... in silence. The words came with the power of immutable conviction. She could not believe, yet she was glad to ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... sincere; he should have been resolute. Had he declared himself determined not to take office without Fox, the royal obstinacy would have given way, as it gave way, a few months later, when opposed to the immutable resolution of Lord Grenville. In an evil hour Pitt yielded. He flattered himself with the hope that, though he consented to forego the aid of his illustrious rival, there would still remain ample materials for the formation of an efficient ministry. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... posterity and their contempt of death. They have no notion of more than one Divine Being, who is only grasped by the mind. They deem it profane to fashion images of gods out of perishable matter, and teach that their Being is supreme and eternal, immutable and imperishable. Accordingly, they erect no images in their cities, much less in their temples, and they refuse to grant this kind of honor to kings ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... to derail any speech except the multiplication-table or the House-that-Jack-built! But she waited with exemplary patience for certainty that the train had stopped. Then spoke as one that gives a commission to speech, and observes its execution at a distance. Her expression remained immutable. "She is a ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious terror, some scission in the continuity of man's experience, some wilful illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... is a home wherein to dwell— The very heart of light! Thyself my sun immutable, My moon ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... Morris Barnes, considered merely as an event, came as a Godsend to the halfpenny press, which has an unwritten but immutable contract with the public to provide it with so much sensation during the week, in season or out of season. Nothing else was talked about anywhere. Under the influence of the general example, Wrayson ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... production is by the skill of a foreigner whose education has grown to suit the work, we must silently sit by and willingly receive the work when handed out for use by the producer. At this point I will say that an intelligent Osteopath is willing to be governed by the immutable laws of nature, and feel that he is justified to pass the fluid on from place to place and ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... of mind which would turn an instrument of life into an immutable law of its existence—that habit is always with us. We may outgrow our adoration of the Constitution or Private Property only to establish some new totem pole. In the arts we call this inveterate tendency classicalism. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... the perfection of any special object is: this needs the knowledge of what its nature is. And we have to rest content with very general terms defining God's Holiness as the essential and absolute good. 'Holiness is the free, deliberate, calm, and immutable affirmation of Himself, who is goodness, or of goodness, which is Himself' (Godet on John xvii. 11). 'Holiness is that attribute in virtue of which Jehovah makes Himself the absolute standard of Himself, of His being ...
— Holy in Christ - Thoughts on the Calling of God's Children to be Holy as He is Holy • Andrew Murray
... the Satan of Fashion. As a matter of fact, their rank had emerged from such long centuries ago that it seemed to me to be so identified with them that they were hardly capable of analysis of people such as myself. As I looked pityingly upon them and the involved simplicity of their immutable natures, I realized an unconquerable feeling of inborn rank and natural elevation in respect to nationality. This is, however, against my personal general conception of Eastern peoples, but I must admit I felt it this ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... been operating strongly and operating persistently. Herein lies its importance. It is a stable force. It never sleeps. This natural environment, this physical basis of history, is for all intents and purposes immutable in comparison with the other factor in the problem—shifting, ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... generation after generation in succession."[AH] "Descended in a direct line from the heavenly deities, the Emperor has stood unshaken in his high place through all generations, his prestige and dignity immutable from time immemorial and independent of all the vicissitudes of the world about him."[AI] "Never has there been found a single subject of the realm who sought to impair the Imperial prestige."[AJ] It is true that in a single passage ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... causing my room to be whitewashed, which was an agreeable surprise to me. It was just the same with all the Breuning family. Our separation was in the usual course of things; each striving to pursue and to attain his object; while at the same time the everlasting and immutable principles of good still held us closely united. I cannot unfortunately write so much to you to-day as I could wish, being confined to bed,[1] so I limit my reply to some ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... not a bird with a stone and not a stone.' The mind cannot be fixed on either alternative; and these ambiguous, intermediate, erring, half-lighted objects, which have a disorderly movement in the region between being and not-being, are the proper matter of opinion, as the immutable objects are the proper matter of knowledge. And he who grovels in the world of sense, and has only this uncertain perception of things, is not a philosopher, but a lover of ...
— The Republic • Plato
... wills and affections of sinful men, is to build, not upon the sand, but upon the wind. There is but one immovable rock on which steadfast character, steadfast relations, steadfast subordination of the lower and personal desires, to the higher and immutable obligations and trusts and responsibilities of life can be built—duty. When this rock has been faithfully clung to, when in the midst of disillusionment and shattered ideals the noble resolution has been clung to never to base personal happiness on a broken trust or another's ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... engagement of Andrea Korust and his brother, others to the presence of Mademoiselle Sophie Celaire in her wonderful danse des apaches. The violinist that night had a great reception. Three times he was called before the curtain; three times he was obliged to reiterate his grateful but immutable resolve never to yield to the nightly storm which demanded more from a man who has given of his best. Slim, with the worn face and hollow eyes of a genius, he stood and bowed his thanks, but when he thought the time had arrived, ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sovereign. The Constitution gives the General Government no power to coerce a State. Our fathers, as a matter of fact, never faced such a possibility. Grant all that in law. Even so, a mighty, united nation has grown through the years. It is now a living thing, immutable, indissoluble. It commands your ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... whose name was Fire-Tongue might have paused, might have hesitated, might even have changed his plans, which, in a certain part of the world, were counted immutable, had he known the manner of man whom he had ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... your country's crown. It is an obedience to the same law of Providence which sends the full-fledged bird from the nest, and the man from his father's house. Man shall not be able to sever what the immutable laws of Providence have joined together. The chafing chains of colonial dependence shall be exchanged for ties light as air, yet strong as steel. The peaceful and profitable interchange of commerce—the same language—a common literature—similar laws, and kindred institutions shall bind you ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... horror as but accidents to be lived down and disregarded, by no means as essential elements in the adventurous and precious whole. Presently they would altogether lose their power to wound and to distress her, while this freedom and the closer union, gained by means of them, continued immutable and fixed. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... offenses of the past. The feeling of dependence is the instinct which urges us to pray. It is the feeling that our existence and welfare are in the hands of a superior power; not an inexorable fate, not an immutable law; but a Being having at least so far the attribute of personality that he can show favor or severity to those who are dependent upon Him, and can be regarded by them with feelings of hope and fear, and reverence and gratitude."[58] The feeling ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... species were not immutable and made at one cast, directly by the fiat of the Creator, seemed to him, at first, he ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... necessary, which it is utterly impossible for me to foresee; still the great fundamental principles upon which every sensible plan for such an Establishment must be founded, appear to me to be certain and immutable; and when rightly understood, there can be no great difficulty in accommodating the plan to all those particular circumstances under which it may be carried into execution, without ...
— ESSAYS, Political, Economical and Philosophical. Volume 1. • Benjamin Rumford
... point of bursting, and then are hastily, often clumsily, enlarged. The ninety desiring peace and comfort for their spirit, the ninety of the well-warmed beds, will have it that the fashions need not change, that morality is fixed, that all is ordered and immutable, that every one will always marry, play, and worship in the way that they themselves are marrying, playing, worshipping. They have no speculation, and they hate with a deep hatred those who speculate with thought. This is the function they were made for. They are the dough, and they dislike ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... complications of predestination and free will did not appear reasonable to him. Marg'et Ann thought it very daring of him to exact reasonableness of those in spiritual high places. She would as soon have thought of criticising the Creator for making the sky blue instead of green as for any of His immutable decrees as set forth in the Confession of Faith. It did not prevent her liking Lloyd Archer that her father and several of the elders whom he had ventured to engage in religious discussion pronounced him a dangerous ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... the patient and were told that he had just that morning begun a four days' gakt[n]ta which, among other provisions, excluded all visitors. It was of no use to argue that we had come by the express request of Tsiskwa. The laws of the gakt[n]ta were as immutable as those of the Medes and Persians, and neither doctor nor patient could hope for favorable results from the treatment unless the regulations were enforced to the letter. But although we might not enter the house, there was no reason why we should not talk to the old man, so seats were placed ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... deepening in Karen. She saw guile on Mrs. Talcott's storm-beaten and immutable face; and she heard specious reassurance in her voice. Mrs. Talcott was dangerous. She had set her heart on this last desire of her passionless, impersonal life and had determined that she and Gregory should come together again. It was this desire ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... come to the same temple to receive the same consecration, can they be confounded with the multitude of human events, to be buried and lost in the endless annals? To what, O great God! if not to the persistence of Thy immutable decrees, can we attribute, on this earth, always so changing and mobile, the supernatural gift ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... and left her groping and alone. It was not like him to treat her thus. It hurt her subtly, wounding her as she had never expected to be wounded, shaking her faith in what she had ever believed to be immutable. And then she remembered the physical weakness with which he had wrestled so long, and a great pity flooded her heart. She would not let herself be hurt any longer. Was he not reserving his strength for her sake? And ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... something other than particular things, which particular things partake of. Not being particular, it cannot itself exist in the world of sense. Moreover it is not fleeting or changeable like the things of sense: it is eternally itself, immutable and indestructible. ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... sense, natural. Thus the wildest visions of poetry, the unsubstantial forms of painting, and the mysterious harmonies of music, that seem to disembody the spirit, and make us creatures of the air,—even these, unreal as they are, may all have their foundation in immutable truth; and we may moreover know of this truth by its own evidence. Of this species of evidence we shall have occasion to speak hereafter. But there is another kind of growth, which may well be called unnatural; we mean, of ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... formed a distinct government, but was attached to the old province of Africa. From 25 B.C. the Roman province of Africa comprised the whole of the region between the mouth of the Ampsaga (Wad Rummel, Wad el Kebir) on the west, and the two tumuli called the altars of the Philaeni, the immutable boundary between Tripolitana and Cyrenaica, on the east (Tissot ii. 261). In the partition of the government of the provinces of the Roman empire between the senate and the emperor, Africa fell to the senate, and was henceforth administered by a proconsul. Subordinate to him were the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Saxons, etc.) do not take effect till they have been accepted by popular assemblies in the provinces which they concern. And such revisions are infrequent. The royal prerogative in legislation is limited by a popular prejudice, which regards the customary law as sacred and immutable. The Capitularies are chiefly administrative ordinances; the "law of the land," which is the same everywhere and for all persons, is an ideal to be realised in England alone of medieval states. Elsewhere the king's law is a supplement, a postscript; the privilege of the free man is to live ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... group. But the pressure of political independence has been latterly bringing into prominence the idea of Race. Odysseus, from whose book I quote again, gives us the very curious fact that even race is not immutable, it changes like religion, with the political movement; it has become a question of political expediency. When a separate State has been organised, as in Bulgaria, or when a league for shaking off the Turkish yoke is being organised, as in Macedonia, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... been advanced be true, that besides this beauty or truth which is formed on the uniform eternal and immutable laws of nature, and which of necessity can be but one; that besides this one immutable verity there are likewise what we have called apparent or secondary truths proceeding from local and temporary prejudices, fancies, fashions, or accidental connection of ideas; if it appears that these last ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... vicar been a poor man with a large family, doubtless things would have been uncomfortable enough to stir the villagers out of their habitual philosophic acceptance of the "rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate" as an inevitable and immutable law. But they couldn't actively dislike either squire or parson, and although the agricultural labourer is slow of speech he is not lacking in shrewdness, and those at Redmarley realised that things would be much worse than ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... but that which tells of its riches, its industry, its valour, the good government of its princes and the irresistible might of its gods, and the world, filled with envy or with fear, deeming its good fortune immutable, never once applies to it, even in thought, the usual commonplaces on the instability of human things. Suddenly an ill wind, blowing up from the distant horizon, bursts upon it in destructive squalls, and it is overthrown in the twinkling of an eye, amid the glare of lightning, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... delighting our age with the same startle of newness and beauty that pleased our youth. Is it his thought? It has the shifting inward lustre of diamond. Is it his feeling? It is as delicate as the impressions of fossil ferns. He seems to have caught and fixed for ever in immutable grace the most evanescent and intangible of our intuitions, the very ripple-marks on the remotest shores of being. But this intensity of mood which insures high quality is by its very nature incapable of prolongation, and Wordsworth, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... are unwilling to let the thrifty reap the rewards of their savings and abstinence," lectured the Political Economist of the standard school. "The law of wages and capital is immutable. More science ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... mobility, established certain rules for the perpetual direction of that motion; so, when he created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... not how long, until she heard Mrs. Bywank's step going the rounds below; then rose and went on again. But as Wych Hazel's little foot passed slowly up from stair to stair, one thing in her mind came out in clear black and white, of one thing she was sure: she must lay hold of those immutable things after which she had striven before. Mere hoping would not do, she must make sure. In the happiness of the last weeks, she had said, like David in his prosperity, "I shall never be moved," where was it all now? Above all other thoughts, even to-night, this ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... Nature are Immutable and Eternall, For Injustice, Ingratitude, Arrogance, Pride, Iniquity, Acception of persons, and the rest, can never be made lawfull. For it can never be that Warre shall preserve ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... describe my loss, in again placing before your eyes a portraiture like this? Look, man, look—and read my answer in the smile, which, denying me, teaches me, in this case, to arm myself with a denial as immutable ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the wind had begun "so low, so low" . . . and carried it away on its moaning voice. Change is the very essence of life; and life may be probation for a better life—who knows? But if she could have engraved, immutable, on her soul, the hours in which her husband loved her. ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... March, 1834, leaving George Sand with Pagello in Venice. The sentimental exaggeration continued, as we see from the letters exchanged between Musset and George Sand. When crossing the Simplon the immutable grandeur of the Alps struck Alusset with admiration, and he thought of his two "great friends." His head was evidently turned by the heights from which he looked at things. George Sand wrote to him: "I am not giving you any message from Pagello, except that ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... a new revelation; for, from his almost immutable reserve, I had supposed that the Commodore never meddled immediately with the concerns of the ship, but left all that to the captain. But the longer we live, the more we learn ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... sense of fitness protests; but nothing is so rare as to meet a being or an object of the present time. There is even very little of the clothing of the day; and that little the inhabitants adapt in a way to their immutable customs, their unchangeable physiognomies. The public square is filled with Breton costumes, which artists flock to draw; these stand out in wonderful relief upon the scene around them. The whiteness of the linen worn by the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... physical and worldly matters. It is because the Sabbath thus harmonizes the physical and moral laws of our being that the injunction concerning it is placed among the ten great commandments, each of which represents some one of the immutable ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... to the twentieth century author, notwithstanding its apparent caprice, has always been governed by immutable laws. But these laws were not recognised in the benighted epoch in which we happen to live at present. On the contrary, Fashion is thought a whim, a sort of shuttlecock for the weak-minded of both sexes to make rise and fall, bound and rebound with the battledore called—social influence. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... naval commander can secure his good name, who knowing the paramount necessity of regularity and strict discipline in a ship of war, adopts an appropriate plan for the attainment of these objects, and remains constant and immutable in the execution. To an Athenian, who, in praising a public functionary, had said, that every one either applauded him or left him without censure, a philosopher replied, "How seldom then must he ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the clean white cell, And we talk as ever — am I not the same? With our hearts we love, immutable, You without pity, I without shame. We talk as of old; as of old you go Out under the sky, and laughing, ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... the philosophers of the eighteenth century responded unequivocally in the negative. Scientists, of whom the period was full, had done much to exalt the notions that the universe is run in accordance with immutable laws of nature and that man must forever utilize his reasoning faculties. It was not long before the philosophers were applying the scientists' notions to social conditions. "Is this reasonable?" they asked, or, "Is that rational?" Montesquieu insisted that divine-right monarchy is unreasonable. ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... of the rock, dragged them long distances and placed them one upon another, so that these buildings oppress while they inspire, for there is in them no freedom, no spontaneity, no individuality, but everywhere the felt presence of an iron conventionality, of a stern immutable law. ...
— The Beautiful Necessity • Claude Fayette Bragdon
... supposition of a Providence, without sacrilegious presumption. The laws for which he contends must have had no author to establish, and can have no superior will to control them; they had no beginning, and can have no end; they cannot be reversed, suspended, or interfered with; they are necessary, immutable, and eternal, not subordinate to God, but independent of Him; they are, in short, nothing less than Destiny or Fate, the same that Cudworth describes as the Democritic, Physiological, or Atheistic Fate, which consists in "the material necessity of all things ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... resembling one another; that at first they were confused, but afterwards brought into order by divine intellect. Xenophanes, who was a little more ancient still, asserted that all things were only one single being, and that that being was immutable and a god, not born, but everlasting, of a globular form. Parmenides considered that it is fire that moves the earth, which is formed out of it. Leucippus thought that there was a plenum, and a vacuum; Democritus resembled him in this ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... said Count Timascheff, "whether such a new asteroid would not be subject to ordinary mechanical laws, and whether, once started, it would not have an orbit that must be immutable?" ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... use lubricating oil to overcome friction on a machine," he concluded. "You have to subsidize a railroad by land grants to enter a new country. By the same immutable law you must offer extraordinary inducements to extraordinary men. Otherwise they will not take ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... it is not, as is the Congress of the United States, restrained within a very limited sphere of action; it is not, as are both the Congress and the State Legislatures of the Union, bound hand and foot by the articles of a rigid Constitution; it is not compelled to respect any immutable maxims of legislation. Hence the Victorian Parliament—in this resembling its creator, the British Parliament—exercises an amount of legislative freedom unknown to most foreign representative assemblies. It ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... celebrated Bostonian identified the Constitution with the law of Nature, as Montesquieu called the Civil Law, written Reason. He said: "It is the glory of the British prince and the happiness of all his subjects, that their constitution hath its foundation in the immutable laws of Nature; and as the supreme legislative, as well as the supreme executive, derives its authority from that constitution, it should seem that no laws can be made or executed that are repugnant to ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... order, and received on the 14th day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years—a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... be a writer, but art not yet a philosopher, my Friedrich. Thou art not fast-set on thy philosophic equilibrium. Thou hast knocked down three books and a stool since thou hast come in the shop. Be calm, my child: consider that even if truly also the fast-bound-eternally-immutable-condition of everlastingly-varying-circumstance—" ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... son," she said at last, "why will you persist in approaching me upon this subject? You know my opinions. I have not hesitated to speak frankly, and it is not my habit to change them; in this instance they are as fixed and as immutable as the polar star. The traditions and customs of four hundred years are behind me. Our family—you know your father and I were cousins, and are descended from the same stock—have been called the 'loyal Talbots.' I cannot contemplate with equanimity the ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... every great teacher, whether we believe in them as especially "divine" or as mere humans who have attained to the realization of their godhood (avatars,) a complete unity of purpose, and if these teachers differ in method of attainment, it is only because of the immutable fact that there can be no one and ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... birthright, based on the broad charter of common humanity, and forfeitable only by individual worthlessness or deliberate refusal. Why is your idea of earthly justice so widely different—since the principle of justice must be absolute and immutable? Yet while the Church teaches you to pray, "Thy will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven," she tacitly countenances widening disparity in condition, and openly sanctions that fearful abuse which dooms the poor man's unborn children to the mundane ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... victoriously against forces of twice and even thrice their number. In Thomas Carlyle he found an enthusiastic biographer, somewhat prone, however, to find for actions of questionable public morality a justification in "immutable laws" and "veracities," which to other eyes is a little akin to Wordsworth's apology for Rob Roy. But whether we accept Carlyle's estimate of him or no, the amazing skill, tenacity, and success with which he stood at bay virtually against all Europe, while ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... definite statement of principles, absolute and apparently immutable. When a man on the street walks up to another and wantonly insults him, the law is, that the insulted party must turn and walk away. If the matter came before a jury they would never convict ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... reason is here suggested for consulting the history of Protestant institutions, when I am going to speak of the object and nature of University Education. It will serve to remind you, Gentlemen, that I am concerned with questions, not simply of immutable truth, but of practice and expedience. It would ill have become me to undertake a subject, on which points of dispute have arisen among persons so far above me in authority and name, in relation to a state ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... themselves and revolve Round the great central life, which is love: these dissolve And resume themselves, here assume beauty, there terror; And the phantasmagoria of infinite error, And endless complexity, lasts but a while; Life's self, the immortal, immutable smile Of God, on the soul in the deep heart of Heaven Lives changeless, unchanged: and our morning and even ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... it were only the Duke—Ah!" She stopped, a new alarm in her eyes. She searched my face eagerly. Of deliberate purpose I set it to an immutable stolidity. ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... immutable; Before, and after all, the first, and last: That moving all is yet immoveable; Great without quantity, in whose forecast, Things past are present, things to come are past; Swift without motion, to whose open eye The hearts of wicked men unbreasted lie; At once absent, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... accordance with an immutable law of nature. Every year a large number of birds perish in an attempt to change their home; every spring-time many flowers die at their birth. The law of the survival of the fittest is impartial and inexorable. The Creator said centuries ago "the soul that sinneth shall surely ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... come to call for "a halt" in scientific speculations, and a return to the phenomenal facts of nature as the true and only basis on which to formulate the immutable laws of life, matter, motion, etc., the writer submits this volume with trustful confidence ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... see the new criticism prevail, firmly established upon a broad and deep foundation. People generally will soon understand that writers should be judged, not according to rules and species, which are contrary to nature and art, but according to the immutable principles of the art of composition, and the special laws of their individual temperaments. The sound judgment of all men will be ashamed of the criticism which broke Pierre Corneille on the wheel, gagged Jean Racine, and which ridiculously rehabilitated ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the aspirations of our hearts simultaneously ascended to the mercy-seat of the great Jehovah! The remembrance of emotions like these are ineffaceable by care or sorrow, and only blotted out by the immutable hand of death. These halcyon hours of budding existence are to memory as the oasis of the desert, where we may recline beneath the soothing influence of their umbrage, and quaff in the goblet of retrospection the lucid draught that refreshes for the moment, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... under the oath and seal of the Omnipotent; they believed themselves rich with an irrevocable benediction which set them above the stars; and immediately they discovered humility. It was only another example of the same immutable paradox. It is always the ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... "When Him whose brows were bound with Victory I saw come conquering through this prison dark. He set the shade of our first parent free, With Abel, and the builder of the ark, And him that gave the laws immutable, And Abraham, obedient patriarch, David the king, and ancient Israel, His father and his children at his side, And the wife Rachel that he loved so well, And gave them Paradise,—and before these men None tasted of ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... of the Union is a measurement of the many elements of which it is composed—a political union of diverse States, an economic union of varying interests, an intellectual union of common convictions, and a moral union of immutable ideals. ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... in this world is absolutely immutable—the human emotions least of all, perhaps—Billy Louise did not hold changeless her broken faith in Ward. She saw it broken into fragments before the evidence of her own eyes, and the fragments ground to dust beneath ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... Nature proceeds through practice to strengthen and augment the remaining senses. For this reason the blind often hear with greater ease and distinctness than other people. The sense of smell becomes almost a new faculty to penetrate the tangle and vagueness of things. Thus, according to an immutable law, the senses assist ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... hath not yet arrived. If it be Thy will, give me permission to take them back to Egypt, that they may continue in slavery for the three hundred and fourteen years that are left, and Thy word be fulfilled. As Thou are immutable, so ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... and knew appalling glimpses of that everlasting truth, too passionless to be cynical, that the hopes of man and his fears, his loves and hates, his strivings and passivity, are all one in the measured and immutable processes of Time.... ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... know not whence or wherefore, rose, But I resumed my ancient powers at length; 3075 My spirit felt again like one of those Like thine, whose fate it is to make the woes Of humankind their prey—what was this cave? Its deep foundation no firm purpose knows Immutable, resistless, strong to save, 3080 Like mind while yet it ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... one would, to this it must logically come. Call the three Godheads by what names one liked, still they must remain One; must administer one justice; must admit only one law. In that law, no human weakness or error could exist; by its essence it was infinite, eternal, immutable. There was no crack and no cranny in the system, through which human frailty could hope for escape. One was forced from corner to corner by a remorseless logic until one ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... according to the light in which they are regarded. We are continually informed that Utility is an uncertain standard, which every different person interprets differently, and that there is no safety but in the immutable, ineffaceable, and unmistakeable dictates of Justice, which carry their evidence in themselves, and are independent of the fluctuations of opinion. One would suppose from this that on questions of justice there could ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... credit in Louisiana when offered as the basis of an action in debt against a resident of that State who had not been served by process in the New York action. Pressed with the argument that by "the immutable principles of justice" no man's rights should be impaired without his being given an opportunity to defend them, the Court ruled that, interpreted in the light of the principles of "international law and comity" as they existed in 1790, the act of Congress of that year did not reach the case.[29] ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity. Nay, even that school which is most accused of atheism doth most demonstrate religion; that is, the school of Leucippus and Democritus and Epicurus. For it is a thousand times more credible, that four mutable elements, and one immutable fifth essence, duly and eternally placed, need no God, than that an army of infinite small portions, or seeds unplaced, should have produced this order and beauty, without a divine marshal. The Scripture ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... is the pyramid of Cheops, whose immutable base we had to skirt on our way hither. In the moonlight we could see the separate blocks, so enormous, so regular, so even in their layers, which lie one above the other to infinity, getting ever smaller and smaller, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... made excessively large so as to receive the shoulder. The Moroccans [Footnote: The Moroccans ... in this country. What similar statement was made in "An Arab Fisherman"?] never have the slightest idea of changing the form adopted by their ancestors, and the shape of their musket is as immutable as all things else are in this country; it seems like a dream to see them at this day making such quantities of these ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... and the cumpany which he conducted; and that because the one had Goddis promisse that thei should multiplie, and the other had his commandiment to enter into such dangeris. I wold your Wisedomes should considder, that our God remaneth one, and is immutable; and that the Church of Christ Jesus hath the same promeis of protectioun and defence that Israell had of multiplicatioun; and farther, that no less caus have ye to enter in your formar interprise, then Moses had to go to the presence of Pharao; for your subjectis, yea, your brethrein ar oppressed, ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... therefore how properly inflicted by the supreme Governor of the world.... They will rejoice when they see him who is their Father and eternal portion so glorious in his justice. The sight of this strict and immutable justice of God will render him amiable and adorable in their eyes. It will occasion rejoicing in them, as they will have the greater sense of their own happiness, by seeing the contrary misery. It is the nature of pleasure and pain, of happiness and ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... dogma and hierarchy; the Summa of St. Thomas Aquinas was the endeavour to settle forever changeless paths for the human mind to walk in. To that ancient world as a whole the perfect was the finished, and therefore it was immutable. ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick
... modes of practice found their earliest illustration in ancient Egypt. Magic, the first of these, represented the attitude of primitive man to nature, and really was his religion. He had no idea of immutable laws, but regarded the world about him as changeable and fickle like himself, and "to make life go as he wished, he must be able to please and propitiate or to coerce these ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... as a rock, and as trenchant as a sword in defence of his patron's claims. But now, having in his hands that short, pithy letter from Owen Fitzgerald, he could not but look at the matter in a more Christian light. After all, was not justice, immutable justice, better than law? And would not the property be enough for both of them? Might not law and justice make a compromise? Let Owen be the baronet, and take a slice of four or five thousand, and ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... of the manzanita brush. Often he fell through and had to step up again; many a branch broke with him, letting him down; but for the most part he stepped from fork to fork, on branch after branch, with balance of an Indian and the patience of a man whose purpose was sustaining and immutable. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... painted according to two methods. There is the stage method. According to that each character is duly marshalled at first, and ticketed; we know with an immutable certainty that at the right crises each one will reappear and act his part, and, when the curtain falls, all will stand before it bowing. There is a sense of satisfaction in this, and of completeness. But there is another method—the method of the life we all lead. ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... theology had stood solidly on the biblical assertion that mankind had sprung from one man and one woman, and that in the beginning every species was fixed and immutable. Aristotle, three hundred years before Christ, had suggested that, by cross-fertilization and change of environment, new species had been and were being evoked. But the Church had declared Aristotle a heathen, and in every school and college ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... appeared to the imaginations of the people of the district of which he was almost the supreme master. There were riots—fierce conflicts extending over days—then dreary sentences of lengthy imprisonments, with gaol tragedies; but still this strange, dry, inarticulate, obstinate figure remained immutable, always invisible, unapproachable, obdurate, spectral. Even the Tory leaders were disgusted and wearied, and Mr. Balfour was careful, in the very crisis and agony of his fight with the National League, to disavow all sympathy with the strange being that was bringing to his assistance all the mighty ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... distant lightning. She paused upon the verge of the bank at the point where it entered the clearing; at the point where the wilderness crowded menacingly her little outpost of civilization. Panting, she stood and stared out over the smooth flowing, immutable river. ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... a free agent, unconscious of restraint in his volitions by the execution of the immutable decree of God; and it is not possible for him, in any instance, to avoid fulfilling that decree: yet the law of God—not his decree—is the rule of man's conduct, and the standard ...
— 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
... Mr Meldrum, drawing her fondly to his side, and speaking as if they were alone together. "You have taught me a lesson, and I will repine no longer about the immutable. It is best to look forward, as you say. We ought to recollect that all our days must not necessarily be gloomy because for the moment they ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... it comes— As the sign of the covenant made long ago 'Twixt Godhood and thought, when, abating its flow, The sea of eternity brought into sight Time's far distant mountains, and safe on their height There rested, by God to humanity brought, The Ark of eternal, immutable Thought! ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... distinct; just as when we rise through the gradations of the moral world, the idea of order becomes more difficult to grasp. It was the last task of the astronomer to show eternal change even in the grand order of our Solar System. It is the crown of philosophy to see immutable law even in the complex action of human life. In the latter, indeed, it is but the first germs which are clear. No rational thinker hopes to discover more than some few primary actions of law, and some approximative ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... as may be the leading features of land and sea on the globe, they are not immutable. Some of the finest mud is doubtless carried to indefinite distances from the coast by marine currents, and we are taught by deep-sea dredgings that in clear water at depths equalling the height of the Alps ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell
... the flowers were dead Ere yet the evening sun was set: But years shall see the cypress spread, Immutable as my regret. ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... in one glad moment—by the one chosen person. There was a coldness in my heart when I realized that the time had come even for the child who had tripped so lightly into our lives so short a time ago, to pass away from us into that other and more complex world. It was the decree of sex, nature's immutable law, sundering playfellows, severing friendships, driving its unwilling victims into opposite corners of the world, with all the pitilessness of natural law. Nevertheless, the thought of these things as I looked at Isobel made me sad. She was young indeed for these days to come, for the shadows ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... all potentiality in God obliges Him to be IMMUTABLE. He is actuality, through and through. Were there anything potential about Him, He would either lose or gain by its actualization, and either loss or gain would contradict his perfection. He cannot, therefore, change. Furthermore, He is IMMENSE, BOUNDLESS; ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... are by-gones; the past is, indeed, immutable, and the future is equally fixed, and ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... another respect that the organization of the animal does not imply an immutable type of work. Before beginning the sticky spiral, the Epeirae first spin an auxiliary intended to strengthen the stays. This spiral, formed of plain, non-glutinous thread, starts from the centre and winds in rapidly-widening circles to the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... of their work seems to be to earn them a fictitious reputation for learning in their own time. The naturalists endeavour to classify the animal outbreaks of violence, ruse and revenge, in the present relations between nations and individual men, as immutable laws of nature. Historians are anxiously engaged in proving that every age has its own particular right and special conditions,— with the view of preparing the groundwork of an apology for the day that is to come, when our generation will be called to judgment. The science of government, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... two beings of the same kind. This, though it seems easier to conceive in simple substances or modes; yet, when reflected on, is not more difficult in compound ones, if care be taken to what it is applied: v.g. let us suppose an atom, i.e. a continued body under one immutable superficies, existing in a determined time and place; it is evident, that, considered in any instant of its existence, it is in that instant the same with itself. For, being at that instant what it is, and nothing else, it is the same, and so ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... God do I acknowledge and confess, in three persons glorified, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, but in one nature and substance, in one glory and kingdom undivided. He then is in three persons one God, without beginning, and without end, eternal and everlasting, increate, immutable and incorporeal, invisible, infinite, incomprehensible, alone good and righteous, who created all things out of nothing, whether visible or invisible. First, he made the heavenly and invisible ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... those which have been set afoot, into the possible dissociative action of the great heat of the sun upon our elements, are not only legitimate, but are likely to yield results which, whether affirmative or negative, will be of great importance. The idea that atoms are absolutely ingenerable and immutable 'manufactured articles' stands on the same sort of foundation as the idea that biological species are 'manufactured articles' stood thirty years ago; and the supposed constancy of the elementary atoms, during the enormous lapse of time measured by the existence of our universe, is of ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... of insects devouring one another on a little atom of clay. This true image seemed to annihilate his misfortunes, by making him sensible of the nothingness of his own being, and of that of Babylon. His soul launched out into infinity, and, detached from the senses, contemplated the immutable order of the universe. But when afterwards, returning to himself, and entering into his own heart, he considered that Astarte had perhaps died for him, the universe vanished from his sight, and he beheld nothing in the whole compass of nature but Astarte; ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... effects are sustained, and under the operation of which they are beginning to combine into a habit of holiness. He rejoices in the hope of its duration to the end of life, solely he would say from the confidence he has in the immutable love and faithfulness of the Holy Being, who has wrought so great a work in him. And let philosophers cavil and doubt, if they must; but this man's example is a refutation in fact of a thousand of their sceptical theories. He is a new man, and the change ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... same extent. We haven't had time yet to number off all the little subdivisions and make rules for them, nor to elaborate the niceties of an immutable system. No ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... her parents growing old, and of change and chance breaking up the wonted calm of her little household circle. That the march of Time should be so irresistible, that his flight could not be stayed or slackened by pope or kaiser, that his decrees should be so immutable, his destiny so inexorable, and that the youngest must soon cease to be young, and the middle-aged become old—or die! this was the thought that preyed on her very soul. She could not endure the conviction that her own father must one day walk with a less elastic step, and smile ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... hair corned up on the forehead in the form of a crown, and a beard plaited in the Asiatic fashion. As for the head, which is almost entirely executed in round relief, that denotes in an undoubted manner the Hellenistic influence, united, however, with the immutable and somewhat hierarchical traditions of Phenician art. The arms are naked as far as to the elbow, and the feet, summarily indicated, emerge from a long sheath-form robe. As for the arms and hands, they project slightly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... again, with immutable punctuality, the silver-chiming clock told out the hours; fair hours made perfect by the spirit of order moving in its round. It moved in the garden, and the lawn was clean and smooth; the roses rioted ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... passage through the Red Sea, their settlement in the Holy Land, the institutions and ceremonies of the law, the splendor of Jerusalem in its most flourishing times, the magnificence of the temple, and the supreme, eternal and immutable nature of their worship, are related by Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pliny the Elder, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 10. October, 1880 • Various
... persuaded that Steven also had his consolation. He knew that she cared for him. She conceived this knowledge of theirs as constituting an immaterial and immutable possession of each other. And it did not strike her that this knowledge might be less richly compensating to ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... illustrating that beautiful harmony, every where prevailing, every where unbroken. All this influenced every thing, 'and mind and gross matter, each performed their parts, in relative proportions, and according to the immutable laws of progress.' ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... is—over Space, over Time; While the Human Will rocks, like a reed, to and fro, Lives the Will of the Holy—A Purpose Sublime, A Thought woven over creation below; Changing and shifting the All we inherit, But changeless through all One Immutable Spirit! ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief) |
