"Justifiable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hercules, but not the limits of my power." True to his old principles, Napoleon refused to "call off the thieves," as Joseph besought him, and declared that, according to the laws of war, when a town was captured under arms pillage was justifiable. ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... in the best, an emulous desire of high offices and glory, in consequence of which the most bitter enmities have often arisen between the dearest friends. For great dissensions, and those in most instances justifiable, arise when some request is made of friends which is improper, as, for instance, that they should become either the ministers of their lust or their supporters in the perpetration of wrong; and they who refuse to do so, it matters not however ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... Knight Errant'), would have given L600 for his 'Caledonian Sketches' (1808). In spite, however, of this proof of damages, the jury found, in Carr's action against Messrs. Hood and Sharpe, the publishers of 'My Pocket Book', that the criticism was fair and justifiable (1808). Carr published, in 1811, his 'Descriptive Travels in the Southern and Eastern Parts of Spain', without mentioning Byron's name. Byron concluded his MS. of 'Childe Harold', Canto I. with three stanzas ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... impossible, and the Reich and its laws had, even Officially, become phantasmal! That, in fact, was Maria Theresa's inarticulate inborn notion; and gradually, as her successes on the field rose higher, it became ever more articulate: till this of "the SEYN-SOLLENDE Kaiser" put a crown on it. Justifiable, if the Reich with its Laws were a chattel, or rebellious vassal, of Austria; not justifiable otherwise. "Hear ye?" answered almost all the Reich (eight Kurfursts, with the one exception of Kur-Hanover: ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... should, that you have to say "Yes" or "No" to a challenge to fight, say "No" if you can—only take care you make it clear to yourselves why you say "No." It's a proof of the highest courage, if done from true Christian motives. It's quite right and justifiable, if done from a simple aversion to physical pain and danger. But don't say "No" because you fear a licking, and say or think it's because you fear God, for that's neither Christian nor honest. And if you do fight, fight it out; and don't give in while ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... well-informed and clever writer like the late Harold Frederic in the hands of Christian Scientists (a sort of sealing with his blood of the contemptuous disbelief in and dislike of doctors he had bitterly expressed in his books), the scathing and quite justifiable exposure of medical practice in the novel by Mr. Maarten Maartens entitled The New Religion: all these trouble the doctor very little, and are in any case well set off by the popularity of Sir Luke Fildes' famous picture, and by the verdicts in which juries from time to time express their ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... Elmore's regret did reflect a monstrous and distorted image of his conduct. He had really acted the part of a prudent and conscientious man; he was perfectly justifiable at every step: but in the retrospect those steps which we can perfectly justify sometimes seem to have cost so terribly that we look back even upon our sinful stumblings with better heart. Heaven knows how such things will be at the last day; but at ...
— A Fearful Responsibility and Other Stories • William D. Howells
... that as soon as Shakespeare has to find, I will not say a magical expression for courage, but even an adequate and worthy expression, he fails absolutely. And is the patriotism in "Ye, good yeomen, whose limbs were made in England" a "noble patriotism"? or is it the simplest, the crudest, the least justifiable form of patriotism? There is a noble patriotism founded on the high and generous things done by men of one's own blood, just as there is the vain and empty self-glorification of "limbs made in England," as if English limbs were better than ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... temporarily bereft her of the power of motion. An extraordinary sight met her eyes. Round the end of the kitchen burst Mr. Pryor, running as stout, pompous Mr. Pryor had not run in years, with terror imprinted on every lineament—a terror quite justifiable, for behind him, like an avenging fate, came Susan, with a huge, smoking iron pot grasped in her hands, and an expression in her eye that boded ill to the object of her indignation, if she should overtake him. ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... proved justifiable, for the trail had lost itself in a mountain stream, up or down which the outlaws must have filed. A month later and the creek would have been dry. But it was still spring. The mountain rains had not ceased feeding the brook, and of this the outlaws had taken advantage ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... regarded in his troop rather as a hound that will "riot" is regarded in the pack; but when the —th came back to Brighton and to barracks, the evil spirit of rebellion began to get a little hotter in him under th Corporal's "Idees Napoliennes" of justifiable persecution. Warne indisputably provoked his man in a cold, iron, strictly lawful sort of manner, moreover, all the more irritating to a temper ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... for almost every one has been somewhere, and has written about it. The only compromise I can suggest is, that we shall go somewhere, and not learn anything about it. The instinct of the public against any thing like information in a volume of this kind is perfectly justifiable; and the reader will perhaps discover that this is illy adapted for a text-book in schools, or for the use of competitive ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... account, you know, to rescue my child from a fate far worse than death, and it may be some consolation to you, young men, to recollect, at the close of your own careers, which I trust will yet be long and happy, that a parent, in his last moments, found a consolation in the justifiable hopes he had placed on your ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... these States are, by their rulers, declared out of the Union, without appeal to the people; they have commenced the war, and now they are regarded by the whole world as in a state of rebellion, not of justifiable revolution. They would submit to no method of adjustment that we could honorably allow. They desired war, as they have been for years preparing for it, at the expense of the Government, and in its service and trust, ...
— Government and Rebellion • E. E. Adams
... mother, the more so as I believe that she thinks she has been doing right, and has my interest sincerely at heart: she appears to consider that an alliance with people of rank cannot be purchased too dear, and that every attempt is justifiable to secure for me such an advantage. Little does she know me: if she forgets, I never shall, that I am the daughter of a Greenwich pensioner, and never would ally myself with those whose relations would look upon me as a disgrace to their family. No, Tom; even if I were so ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... tried to fancy him beside her, and acted the scene over again, "making believe," childish fashion, that she stood on tiptoe attempting to reach up to his mouth—a very long way!—and there breathing out the "Yes" in a perfectly justifiable and unquestionable fashion. And then she laughed at her own conceit—the foolish little wife!—and tripped off into the drawing-room, lest the old butler, who always went round the house at midnight to see that all was safe, might catch her at her ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... there was profound silence, then a general cry of protest arose. To be defrauded of their Virginia Reel for no justifiable reason, and sent to bed before ten o'clock like a lot of naughty children when they really had not done a ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... cupidity or covetousness, and lead even to the appropriation of what is not our own. Kleptomania is met with in the book-worm or the antiquarian, as well as in the feminine lover of dress or those in poverty and distress. Firmness may become obstinacy; the justifiable love of self may, by abuse, become pride; and a proper and chaste wish for the approbation of others may be turned into the most absurd of vanities. Even religion itself may be carried to uncharitableness, fanaticism ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide. Thus, in a case lately decided before Miller, J., Doe presented Roe a subscription paper, and urged the claims of suffering humanity. Roe replied by asking, When charity was like a top? It was in evidence that ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 1653. It proclaimed that Cromwell's Interim Dictatorship and Protectorate had been an interruption of the natural course of things, dexterously leaving it an open question whether that interruption had been necessary or justifiable, but calling on all men, now that Oliver was dead and his greatness gone with him, to regard his rule as exceptional and extraordinary, and to revert to the old Commonwealth. It involved, therefore, a very ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... would have been killed by another hand in either case; but the attitude of the public would not have been the same in either case. The public would have considered the killing of Mazarine before the eyes of the world as justifiable homicide; its dislike of the man would have induced it to add ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... moderation and Christian charity. He arose from the blow, adjusted his clothes, and made no attempt at retaliation at all—merely muttering a few words about "taking summary vengeance at the first convenient opportunity,"—a natural and very justifiable ebullition of anger, which meant nothing, however, and, beyond doubt, was no sooner given vent to ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... contempt for the sheriff was too great to permit his speaking directly to Minter, "will you explain to the sheriff that my determination to have satisfaction does not come from the fact that he killed my father, but because of the manner of the killing? To the sheriff it seems justifiable. To me it seems a murder. Having that thought, there is only one thing to do. One of us must not leave this place!" Gainor bowed, but the ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... the Liberal Prime Minister, did not think that the conquest of the Transvaal, supposing it to be justifiable, would pay for its cost, and he accordingly made a treaty with the people of that country (1881). Lord Beaconsfield thought this policy a serious mistake, and that it would lead to trouble later on. He said, "We ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... fly and introduce him to the sugar-basin. He will then pull off his wings in order to see what he will do without them. The fly wanders round beneath the sugar-basin, his small mind absorbed in a somewhat justifiable surprise, and then the child loses all interest in him. Thus the ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... Alec and Aunt Janet down on the homestead; and our housekeeper, who belonged to the Island and was now returning to it, took charge of us on the journey. I fear she had an anxious trip of it, poor woman! She was constantly in a quite justifiable terror lest we should be lost or killed; she must have felt great relief when she reached Charlottetown and handed us over to the keeping of Uncle Alec. Indeed, she said ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... producing in quantity. Orders for four thousand Vickers had been placed the preceding December, but deliveries had not been made by the beginning of April. Either because of jealousy in the department, or because of justifiable technical reasons, various experts demanded a better machine gun than any used by the Allies, and Secretary Baker took the responsibility of delaying matters so as to hold the competition recommended by a board of investigation. This competition ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... historian of high distinction, could not see his way with his colleagues, and retired from their company. Another, who came from the working-classes, is understood to have resigned from thought of the sufferings which any war, however justifiable, must inevitably inflict upon the poor. A third, a lawyer in a position of the utmost authority, is believed to have had grave misgivings about our legal right to call Germany to account. And I have heard that a fourth, who had been prominent as a pacifist in the days of an earlier conflict, ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... here, more or less about the time the fire was noticed. What do you think of that for circumstantial evidence, Mr. Connelly? And in addition to this, I can point out his incentive—which I prefer to hold in reserve for the present. He might think his incentive justifiable; but the Bench might differ with him." And El Corregidor held me with his glittering eye while ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... been an age-long battle between the Germans and antiquity, i.e., a battle against the old culture. It is certain that precisely what is best and deepest in the German resists it. The main point, however, is that such resistance is only justifiable in the case of the Romanised culture; for this culture, even at that time, was a falling-off from something more profound and noble. It is this latter that the Germans ...
— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... told me why. Of course, I did not grasp all the things he told me at once, but I listened and felt comforted; I began to feel that perhaps I might amount to something, might have some life of my own, and that my rebellion was perhaps justifiable. I began to understand why work was so objectionable to me and why I rebelled against the authority of my parents. My conceptions of freedom were crude, but I began to feel that my revolt was just, and was based upon the terrible injustice ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... were justifiable; as long as the two below were in sight, and as often as they came round, they did not exchange word or look with each other. Schilsky frowned sulkily, and his loose-knitted body seemed to hang together more loosely than usual, while as for Louise—Maurice staring hard from his ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... learn no experience thus; but when they form a circle of their own and the same expansion happens, they do as their parents did, saying to themselves, "My parents lost my confidence by insisting on what was not really important; but my objections are reasonable and justifiable, and my children must trust me to ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that the title is justifiable. Conceding that this sudden 'good' ending looks like a concession and certainly is a constructive weakness, yet in the inwardness of the subject it is excellently motivated by the typically mediaeval attitude of Kolbein to salvation and the Church as its sole bestower. Notwithstanding the ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... which they could not penetrate; and their spears, their shields, their canoes, and their persons, were equally exposed to the violence of the new settlers. It was easy to foresee the consequences of such conduct: the natives at first discovered symptoms of justifiable reserve, and subsequently adopted steps of an hostile complexion, several unfortunate convicts being found murdered in the woods. In vain did the governor issue order after order, and proclamation after proclamation; ...
— The Present Picture of New South Wales (1811) • David Dickinson Mann
... "tendency-criticism" has fallen into disrepute; hence we must also free ourselves from the pedantry and hair-splitting which were its after effects. In consequence of the (erroneous) assumptions of the Tuebingen school of critics a suspicious examination of the texts was justifiable and obligatory on their part. (3) Individual difficulties about the date of a document ought not to have the result of casting suspicion on it, when other good grounds speak in its favour; for, in dealing with writings which have no, ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... regarded as an interruption of religion. When I am at pains to justify my religion, I am already doubting; and for common opinion doubt is identical with irreligion. In so far as I am religious, my religion stands in no need of justification, even though I regard it as justifiable. In my religious experience I am taking something for granted; in other words I act about it and feel about it in a manner that is going to be determined by the special conditions of my mood and temperament. The mechanical and prosaic man acknowledges God ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... chief questions may arise; but here also there seems to me to be only one of these—it is true it is the most important of all—on which there should be much debate. The succumbing of Constantin seems perhaps a little more justifiable by its importance to the story than by its intrinsic probability.[384] Clemenceau seems to me "constant to himself," or in the "good childlikeness" of his character, throughout; and to ask whether it was necessary to make him smash the bust that he finds in Serge's possession ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... those modifications of matter called sound, would the blind man be able to have any conception of them? It certainly would not be wise in him to aver, that such a thing as colorific sound had no existence, was impossible; but at least he would be very justifiable in saying, they appeared contradictions, because he had some ideas of sound which did not at all aid him in forming those of colour; he would not, perhaps, be very inconclusive if he suspected the competency of ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... from the classes to the masses. It is in its nature an appeal from a verdict likely to be pronounced by the understanding or the prejudice of educated men, to the emotions of the uneducated crowd. The appeal may or may not be justifiable. This is not the point for discussion; but the making of such an appeal necessarily implies that the existence of certain widespread feelings is a condition requisite for full appreciation of the reasoning in support of Home Rule. The reasons may be good, ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... good as it used to?) "No, I don't think so." (What is the difference?) "There is no difference." (What did I ask you?) "The difference." (The difference between what?) "You did not say." In this the shallowness of her comprehension and thinking is well shown, and it seems here again perhaps justifiable to formulate the main defect as one of attention, which prevents completion of a complicated process of comprehension. A feature of further interest in this case is that automatic intellectual processes, such as those ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... loved peace. He hated to thwart the boy, because he knew that it would arouse the ire of the mother, whose love had run away with her commonsense. Love is beautiful—soft, yielding, gentle love—but the common law of England upholds wife-beating as being justifiable and desirable on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... is something terrifying in the very word. And this justifiable terror is a national tradition. To thousands of honest folk a Perquisition was an ever present fear through the old Regime, and this fear became acute terror in the Revolution. Then a search warrant meant almost certainly subsequent arrest, ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... backward with a debt of honour (though I write it, how foolish the expression: as if all debts were not equally incumbent), but any tradesman may wait for years. He does not lie, except to save a woman's reputation (query—Is it then justifiable? I really don't know), but he exaggerates fearfully. Animal courage he has, but nothing of the moral attribute. Except as regards his egotism, personal and national, he is not offensive in manner or language. To ladies he is courteous, but his opinion of woman is of ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... either accidental, criminal, or justifiable, that is, brought on to preserve the life of the mother. Accidental abortions may follow a sudden fall or a sudden shock, either mental or physical, to the mother. They may be due to some disease either of ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... too large, monopolize the market,—or trade for a profit which they know dealers of smaller fortunes cannot possibly live by. If such men really think that raising themselves on the ruin of others, in this manner, is justifiable, and that riches obtained in this manner are fairly earned, they must certainly have either neglected to inform themselves, or stifled the remonstrances of conscience, and bid defiance to ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... the result of the two successive Balkan Wars, though these had exhausted the material resources of the two countries, was a justifiable return of national self-confidence and rejoicing such as the people, humiliated and impoverished as it had habitually been by its internal and external troubles, had not known for very many years. At last Serbia and Montenegro had ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... highness, tell the whole truth to Cerise; for I have always considered it perfectly justifiable to retain facts which cannot add to people's happiness. I declared that I left her because my life would have been forfeited if I had remained, and I valued it only for her sake. That I always intended to return; and when I quitted Valencia, and had become a man of property, I immediately ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... wrongfully detained on board of the Austrian brig of war; that at the time of his seizure he was clothed with the nationality of the United States, and that the acts of our officers, under the circumstances of the case, were justifiable, and their conduct has been fully approved by me, and a compliance with the several demands of the Emperor of Austria ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... was forgetting. I should say that the good young man will be acquitted because it was justifiable homicide or that he will return after a short term of imprisonment; in any case I think he will marry Rosina and live ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... whether the decapitation of Charles the First were a justifiable act, and the debate was opened in the affirmative by a young man with a singularly sunny face and a voice of music. His statement was clear and calm. Though nothing could be more uncompromising than his opinions, it seemed that ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... priests; while the queen was called Madame Veto, though in fact she had finally joined Dumouriez in urging her husband to give his royal assent to the decree against them, not, as thinking it on any pretense justifiable, but as believing, with the general, in the impossibility of maintaining its rejection. Yet nothing could more completely prove the absolute innocence and unimpeachable good faith of both king and queen than the act of his enemies in giving them this nickname; ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... do for one another. With reference to the Atonement, the demand for ethical treatment is usually expressed in two ways. (a) There is the demand for analogies to it in human life. The demand is justifiable, in so far as God has made man in His own image; but, as has been suggested above, it has a limit, in so far as God is God and not man, and must have relations to the human race which its members do not and cannot have to each other. (b) There is the demand that ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... lay my finger in the marks of the wounds." The other is, "Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief." In abstract logic or rigid science the former may be appropriate and right. The latter alone can be justifiable in moral and religious things. If a man sorrowfully and humbly doubts, because he cannot help it, he shall not be condemned. When he is proud of his doubts, complacently swells with fancied superiority, plays the fanfaron with his pretentious arguments, and sets up as a propagandist ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... causes, was a masterpiece of political strategy designed to concentrate the odium of failure on those who were only responsible in part and to preclude their return to political power. Of these hidden causes there were two in particular: one the possibly justifiable refusal of Greece to lend her army to the scheme when a comparatively small military force might have been sufficient, and the other the far more culpable failure of Russia to co-operate with the 100,000 troops which ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... are the ways of God, And justifiable to men; Unless there be who think not God at all. If any be, they walk obscure; For of such doctrine never was there school, But the heart of the fool, And no man therein doctor ...
— Milton • John Bailey
... her two coal barges, she proceeded slowly and quietly, and was not discovered till she had passed the upper batteries. When the first gun was fired, she started ahead full speed, and, though under fire for twenty minutes longer, was not struck. With justifiable elation the admiral could now write: "This gives us complete control of the Mississippi, except at Vicksburg and Port Hudson. We have now below two XI-inch guns, two IX-inch, two 30-pounder rifles, six 12-pounders, and ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... attributed to the activity, courage, and enterprise of our privateers. The principle has been adopted in all ages, that private property, captured on the high seas, is a lawful prize to the captors; also, that the destruction of private property belonging to an enemy is a justifiable act. To a well-constituted mind it must appear, on investigation, that such principles are unjust, belong to a barbarous age, and cannot be advocated on any platform of ethics recognized among civilized nations in ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... save the limb of a young subject, it is justifiable to run risks which would not be permissible in the case of an older person. To save an upper limb, also, risks may be run which would not be justifiable in the case of a lower limb, because, while a serviceable ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... justifiable, all that the law requires is that the captor shall be held responsible for due diligence; it is not enough that the captor should use as much caution as he would in his own affairs, the law requires that there should be no ...
— The Laws Of War, Affecting Commerce And Shipping • H. Byerley Thomson
... no justification for such a condition on any possible theory of popular Sovereignty. This defect has not hitherto had very many practical inconveniences, but it is an absolute violation of the theory and the spirit of American democratic institutions. The time may come when the fulfillment of a justifiable democratic purpose may demand the limitation of certain rights, to which the Constitution affords such absolute guarantees; and in that case the American democracy might be forced to seek by revolutionary means the accomplishment of ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... him, and spoke to the following purpose:—"It may not be known to you, Sir Jasper, that since the general pouring out of Christian light upon this kingdom, many solid men have been led to doubt whether the shedding human blood by the hand of a fellow-creature be in any respect justifiable. And although this rule appears to me to be scarcely applicable to our state in this stage of trial, seeing that such non-resistance, if general, would surrender our civil and religious rights into the hands of whatsoever ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... the influence of passion has committed an act contrary to the truth he recognizes, remains none the less free to recognize it or not to recognize it; that is, he can by refusing to recognize the truth regard his action as necessary and justifiable, or he may recognize the truth and regard his act as wrong ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... districts south of the Thames. It will be an interesting task for our Legislature to ascertain whether there is any actual law to account for the transfer, as it inevitably will have to do when the delicate choice is forced upon it between justifiable infanticide, wholesale Hospices des Enfants Trouves, and possibly some kind of Japanese "happy despatch" for high-minded infants who are superior to the slow poison administered by injudicious "farmers." At all events, one fact is certain, and we can scarcely reiterate it too ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... obstacle to be overcome. He is apt to conclude that this is all, that some force will be needed to break it down, and that therefore an amount of urgency even to the degree of inflicting considerable pain is justifiable. This is usually wrong. It rarely constitutes any obstruction, and, even when its rupturing may be necessary, it ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... because if this did occur you would probably not be able to accomplish your mission. Later you may have to run a big chance of sacrificing several of your men, in order to get the desired information, which would be entirely justifiable. Tell me how your men are arranged and what ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... better for all that enlisted men should be soldiers rather than thieves. To secure the ends which alone can justify war—and if the Netherlanders engaged in defending national existence and human freedom against foreign tyranny were not justifiable then a just war has never been waged—a disciplined army is vastly more humane in its operations than a band of brigands. Swift and condign punishments by the law-martial, for even trifling offences, is the best ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ask you to come but your influence among them is so great that it seems justifiable ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... at all. It was necessary for the Panamanian to return to the Cedars. His purpose, whatever it was, compelled him to remain for the present in the mournful, tragic house. Therefore, he would crush his justifiable anger. He would make it practically impossible for Bobby to refuse his hospitality. And he had asked for money—only a trifling sum, yet Graham would grasp at the fact to support ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... upon me as she swung from the tree, the blood driven into her features by the agonizing pressure of the halter. 'Tis the very look that has haunted me for years, and caused me many bitter moments of remorse; though, God knows, the deed was lawful and justifiable, done in the execution of my duty to the republic. And yet she lives," he continued musingly. "How could she have been saved? True, she had not been hanging long when we left the place. Some of her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... shooting, we rarely punished; although, strangely enough, our innate Anglo-Saxon feeling for the formality of government always resulted in a Sunday "inquest." We deliberated solemnly. The verdict was almost invariably "justifiable self-defence," which was probably near enough, for most of these killings were the result of quarrels. Murders for the purpose of robbery, later so frequent, were as yet almost unknown. Twice, however, and in both instances the prisoner ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... of the Belgian treaty. Bernhardi argued most earnestly, that if a treaty placed a difficulty in the way of a great nation's realising its purposes, then it was not only justifiable, but the duty of that nation to ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... Spain sprang from the attempts of the British merchants to prosecute an illicit trade with the Spanish main. These unjustifiable practices on their part produced severity on the part of the Spaniards toward the subjects of Great Britain which were not more justifiable, because they exceeded the bounds of a just retaliation and were chargeable with inhumanity and cruelty. Many of the English who were taken on the Spanish coast were sent to dig in the mines of Potosi; and by the usual progress of a spirit of resentment, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... savings-bank, and he survives her, it is sometimes the rule of such establishments to compel him to take out administration in order to receive such money, although it is questionable whether such rule is legally justifiable. Widows and widowers pay no legacy-duty for property coming to them ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... who with Sexby and Wildman represented on the Army Council the private soldiers of the Model Army, during the debate on the right of voting, gave expression to the view that some fundamental changes in the laws of the Land were both necessary and justifiable, in the following words: "I hear it said, 'It's a huge alteration it's a bringing in of new laws.' ... If writings be true, there hath been many scuttlings between the honest men of England and those that have tyrannised over ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... came to Amiel, when a man feels himself great like the universe and calm like a god, one may thrill with love and admiration for Nature without resigning sense of superiority over all other of her works or abating one jot of justifiable pride. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... night, this their first in Florida. The trees, festooned with the long, swinging, gray Spanish moss, looked like the real tropical thing to all of the boys. And they felt a pride that was surely justifiable, in the success that had attended their ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... flattered portrait of an earthly beauty; the wife, at best, of the artist; or, it might be, a peasant girl of the Campagna, or some Roman princess, to whom he desired to pay his court. For love, or some even less justifiable motive, the old painter had apotheosized these women; he thus gained for them, as far as his skill would go, not only the meed of immortality, but the privilege of presiding over Christian altars, and of being worshipped with far holier ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... said, "what did I tell you? Didn't I tell you you ought to take this case?" Mr Winter, with his chest thrust out, plumed and strutted in justifiable pride of prophecy. "Now, I'll tell you another thing: today's event will do more for you than it has for ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... preliminary to any useful discussion of passive resistance is the clear recognition of the fact that it is rebellion, and nothing less. To say, or admit, this is not necessarily to condemn it; for there are few persons to-day, I suppose, who would contend that rebellion is never justifiable. All it asserts is that passive resistance has to be judged by the same measures and according to the same standards as any other kind of revolt against constituted political authority. It is all the more needful to make this plain because some of the milder but more ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... in the philosophies of Hume, Kant and Hegel!—I regarded tragic knowledge as the most beautiful luxury of our culture, as its most precious, most noble, most dangerous kind of prodigality; but, nevertheless, in view of its overflowing wealth, as a justifiable luxury. In the same way, I began by interpreting Wagner's music as the expression of a Dionysian powerfulness of soul. In it I thought I heard the earthquake by means of which a primeval life-force, which had been constrained for ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... did decline the king's authority in certain particulars! But were they not justifiable? A glance at the situation will solve ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... of their own deserts? In like manner our antagonist in a law-suit, and our competitor for any office, are commonly regarded as our enemies; though we must acknowledge, if we would but reflect a moment, that their motive is entirely as justifiable as our own. ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... in his accustomed manner and he was pleased with the news brought him because he had been expecting in any event to overcome Vindex and because he thought he had now secured a justifiable ground for money-getting and murders. He enjoyed the same degree of luxury; and upon the completion and adornment of the heroum of Sabina he gave it a brilliant dedication, taking care to have inscribed upon it: "The Women have built This to Sabina, the Goddess Venus." And the writing ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... foreigner is the most honest manufacturer of the two—and, lastly, you know, what is worse than all, that these cruel and wicked deceptions, and many more like them, are regarded, on the highest commercial authority, as 'forms of competition' and justifiable proceedings in trade. Do you believe in the honourable accumulation of wealth by men who hold such opinions and perpetrate such impostures as these? I don't! Do you find any brighter and purer prospect when you look down from the man who deceives you and me on the ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... The moment that they overstepped the slightest bounds of law, in rushed the authorities with summary punishment. The prisons of the period were full of mechanics whom serfdom or poverty had stung on to commit some crime or other. However trifling the offence, or whatever the justifiable provocation, the law made no trades-union memorialized Congress to limit the hours of labor of those employed on the public works to ten hours a day. The pathos of this petition! So unceasingly had the workers been lied to by politicians, newspapers, clergy and employers, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... values not those Acclamations which are not seconded by the impartial Testimony of his own Mind; who repines not at the low Station which Providence has at present allotted him, but yet would willingly advance himself by justifiable Means to a more rising and advantageous Ground; such a Man is warmed with a generous Emulation; it is a virtuous Movement in him to wish and to endeavour that his Power of doing Good may ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... it yet refuses to vote the budget to pay for them. It supports a large parliamentary party without any clear or consistent parliamentary policy in internal or external affairs, unless to be "agin the Government" is a policy. And lastly, if some of its economic demands are justifiable, and have in several respects been satisfied by modern legislation, its fundamental doctrine, the basis of the entire edifice, is a wild hallucination, sickening to common sense, and completely out of harmony with the progressive economic ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... that revenge may have influenced Egfrid's conduct: this, however, does not make it more justifiable in a Christian king. Ireland was not merely the refuge of men of learning in that age; it afforded shelter to more than one prince driven unjustly from his paternal home. Alfred, the brother of the Northumbrian monarch, had fled thither ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... the whole event with indifference—their rage and their regard equally—but for my suffering and sensitive wife. Wronged as she had been, and so persecuted as to render all her subsequent conduct justifiable, she yet forgot none of her filial obligations; and, in compliance with her earnest entreaties, I had already, the very day after this conflict, prepared an elaborate and respectful epistle to both father and mother, when an event took place of startling solemnity, which was calculated ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Mr Pecksniff. 'Be that as it may, here we are; and being here, we are to consider whether it is possible by any justifiable means—' ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... well, I think," said Abbott, with justifiable pride, as he picked up the telephone. After several moments he reported that the President would see Enoch ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow
... also,' he goes on to say, 'that it leads them in their desire to rise in the social scale to attempt by dishonest means to live at a higher rate than is justifiable, to gamble and speculate, in order to keep up a false position. I have come across those who have fallen where this has confessedly been the case, and who have lamented that such wrong ideas had been put into their heads. Young people ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... With justifiable pride they surveyed their handiwork. "Now let's get under way!" cried Lord Reginald. "She floats well on the water, and is higher out of it ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... happen that there would be rash governors who might act inconsiderately, and only through self-will or caprice, and cause great and excessive expenses of the royal revenues. Consequently, it is preferable that action be taken by many votes, since in justifiable and even in doubtful cases the preference of him who governs or presides is always followed. Madrid, July 11, 1631." "Let ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIII, 1629-30 • Various
... gentleman from his overseer; and knowing him to be on an excursion with the ladies, and thinking he would be back about mid-day, I advised him, sir, to delay his return to the station, until he had seen his master. Hence, you see, sir, his presence on the station was perfectly justifiable. With regard to his peccancy I will not attempt, sir, to offer any palliation beyond the expression of my belief, that the tobacco was taken without any notion of the offence he was committing; in proof of which, I may mention, sir, the absence of any concealment on his part, when you came ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... make it conform to her ideas of a man's duty to the woman he had promised to marry—or to any woman. She had heard him speak of reason in connection with the affair, as though there were no such thing in the world as rage so justifiable as to make a man yearn to inflict punishment upon another man who had attacked his woman. He had looked upon the matter cold-bloodedly, and she had resented that. But now that she had been avenged, she felt that she had been wrong. It had been such a trivial thing, ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... barely indicate in a mysterious note to one of the books of his Emile. This shows the philosopher so completely under the influence of the mediaeval superstition of knightly honor that he considers it justifiable to murder a man who accuses you of lying: whilst he must have known that every man, and himself especially, has deserved to have the lie given him times ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... this side of wickedness; one of those dark and comic dramas to which that of Tartuffe is mere child's play,—dramas that do not enter the scenic domain, although they are natural, conceivable, and even justifiable by necessity; dramas which may be characterized as not vice, only ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... that dangerous encounter: Fanny's knowing that he had turned the Ballingers out. As he would have been very unwilling to admit that Mrs. Levitt had forced his hand there, he took the whole of the responsibility for that action. But, inevitable and justifiable as it was, he couldn't hope to carry it off triumphantly with Fanny. It was just, but it was not magnanimous. Therefore, without making any positively untruthful statement, he had let her think that Ballinger had given notice of his own accord. The chances, he thought, were all against ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... true, is not always or wholly evil. Sometimes it is justifiable and necessary. Sometimes it is professedly and in part really due to some strong wave of philanthropic feeling produced by great acts of wrong, though of all forms of philanthropy it is that which most naturally defeats itself. Even when unjustifiable, it calls into action splendid qualities of ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... distribution, the State must adopt the same methods of doing business as the present owners. I mean that even as the big Trusts and companies are crushing—by competition—the individual workers and small traders, so the State should crush the trusts by competition. It is surely justifiable for the State to do for the benefit of the whole people that which the capitalists are already doing for the profit of a few shareholders. The first step in this direction will be the establishment ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... It is hardly justifiable to cover the whole system of Buddhism with a single epithet[FN5] 'pessimistic' or 'nihilistic,' because Buddhism, having been adopted by savage tribes as well as civilized nations, by quiet, enervated people ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... Mrityu or death being of two syllables, the correspondence is justifiable between it and Mama or mineness which also is of two syllables. So in the case of Brahman and na-mama. Of course, what is meant by mineness being death and not-mineness being Brahman or emancipation, cannot be unintelligible to one who has ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... this was not true, or only partially true, but considered it justifiable after Tommy's warning—and Tommy knew a lot about women. I remembered him saying once that a girl's determination could be changed in two ways: by opposition, and by cooperation. I had tried opposition, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... the conclusion of the sentence. His mind was working swiftly. For, if Farwell tried to come across, he would probably be killed by the coming explosions; and that must be prevented at any cost. The destruction of the dam was justifiable, even necessary. But homicide with it would never do. To shoot in self-defence or to protect his rights was one thing; to allow a man to be killed by a blast was quite another. But just how to prevent it ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... it be conceded that the charges against the Japanese which we find in the Blue Book and in Sir Rutherford Alcock's 'Capital of the Tycoon,' are all well founded, and the resort to strong measures on the part of the British will be admitted to be justifiable. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... which, if not new, we are quite willing to exhibit—and of going to see our neighbors, and staying just long enough to ask how they do, say a few stale or silly things, and prove an interruption and a nuisance, and then going elsewhere—a whit more justifiable, in beings made in the image of God, and who are to be ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... corpuscles and so forth, that a searching investigation cannot be undertaken. In addition the preparation and staining of dried blood specimens is amongst the simplest and most convenient of the methods of clinical histology. In the interest of its wider dissemination, it will be justifiable to describe it more ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... which was wrested from my hands by the sailor; and I acknowledge that I attempted with that gun to defend my family and my house from immediate violence; I am, however," continued he, "happy to have escaped having injured any person, even in the most justifiable cause, for the piece did not go off, it only flashed in ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... distinctive interest and employment not less urgent and necessary than the interests and employments of men. And when she failed, as she plainly must have failed, to find any such occupation, her sense of beauty and her justifiable demand for life found an outlet largely in shopping, in entertaining, in all such ephemeral attractions and amusements as women in her class may seek and reject. That way of escape, however, soon raised financial obstructions to Trafford's work. He had to find ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford
... submission; so I made it my business to look up the manorial title-deeds. The pretensions of the ecclesiastical "Moses" to exercise a control over the operations of the reasoning faculty in the search after truth, thirty centuries after his age, might be justifiable; but, assuredly, the credentials produced in justification of claims ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... exalted and enthusiastic temperaments; both were skilled in the arts of oratory and the management of men, and both possessed a visionary side. For each the situation in the New World formed an ample and, indeed, justifiable field. ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... was justifiable at Christ-tide. An ordinance for governing the household of the Duke of Clarence in the reign of Edward IV. forbade all games at dice, cards, or other hazard for money "except during the twelve days at Christmas." And, again, in ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... for "damage caused by any kind of maltreatment of prisoners of war," is more doubtful on the strict letter, but may be justifiable under the Hague Convention and involves a ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... on hearing such soothing and delicious sounds, was, at least, justifiable; for it was long—very long, since she had listened to any thing like melody. The fierce trumpet and the shrill fife were the only instruments she had heard, since ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... years,) that as we do not instantly pronounce a man a murderer upon hearing that he has killed a fellow-creature, but, according to the circumstances of the case, pronounce his act either murder, or manslaughter, or justifiable homicide; so by parity of reason, suicide is open to distinctions of the same or corresponding kinds; that there may be such a thing as self-homicide not less than self-murder—culpable self-homicide —justifiable ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... to see this regatta and to help in it that the Rob Roy had pushed her way to Paris; and for this six hundred miles of river navigation in a sea-going boat were justifiable, yet often did I feel much the sea-trim lifeboat yawl was out of place upon a calm inland water ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... when he was sorely tempted to regret a little that some of the feasts of the Church were "moveable." True, they moved only within strictly prescribed limits, and in accordance with certain unalterable, wholly justifiable rules. Yet, in the very fact that they did move, there seemed—to use an expressive slang phrase of the day—"something not quite nice." It was therefore the fixed feasts that pleased Percy best, and on Christmas ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... into the absurd positions of absolute subjective idealism on the one hand and sensationalism and absolute materialism on the other. The Christian mind lays emphasis on the will and accordingly is alone able to reach reality, a reality justifiable alike to the reason and to the heart. For will is the creative faculty in man as well as in God. As God through His will creates reality, so man through his will first comes to know reality. Mere intellect can never pass over from thought to ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... For example: a Yale professor of history had an article in the New York Times, a while ago, declaring that the constitutional amendments conferring citizenship on the Negroes were wrong and that the reaction against them in depriving the Negroes of the vote was justifiable; to which I wrote a reply, mostly in the language of Mr. Flemming, a native Southerner who had represented Georgia in Congress, arguing that the amendments were not only justifiable but indispensable, and the Times would not publish ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... as dogs and cats, however, attempts at treatment are justifiable, and we are convinced that in many cases of difficulty in the application of splints and bandages a patient may be placed in a condition of undisturbed quiet and left to the processes of nature for "treatment" as safely and with as good an assurance of a favorable result as if ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... Senators who have served with me here, that I have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of State sovereignty, the right of a State to secede from the Union. Therefore, if I had not believed there was justifiable cause; if I had thought that Mississippi was acting without sufficient provocation, or without an existing necessity, I should still, under my theory of the Government, because of my allegiance to the State of which I am a citizen, have been bound by her action. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... and abjure him? I have no reserve on this subject, and will frankly state that, setting aside that stage of the entertainment when he counterfeited the death of some creature he had shot, by laying his head on his hand and shaking his left leg - at which time I think it would have been justifiable homicide to slay him - I have never seen that group sleeping, smoking, and expectorating round their brazier, but I have sincerely desired that something might happen to the charcoal smouldering therein, which ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... by repute—as who did not? Since at that period it was the widest-known name in the whole medical profession in Scotland. And the first sight of him confirmed the reputation, and made even a stranger recognize that his fame was both natural and justifiable. But the minister had scarcely time to cast a glance on the acute, benevolent, wonderfully powerful and thoughtful head, when his attention was attracted by the poor infant, whom Janet was carefully unswathing from ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... division of his forces in the presence of an enemy of twice his strength, Lee is not entitled to commendation. It is justifiable only—if at all—by the danger of the situation, which required a desperate remedy, and peculiarly by the success which attended it. Had it resulted disastrously, as it ought to have done, it would have been a serious blow to Lee's military ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... a child in rebellion. Rebellion is sometimes justifiable. Anger may be a virtue. You would not take this force out of your child any more than you would take the temper out of a knife or a spring. Anger manifested vocally or muscularly is the child's form of protest. But, established as a habit of the life, it is altogether unlovely. Who does not know ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope |
