"Reasonableness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shyness should become general, as it may in a contingency that is already on the horizon? We refer, of course, to the suggestion, coming from various quarters, that women should propose. The reasonableness of this suggestion may not lie on the surface; it may not be deduced from the uniform practice, beginning with the primitive men and women; it may not be inferred from the open nature of the two sexes (for the sake of argument two sexes must still be insisted ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... speculative daring, and his gift of cold and dignified eloquence is severely repressed. He wrote to attain his immediate end, and from that standpoint his pleading was a masterpiece. A certain deadly courtesy, a tone of quiet reasonableness made it possible for the most prejudiced reader to follow it with assent. The argument was irresistible, and the single touch of emotion at the end was worthy of a great orator. A few lines depicted these men who, moved by public ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... of nations, and so commonly affect the rights of foreigners, that they fall within the considerations which are relative to the public peace. The most important part of them are, by the present Confederation, submitted to federal jurisdiction. The reasonableness of the agency of the national courts in cases in which the State tribunals cannot be supposed to be impartial, speaks for itself. No man ought certainly to be a judge in his own cause, or in any cause in respect to which he has ...
— The Federalist Papers
... spirit, and hoped, after his father's death, to become lord of Rimini; in the contemplation of which event, albeit he was rude in appearance and a cripple, Messer Guido desired him for a son-in-law above any one of his brothers. Discerning, therefore, the reasonableness of what his friend counselled, he secretly disposed matters according to his device; and a day being appointed, Polo, a brother of Gianciotto, came to Ravenna with full authority to espouse Madonna Francesca. Polo was a handsome man, very pleasant, and of a courteous breeding; and ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... and there strengtheneth sin, that sting of hell, to pierce by its unutterable charging of it on the conscience, the soul for ever and ever; nor can the soul justly murmur or repine at God or at His law, for that then the sharply apprehensive soul will well discern the justness, righteousness, reasonableness, and goodness of the law, and that nothing is done by the law unto it, but that which ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... 'Tu, Marcellus, eris,'—or of Wives for their Husbands, as Artemisia and Laodamia, sometimes amounting to Idolatry—nay, the Love of Friend for Friend, with alle its sweet Influences and animating Transports, yet exceeding the Reasonableness of that of David for Jonathan, or of our blessed Lord for St. John and the Family of Lazarus, may procure far more Torment than Profit: even if the Attachment be reciprocal, and well grounded, and equallie matcht, which often ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... subject with wit and invention; and that now the art is lost of moving men's passions, so common among the ancient orators of Greece and Rome. These, and the like objections, are frequently in the mouths of men who despise the "foolishness of preaching." But let us examine the reasonableness of them. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... never occurred to me, and I was struck with its reasonableness, when I came to think it over. The ill-favored individual signed the name "John Browning" to the dispatch which he sent some months before, as a pretext for visiting our office so much—but that was ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... speculation is not all idle. It serves to quicken within us the thought of how near the dead may be to us, to purify that thought, and to breathe upon our fevered hearts a consoling hope. And when I combine its intrinsic reasonableness with the spirit and spiritualism of Christianity, and that intuitive suggestion which springs up in so many souls, I can urge but faint objection to those who entertain it, and would, if possible, share and diffuse the comfort which it gives. Nearer, than, than we imagine—close as in ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... forms. These imps, as they were called, were accustomed to visit their mistress once in twenty-four hours. If the witch, said her persecutors, could be put naked upon a chair in the middle of the room and kept awake, the imps could not approach her. Herein lay the supposed reasonableness of the methods in vogue. And the authorities who were offering this excuse for their use of torture were not loth to go further. It was, they said, necessary to walk the creatures in order to keep them awake. It was soon discovered that the enforced sleeplessness ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein
... signified his disgust to his introductor, giving him to understand, that he had laid his account with being chosen representative of one of those boroughs for which he had been sacrificed. His lordship agreed to the reasonableness of his expectation, observing, however, that he could not suppose the minister would enter upon business with him on his first visit; and that it would be time enough at his next audience to communicate his demand. Notwithstanding ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... believes and declares himself guilty of crimes of which he is as innocent as the child unborn. The history of the transaction we have been considering, affords a clear illustration of the truth and reasonableness of this explanation. ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... experience of navies a suspicious encomium, involving more of flattery to a man's foibles than of credit to his discretion and his judgment. But at the time when the quarrel between Great Britain and her colonies was fast becoming imbittered, the same kindliness, coupled with a calm reasonableness of temper, ruled his feelings and guided his action. Although by political creed a moderate Tory, he had none of the wrong-headedness of the party zealot; and the growing alienation between those whom he, like his brother, regarded as of one family, ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... after reading this, to wonder whether Henry More, the retired, and so far untried, student of Cambridge, would have been able thus to meet the alternations of suffering which he imagines? It is one thing to see reasonableness, another to be reasonable when objects have become circumstances. Would he, then, by spiritual might, have risen indeed above bodily torture? It is possible for a man to arrive at this perfection; it is absolutely necessary that a man should some ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... Boston, where he likewise met with a flattering reception, he lost no time in making known to Gen. Shirley the business that had taken him thither. The justness and reasonableness of his complaints were promptly acknowledged by this officer, who, to place the vexed question beyond dispute, declared, that henceforward Capt. Dagworthy and all inferior officers, holding king's commissions, should own the authority and render ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... the soundness and reasonableness of this counsel, and knew that their respective fathers would both concur in this opinion, though their own ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... considered, be found just; and if the reader should suspect me, as I suspect myself, of some partial fondness for the memory of Dryden, let him not too hastily condemn me; for meditation and inquiry may, perhaps, show him the reasonableness ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... sentences, moving like rollers in a calm sea, were more affecting than any passion could be. . . . It seemed to him now the very incarnation of that spirit of the Church that at once attracted and repelled him—in its serenity, its gentleness, its reasonableness, and its irresistible force. ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... occasional demonstrations of fondness by which her children mark their esteem for her; but displays of personal sentiment secretly embarrass her: passion in her is humanitarian rather than human: she feels strongly about social questions and principles, not about persons. Only, one observes that this reasonableness and intense personal privacy, which leaves her relations with Gloria and Phil much as they might be between her and the children of any other woman, breaks down in the case of Dolly. Though almost ...
— You Never Can Tell • [George] Bernard Shaw
... their God. It was but the putting into plain words of what 'common-sense' and faint faith had often whispered to Hezekiah. The very absence of temper or demand in the letter gives it an aspect of that 'sweet reasonableness' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... gone forthwith to Selby, told him the secret, and enlisted his aid; but Mr. Baruch did not work like that. He allowed chance a week in which to show its reasonableness; and not till then, nothing having happened, did he furnish himself, one afternoon, with an excuse, in the form of a disputed customs charge, and cross the narrow landing to the ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... part, therefore, I believe in the immortality of the soul, not in the sense in which I accept the demonstrable truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God's work. Such a belief, relating to regions quite inaccessible to experience, cannot of course be clothed in terms of definite and tangible meaning. For the experience which alone can give us such terms ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... form, and gradually, as experience taught, lowered it. It is, further, remarkable that the latter members of the Amati family pursued the same course as Andrea Amati (though in a less degree), after which they awoke, as it were, to the reasonableness of the example set by Gasparo, and gave us those instruments so highly thought of by the connoisseur, the form of which has much in common with that adopted by Niccolo Amati and ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... we know personally one who claims to have had the specific instruction, the personal experience, and to have made the scientific demonstration referred to and outlined in the problem, our opportunity for instruction, and for the application of tests for validity and reasonableness as to the whole ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... my part, and—maybe we can put it through. This is out of my line, but they do it abroad, so why not here? The girl's no more than human." Mr. Melcher seemed ingenuously pleading for reasonableness. "If we make good I'll hang out a sign, 'Max Melcher, Matrimonial Agent.' Meanwhile I want it understood with your mother that I share ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... land. If, they argue, there had been no Englishmen and Scotchmen to take large farms, the small holders would not have been swept away, and "driven like a wild goose on the mountain" to make room for them. Without for the present discussing the reasonableness of this plea, I merely record the simple fact that an English or Scotch farmer is unpopular from the beginning. Here and there such a one as Mr. Simpson may manage to live the prejudice down; but that he will have to encounter it on his ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... the pump-room one morning, after an acquaintance of eight or nine days, is given as a specimen of their very warm attachment, and of the delicacy, discretion, originality of thought, and literary taste which marked the reasonableness of ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... not propose to discuss the reasonableness of his or your demands, but it seems that a statement of his prospects is owing ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... command; this violent hostility Sulpicius tried, not without temporary success, to restrain, and the fact that a man of so just a mind should have taken this line is one of the best arguments for the reasonableness of Caesar's cause.[180] When war broke out he was greatly perplexed how to act; his breadth of view made decision difficult, and he seems to have been at all times more a student than a man of action. With some heart-burnings he joined Caesar ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... public interest of the English constitutional party conflict have been fully allowed for, there does remain the bold, bleak question which Dickens in substance asks, "Suppose I want somebody else who is neither Coodle nor Doodle." This is the great quality called satire; it is a kind of taunting reasonableness; and it is inseparable from a certain insane logic which is often called exaggeration. Dickens was more of a satirist than Thackeray for this simple reason: that Thackeray carried a man's principles as far as that man carried ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... absolute will, to which the experience of the resistless force behind his own soul must sometimes have tempted him, Jeremiah was further guarded by his visions of the Divine working in Nature. He is never more clear or musical than when singing of the regularity, faithfulness and reasonableness of this. With such a Creator, such a Providence, there could ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... highly important subjects of blockade, contraband, the destruction of neutral prizes, and continuous voyages. The declaration of London is an eminently satisfactory codification of the international maritime law, and it is hoped that its reasonableness and fairness will secure its general adoption, as well as remove one of the difficulties standing in the way of the establishment of an ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... which prompts every other kind of murder in capitalistic countries, as well as every other kind of crime. I know, my dear, that this seems very strange to you, but you will accustom yourself to the idea, and then you will see the reasonableness of the Altrurian plan. On the whole, I am sorry you could not have seen that hapless man, and heard him. He had a face ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... defects and drawbacks, you have on your side a weight of Christian tradition and a wealth of Christian example. Under such circumstances and in such an atmosphere, what are we not entitled to expect of those who bear the Christian name? What justice is there, or what reasonableness, in demanding as a test of genuineness the same degree of attainment on the part of Christian people, many of them uneducated, who are only just emerging from the deadness ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... well, as do the feats of Gymnast against Tripet, and the fate of the unlucky Touquedillon, and the escalade of La Roche Clermande, and (a little less perhaps) the pure burlesque of the eating of the pilgrims, and the combing out of the cannon balls, and the contrasted sweet reasonableness of the amiable though not at all cowardly Grandgousier. But the advice of the Evil Counsellors to Picrochole is still ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... speculation to excite notice in scientific circles. One of the curious features of the history is that it was Kant who first cited Wright's theory, pointed out its accordance with the appearance of the Milky Way, and showed its general reasonableness. But, at the time in question, the work of the philosopher of Konigsberg seems to have excited no more notice among his scientific contemporaries ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... Hampshire, is well known. When his master told him that they were on the point of starting for the army, to fight for liberty, he shrewdly suggested that it would be a great satisfaction to know that he was indeed going to fight for his liberty. Struck with the reasonableness and justice of this suggestion, General Sullivan at once ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... quite acquiesces—that as he approaches the reverend period of nine or say ten years, he should still be the unabashed and proclaimed possessor of a hoop and a Noah's Ark. The child will quite see the reasonableness of this, and, the goal of his ambition being now a catapult, a pistol, or even a sword-stick, will be satisfied that the titular ownership should lapse to his juniors, so far below him in their kilted or petticoated incompetence. ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... see the world and all its allurements from the windows of Zura's uncontrolled youth. Earnestly I then appealed to her to try to understand that life was a school and not a playground and to look without prejudice at the reasonableness of conventions which life in any country demanded, if happiness was ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... the reasonableness of these remonstrances; but where should a chamber and bed be sought? It was not likely that a new attempt to procure accommodation at the inns would ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... evident reasonableness of the father's position, in the eyes of this good and gentle woman, made it impossible for her to speak without dissent to such an atrocity as Lord Hurdly's attitude seemed to her. So she moved away, and the woman took the hint and ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... this remark. Their learned men have been employed in writing volumes on the subject, the principal aim of which appears to be that of impressing on the minds of the people the comparative authority of the Emperor over his subjects and of a parent over his children. The reasonableness and justice of the latter being once established, that of the former, in a patriarchal government, followed of course; and the extent of the power delegated to the one could not in justice be withheld from the other. And for the better allaying of any ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... Sapphic terror of love would ever and anon come upon the sculptor, when his matured reflecting powers would insist upon informing him of the fearful lapse from reasonableness that lay in this infatuation. It threw him into a sweat. What if now, at last, he were doomed to do penance for his past emotional wanderings (in a material sense) by being chained in fatal fidelity to an object that his intellect despised? One night he dreamt that he saw dimly masking behind ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... in moving pictures and in alarmist appeals for "preparedness," is already in our midst, not so much at work blowing up our factories as insidiously at work in our hearts. The German apologist—even of Anglo-Saxon blood—is suggesting the reasonableness of a German verdict. "After all," one hears from his lips, "there is much on the other side of the shield, which our English prejudices have prevented us from seeing. Germany cannot be the monster of barbarism that she has been painted. As for broken treaties, the atrocities, ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... and Reasonableness of the Divine Conduct, in pardoning Sinners upon their Repentance, &c. T. Cox, ...
— The Annual Catalogue: Numb. II. (1738) • Various
... obstinacy of the king, and the jobbing, gambling spirit of the court, predicted the fate of the petition, as soon as it was sent from America; for the men being known, their measures were easily foreseen. As politicians we ought not so much to ground our hopes on the reasonableness of the thing we ask, as on the reasonableness of the person of whom we ask it: who would expect discretion from a fool, candor from a tyrant, or justice from ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... more. They knew all the flies in my book; could tell the new Jenny Lind from the old Bumble Bee before it struck the water; and seemed to know perfectly, both by instinct and experience, that they were all frauds, which might as well be called Jenny Bee and Bumble Lind for any sweet reasonableness that was in them. Besides all this, the water was warm; the trout were logy and would ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... to meet it with a degree of that "sweet reasonableness" which should invest one's daily living, is knowledge that can hardly come amiss. One must treat it as a transient visitation ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... herself, with a sudden distrust of the conclusion which had hitherto satisfied her mind—why might he not lock some of them up in the other rooms as well? The remembrance of the keys still concealed in their hiding-place in her room sharpened her sense of the reasonableness of this new view. With one unimportant exception, those keys had all failed when she tried them in the rooms on the north side of the house. Might they not succeed with the cabinets and cupboards in the east rooms, on which she had never tried them, or ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... "Sweet Reasonableness? Another host Of sages see! The habits of the Ghost, The Astral Body's action, Absorb them, eager. Does more furious fire The councils of the Caucusites inspire, Or light ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... refuse at pleasure; and besides, they at this day shall be convinced that there was so much reality, and downright willingness in God, in every tender of grace and mercy to the worst of men, and also so much goodness, justness, and reasonableness in every command of the gospel of grace, which they were so often entreated and beseeched to embrace, that they will be drowned in the conviction of this, that they did refuse love, grace, and reason—love, I say, for hatred, grace for sin, and things ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin
... a revolution in the state of civilization that will give perfection to the revolution of France. Already the conviction that government by representation is the true system of government is spreading itself fast in the world. The reasonableness of it can be seen by all. The justness of it makes itself felt even by its opposers. But when a system of civilization, growing out of that system of government, shall be so organized that not a man or woman born in the Republic but shall inherit some means of beginning the world, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... a letter from my sister Mary," she said, kindly changing the subject, "and it will please you to know that my lordly father is inclined to listen to reason, and manifests a disposition to admit the reasonableness of his daughter Frances becoming Rich. Beshrew me! but most fathers like that distinction for their children; only, alas! in this instance, Rich and riches are not synonymous. What think you of that? His Highness has not said a word to me on the subject. There ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... perform their work. The motives and sentiments of the various organized groups will govern the action of the wage earners, and produce almost the same result under any system of wage payment. The state of industrial relations, the satisfaction the workers feel in their position, the reasonableness shown by the different groups, the intelligence or ignorance of labor leadership—these and similar other factors will, at bottom, govern the effort put forth by the wage earners. These are the matters to which all who realize ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... set up for reasonableness, my lady. So I don't pretend to say, as I might do if I were a sensible woman and all that,—that I am convinced by Mr. Gray's arguments of this thing or t'other. For one thing, you see, poor fellow! he has never been able to argue, or hardly indeed ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Parliament, the reasonableness of engaging in a war upon the Continent was taken into consideration, and admitted. Liberal supplies were granted, to enable the army, now collected in the King's Hanoverian dominions, to act with vigour, in conjunction with the King of Prussia. Supplies ...
— A Museum for Young Gentlemen and Ladies - A Private Tutor for Little Masters and Misses • Unknown
... over with her as soon as she gave him leave. For his part he had not a moment's doubt that her good sense, relieved from the immediate pressure of her feelings, which were in themselves but too divine for the needs of this world, would convince her of the reasonableness of all he had sought to urge upon her. As soon as she was able, and judged it safe to admit a visitor, his aunt would be ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... but she cannot set it free from earth except by exalting it towards heaven. It was for this end that a renovating grace was put into her hands; and therefore from the nature of the gift, as well as from the reasonableness of the case, she goes on, as a further point, to insist, that all true conversion must begin with the first springs of thought, and to teach that each individual man must be in his own person one whole and perfect temple of God, while he is also one of the living stones which ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... could not, of course, deny the reasonableness of this plea; but neither could they ignore the inconveniences to themselves that would arise from its frank recognition. Between their base at Salonica and the troops which had advanced to Krivolak interposed several Greek ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... a modern nation, following the example of the little city state of Geneva, under Calvin. He claimed for preachers chosen by local congregations the privileges and powers of the apostolic companions of Christ, and in place of "sweet reasonableness," he applied the methods, quite alien to the Founder of Christianity, of the "Sons of Thunder." All controversialists then relied on isolated and inappropriate scriptural texts, and Biblical analogies which were not analogous; but Knox employed ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... "requested to see them confidentially, to hold communications with them, and to grant them secret conferences."[156] Lebrun then referred in contemptuous terms to the British naval preparations, and stated that he had firmly maintained the decree respecting the Scheldt. He then affirmed the reasonableness of the decree of 19th November; and scouted the notion that France harboured designs against Holland. In answer to this last he had said in effect: "That it was much to be wished that the British Ministry had never meddled more with the internal government of that Republic than we ourselves ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... his army in person, and it certainly was not expedient that a woman should hold a position one of whose chief duties she could not discharge. This French custom had, of course, no force in England; but the Norman nobles must have recognized its reasonableness; or if not, ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... hut? Camels are not house-beasts, surely. And to lie by the fire;—cats and dogs like firesides, and crickets, but in my pictures of the Ship of the Desert I never had seen this overmastering desire to get warm. And if it was in sooth a cold country—then in the name of all nursery reasonableness, how came the ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... side of life, of the perpetual tendency of want to cramp the noblest attitude. Poverty and misfortune had overhung her childhood and she had none of the pretty delusions about life that are supposed to be the crowning grace of girlhood. This very competence, which gave her a touching reasonableness, made Glennard's situation more difficult than if he had aspired to a princess bred in the purple. Between them they asked so little—they knew so well how to make that little do—but they understood also, and she especially did not for a moment let ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... by a minister, and Mr. Asquith would turn to Lord Kitchener for his opinion. Lord Kitchener would say, "It's impossible," and close his lips firmly. At this Mr. Lloyd George would attack him, pointing out the reasonableness of this proposal in swift and persuasive phrases. Lord Kitchener, shifting on his chair, would repeat, "It's impossible." Then in question after question Mr. Churchill would ask why it was impossible. "It's impossible," Lord Kitchener would mumble at the end of these questions. Finally, when nearly ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... sunshine freely. Her nasturtiums blossomed there all winter; from a pot she had suspended by strings from the top of the casing, sweet alysseum flowed downward like a fountain of soft green waters tipped with white; scarlet geraniums shot up rank shoots that had to be pruned into reasonableness, and as to Christmas roses—"But there!" the worthy soul would assure her ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... into the reasonableness of the date, it will suffice now to state that at this point the bardic history of Ireland cleaves asunder into two great divisions—the mythological or divine on the one hand, and the historical or heroic-historical on the other. The first is an enchanted land—the world of the Tuatha ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... one friend to whom I have tried to talk about this matter, but I have had no success. He is very peculiar in his views and feelings. He agrees to every thing that I say, and admits the wisdom and reasonableness of it all, ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... under oppression; and they are rent by the most agonizing of all the doubts of the soul, the doubt whether their true salvation must not come from their most abhorrent passions, from murder, envy, greed, stubbornness, rage, and terrorism, rather than from public spirit, reasonableness, humanity, generosity, tenderness, delicacy, pity and kindness. The confirmation of that doubt, at which our newspapers have been working so hard for years past, is the morality of militarism; and the justification ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... third deals with language, and the fourth lays down the limits of the understanding. Other works of his are Thoughts concerning Education (1693), On the Conduct of the Understanding (pub. posthumously), The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695), Treatise on Government, and Letters on Toleration. If not a very profound or original philosopher L. was a calm, sensible, and reasonable writer, and his books were very influential on the English ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... instead of expatiating on the Maumsey household, turned the conversation to something else—especially to Nora's first attempts at golf, in which he had been her teacher. Nora, whose reasonableness was abnormal, very soon took the hint, and after five minutes' "chaff" with Winnington, to whom she was devoted, she took up her work and went ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and formed to have a connected view or grasp of things, it will display its powers with more or less effect according to its particular quality and capacity in the individual. In the case of most men it makes itself felt in the good sense, sobriety of thought, reasonableness, candour, self-command, and steadiness of view, which characterize it. In some it will have developed habits of business, power of influencing others, and sagacity. In others it will elicit the talent of ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... The reasonableness of the narrative of the fall is seen in view of the condition of man after he had sinned with his condition when he left the hand of the Creator. Compare Gen. 1:26 with 6:5, and Psa. 14. If the fall of man were not narrated in Genesis ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... Barren neither came to fetch her, nor sent any writing to tell of the causes for his delay. The girl was fruitful of new reasons for his silence, and then grew a black fear which answered all doubts and, by its reasonableness, terrified her. Perhaps "Mister Jan" was ill—too ill even to write. He had but little strength—that she knew, and few friends—of that Joan was also aware, for he had told her so. Yet, surely, there were those, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... will be using your money to do something you disapprove of.' Gerald was smiling at her as though he felt that he was bringing her round to reasonableness. 'Perhaps that's ugly.' ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... letters I have written have come to your hands or Eliza's, you know that I am safe, through the protection of an American, a most worthy man, who joins to uncommon tenderness of heart and quickness of feeling, a soundness of understanding and reasonableness of temper rarely to be met with. Having been brought up in the interior parts of America, he is a most natural, unaffected creature. I am with him now at Havre, and shall remain there till circumstances point out what is necessary for me to ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... upon Falconer's part in the attack the next night, and upon the entire reasonableness of his abandonment of the trail. He put it down to his own mulishness that he had hung on and had learned through the little boy of her removal ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... a passing tiff. All you need in these matters is a little give and take, a bit of reasonableness on both sides. We got together and talked things over. She withdrew my double chin. I conceded her shark. Perfectly simple. All done in ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... the significance of Sir Thomas Dick-Lauder's facts, and the reasonableness, on the whole, of the views which he has founded on them, they will not bear examination in detail. No such barriers of detritus as he assumed could have existed without leaving traces behind them; but there is no trace left. There is detritus enough in Glen Spean, ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... possessed of an innate reasonableness that responded to reason, but fear was not in her, and an appeal to reason was least potent with her when she was in the saddle. The veiled hints of danger, by which from, Evans onwards, she had been beset, only woke the spirit of revolt that slept in her but little ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... against his will? Fascination exists only in the imagination of the fascinated. If he have the strength to deny the fascination and convince himself that it does not exist, he is saved. It is purely a matter of willpower and calm reasonableness. There must have been sturdy, level-headed Egyptian citizens who could not understand what people saw to admire ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... cool, his instincts would have governed him. He would have dashed about trying to save people, and then met the waves with a noble gesture. He had time to be reasonable; not instinctive. The world was the gainer, as he jolly well knew it would be—or where would have been the reasonableness? I don't believe Ferguson cared a hang about keeping his individual machine going for its own sake. But he knew he was a valuable person. His mind was a Kohinoor among minds. It stands to reason ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... be enlightened permanently by merely teaching him to reject some particular set of superstitions. There is an infinite supply of other superstitions always at hand; and the mind that desires such things—that is, the mind that has not trained itself to the hard discipline of reasonableness and honesty, will, as soon as its devils are cast out, proceed to ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... matters such as this appears to the Government to be the most impartial, just, and most satisfactory way out of the existing difficulty, and, lastly, because one of the parties to a Convention, according to all principles of reasonableness, cannot expect that his interpretation will be respected by the other party as the only valid and correct one. And although this Government is firmly convinced that a just and impartial decision might be ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... the perfect reasonableness of this Restraint, soberness, the matured thought, the unselfish a act, they are necessities of the barbarous state, the life of dangers. Dourness is man's tribute to unconquered nature. But man has conquered nature now for all practical purposes—his political affairs are ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... of Penrod, this question was without meaning or reasonableness. It was within neither his power nor his desire to analyze the process by which the phrase had become offensive to him, and was now rapidly assuming the proportions of an outrage. He knew only that his gorge rose at the thought ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... commerce, or of the philosophic evolutionist, of a world peopled by myriads of happy altruists bounding from bath to breakfast-room, illumined and illumining by their healthy and mutual smiles, differs from the earlier fancies of Asgard and the Isles of the Blest, not in heightened nobility and reasonableness, but in diminished beauty and poetry. The dream of unending progress is vain as the dream of ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... conversation, whether we wish to be useful or pleasing, the first requisite is the religious and moral knowledge of right and wrong; the next is an acquaintance with the history of mankind, and with those examples which may be said to embody truth, and prove by events the reasonableness of opinions.[16] Prudence and justice are virtues and excellences of all times, and of all places—we are perpetually moralists; but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... different articles grown or manufactured in either country, they petitioned, and even set up a claim, which was granted, to be heard by counsel and to produce witnesses. But Pitt steadily refused the least modification of this part of his measure, not merely on account of its intrinsic reasonableness and justice, but because there was scarcely any condition to which the ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... the French staff were relaxing the rule, and Folk had pledged himself to her discretion. "I am not doing you any kindness," he had written. "You will have to share the common hardships and privations, and the danger is real. If I didn't feel instinctively that underneath your mask of sweet reasonableness you are one of the most obstinate young women God ever made, and that without me you would probably get yourself into a still worse hole, I'd have refused." And then followed a list of the things she was to be sure to take with her, including ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... at first sight, to be a sweeping statement, but two homely illustrations will prove its reasonableness. First we will take the case of a man committed to prison for law-breaking. His environment is obviously due to his wrong actions, the latter being the offspring of his thoughts, for all actions spring from thoughts. Next let us take the case of a man who is the trusted head of an ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... circumstanced as they were, whose separation of canonical from uncanonical gospels, or rather their canonizing of certain writings apart from others, and their claiming of inspiration for the authors of the former, must be judged by the reasonableness of the thing itself, in connection with men of their type. The second century abounded in pseudonymous literature; and the early fathers, as well as the churches, were occupied with other things than the sifting of evidence connected with writings considerably prior ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... use the chair he had shoved toward her. She stood beside it a little defiantly. Now she looked into his eyes with a kind of imperious reasonableness. "Whatever I was to you, Fectnor," she said, "I became because I was ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... efforts made by the English at sea to suppress the slave-trade; and our work being to induce them to raise and sell cotton, instead of capturing and selling their fellow-men, our errand appears quite natural; and as they all have clear ideas of their own self- interest, and are keen traders, the reasonableness of the proposal is at once admitted; and as a belief in a Supreme Being, the Maker and Ruler of all things, and in the continued existence of departed spirits, is universal, it becomes quite appropriate to explain that we possess a Book containing a Revelation of ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... criticism. It swings somewhere between criticism on the one hand and reporting on the other. When Mr. Arthur Bourchier a few years ago, in the course of a dispute about Mr. Walkley's criticisms, spoke of the dramatic critic as a dramatic reporter, he did a very insolent thing. But there was a certain reasonableness in his phrase. The critic on the Press is a news-gatherer as surely as the man who is sent to describe a public meeting or a strike. Whether he is asked to write a report on a play of Mr. Shaw's or an exhibition ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... if you wish to, they all have a reasonableness that must have originated in some mighty mind, and better than that, they all tell of the Indian's faith in the survival of the best impulses of the human heart, and the ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... evident from the speech of Woodin that the anti-Grant forces had the reasonableness of the argument, but the acceptance of the Utica instructions put delegates in a delicate position. To say that Conkling had "tricked" them into a pledge which the convention had no authority to exact,[1680] did not ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... It was strange to think that so much humane painstaking care and exertion was being introduced into the business of hanging people; that the most insane deed on earth was being committed with such an air of simplicity and reasonableness. The cars were running, and human beings sat in them as people always do, and they rode as people usually ride; and then there would ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... will scarcely be at once admitted; but a little explanation will show its reasonableness. For if, as we have seen, there is an expenditure of mental energy in the mere act of listening to verbal articulations, or in that silent repetition of them which goes on in reading—if the perceptive faculties must be in active exercise to identify every syllable—then, any ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... be decided upon economic grounds, that it is one of the things that it is well to discuss from the bottom up if two people wish to marry, provided there are any reasons why the relative merits of two or more places of residence are involved in the issue. The reasonableness and generosity of the average American man quite equals the like qualities in the average American woman; hence the domicile question may well be left in abeyance in any struggle for "equality of rights between the sexes" and confined to personal ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... again. Strange how quickly things had happened! He bore these men who had thrashed him no very vivid ill-will. He was bruised and enlightened. He saw with absolute fairness now the reasonableness of his unpopularity. He had behaved like a fool. Disdain, seclusion, are the privilege of the strong. The fallen aristocrat still clinging to his pointless distinction is surely the most pitiful creature of pretence in all this clamant universe. Good heavens! what was there for him to despise ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... the sake of complacency in your small dexterity: better, infinitely better, that you should be wholly uninterested in pictures, and uninformed respecting them, than that you should just know enough to detect blemishes in great works,—to give a color of reasonableness to presumption, and an appearance of acuteness to misunderstanding. Above all, I would plead for this so far as the teaching of these schools may be addressed to the junior Members of the University. ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... this writing was taken to head-quarters and read, Julian, considering the reasonableness of the complaint, ordered that their families should go to the East with them, and allowed them the use of the public wagons for the purpose of moving them. And as it was for some time doubted which ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... institution?—that spirit which, without the help of some such institution, drags out an isolated, debased, and degraded existence. All those great men were utterly ruined; and it is only an insane belief in the Hegelian 'reasonableness of all happenings' which would absolve you of any responsibility in the matter. And not those men alone! Indictments are pouring forth against you from every intellectual province: whether I look at the talents of our poets, philosophers, painters, or sculptors—and ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Of Johnson's reasonableness nothing need be said, except that it is patent everywhere. His wife's judgment was a sound one—"He is the most sensible man ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... that I forgot to tell the publishers to send you a copy of my last peace-offering [The "Essays on Controverted Questions."], and that one will be sent you by to-morrow's post. There is nothing new except the prologue, the sweet reasonableness of which will, I hope, meet ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... clams, intellectual chowder, refined lager, and very scientific pork and beans. It is far superior to our monotonous sand-beach in its picturesqueness of natural beauty, in the American character of the visitors, and in the reasonableness of hotel charges, as well as ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... Russian march across mysterious Asia to the legendary Chinese Wall. The point here is that it existed; and where there exists such an idea in such military rulers, they very seldom alter their idea. But Kitchener did alter his idea. Not in mere military obedience, but in genuine human reasonableness, he came late in life to see the Russian as the friend and the Prussian as the enemy. In the inevitable division of British ministerial councils about the distribution of British aid and attention he was the one man who stood most enthusiastically, one might say stubbornly, for the supreme importance ...
— Lord Kitchener • G. K. Chesterton
... he was to revisit the province of Oran, and eager, too, to satisfy himself of the welfare of his faithful Ben Zoof, Servadac could not but own the reasonableness of the lieutenant's objections, and yielded to the proposal that the eastward course should be adopted. The wind gave signs only too threatening of the breeze rising to a gale; but, fortunately, the waves did not culminate in breakers, but rather in ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... so constructed as not to be usable without stopping the running of the cars, would be a nuisance. The supposed analogy to the right of an abutter to load and unload a necessary article fails entirely. A passing driver is not in the position of an abutter, the reasonableness of whose action is determined by the degree of momentary necessity, and the limit of whose right is that his obstruction must be temporary. Here, however, the watering-trough and not the driver is in the abutter's position. The watering-trough is a public utility, which every ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... similar errors are excluded by the fact that Christ instituted this sacrament under the species of bread and wine, as is evident from Matt. 26. Consequently, bread and wine are the proper matter of this sacrament. And the reasonableness of this is seen first, in the use of this sacrament, which is eating: for, as water is used in the sacrament of Baptism for the purpose of spiritual cleansing, since bodily cleansing is commonly done with water; so bread and wine, wherewith men are ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... book that Chesterton has ever written. It is, I venture to think, the work that will gain for him immortality. It is a book on the greatest of themes, the reasonableness of the Christian religion. There have been many books written to attack the Christian religion, equally many to defend it, but Chesterton has made his apology for the religion on original grounds—the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... from which I shall regard this campaign is not that of a trained military expert or critic, but merely that of an attentive and fair-minded civilian observer. I do not pretend to speak ex cathedra, nor do I claim for my judgments any other value than that given to them by such inherent reasonableness and fairness as they may seem to have. I went to Cuba without any prejudice for or against any particular plan of operations; I had very little acquaintance with or knowledge of the officers of the Fifth Army-Corps; and the opinions and conclusions that I shall here ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... Cowperwood had been free on a certificate of reasonable doubt both Harper Steger and Dennis Shannon appeared before the judges of the State Supreme Court, and argued pro and con as to the reasonableness of granting a new trial. Through his lawyer, Cowperwood made a learned appeal to the Supreme Court judges, showing how he had been unfairly indicted in the first place, how there was no real substantial evidence ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... is not over the innate reasonableness of it: the universe is immeasurably more reasonable with it than without it; but over its practicability after the body is gone. We, in our immeasurable wisdom, don't see how it can work—we don't see how ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... interrupted Mary gently; "it is not because of the reasonableness of our parents' commands that we are required to obey them, but because it ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... time the youth or maiden is exceedingly resentful of arbitrary restraint or punishment. There is a super-sensitiveness and a keen self-consciousness which cannot brook harshness and coercion. Sympathy and reasonableness must take the place of censure and punishment. Years ago I remember seeing a father start to whip his boy who was just emerging into the adolescent stage, a heavy stick was raised to strike, but the boy looked his father in the eye without flinching and quietly remarked: "You ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... like an escaped lunatic since early this morning, my good de Marmont," he said drily. "Don't you think that—as we shall have to mix again with our fellow-men presently—you might try to behave with some semblance of reasonableness." ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... view possible to the primitive intelligences over which we exercise domestic lordship. In this view they are, indeed, as we regard them—so many channels by which the rupee may flow from us; but what are we, if not great reservoirs, built to feed those very channels? And so, with that "sweet reasonableness" which is so pleasant a feature of the Hindoo mind, your boy or butler, being the main conduit, sets himself to estimate the capacity of the reservoir, that he may adapt the gauge of each pipe and regulate ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... although full of reasonableness and foresight, are not so well approved of at this time, when States not only refuse to refer to the laws of Christian knowledge, but are seen even to wish to depart each day farther from them. Nevertheless, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... being made with proper care to insure its strength; we were still several hundred miles from the coast of Guiana, and for so long a voyage it was indispensable to have a struc- ture of considerable solidity. The reasonableness of this was self-apparent, and as the crew had recovered their as- surance they spared no pains to accomplish their ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... Planchette's penetration; but while we sat in quiet expectation of the reply, which of course did not come, my friend's mother—a sober, middle-aged lady, habitually behaving herself with perfect reasonableness, and, moreover, without a spark of imagination (but that, indeed, was rather of course; belief in such supernatural agencies betokening, in my opinion, an absence of poetical imagination, as well as of spiritual faith), practical, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... first place, it has been authoritative rather than scientific, which is to say that students have been induced to accept the statements of teachers and text books, and have not been trained to weigh for themselves their reasonableness and worth; a principle essentially unscientific and undemocratic, since it inculcates in the future citizen convictions rather than encourages the habit of open-mindedness so necessary for democratic citizenship. For democracy—it cannot be too often repeated—is a dynamic thing, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... wonderful that such a method should incur the charge of sentimentalism. "It would be so nice to believe it, therefore it must be true," sounds like a shameless abandonment of reasonableness. The fact that a belief is "consoling," quite independently of its truth or falsehood, creates a bias towards its acceptance. That it is pleasant to believe oneself very clever and competent will incline one to that belief until something important depends, not ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... reasonableness of Jack's words. "Go where you like," muttered Shand. "I'll stick ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... 1904). This animal, together with the dog, is found beneath the constellation signs carrying firebrands; both are regarded as lightning beasts. By comparing the head of the figure shown in Pl. 25, fig. 1, with figs. 2, 4, 5, of the same plate, the reasonableness of the identification of this head as that of a macaw and not that of a tortoise appears clear. The same figure occurs in Tro-Cortesianus 12a (Pl. 25, fig. ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... a policy like yours would decimate the House of Commons and abolish the House of Lords. Practical religion has a sweet reasonableness. We are all human, even if we are all gentlemen; and ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... the last word of wisdom or reasonableness. It was lacking in beauty and distinction as a petition, as being just the right form of prayer for those fifty thousand faultless dockers up on Tower Hill that afternoon (the whole of London listening, in that shocked and proper ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... with just the shadow of a shrug, was all sweet reasonableness. She smiled more suavely than ever. "Surely, Lina," she remonstrated, in her frankest and most convincing tone, "I must know best what is good for dear Ettie, when I have been watching her daily for ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... been prepared for this tranquil reasonableness. May was either more primitive, or much more sophisticated, than she had supposed. Her ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... from an amusing book called The Academy, which, for all I know, is the first real boy's school-book ever written. Its companion is The Rector, and together they describe, with no little spirit and reasonableness, a school a hundred years ago, with all the escapades and errors of the boys and all the homilies of the schoolmaster. I like the episode of Scourhill as well as any because of the pleasant interior ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... young, while yet unmarried, is thus finely defined by Jeremy Taylor:—"It is a voluntary cession that is required; such a cession as must be without coercion and violence on his part, but upon fair inducements and reasonableness in the thing, and out of love and honour on her part. When God commands us to love Him, He means we shall obey Him. 'This is love, that ye keep my commandments; and if ye love me,' says the Lord, 'keep my commandments.' Now as Christ is to the Church, so is man to the wife; ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... and blandishments that had rendered his child so dear to him during the first year or two of his widowerhood, he had still a strong but somewhat latent love for her. Accustomed to command and to obey, without being questioned himself or questioning others, concerning the reasonableness of the mandates, he was perhaps too much disposed to believe that his daughter would marry the man he might select, while he was far from being disposed to do violence to her wishes. The fact was; few knew the Pathfinder intimately without secretly believing him ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... The reasonableness of this rule is apparent the moment that its effects upon offspring are comprehended. The child inherits the joint organization of the parents. It can never be better than the sum total of the parental organizations. It may be better or worse than either of these, according to circumstances. ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor
... was right—"elle avait toutes les intelligences de la tete et du coeur." And old and young, the best and the worst, seemed to love and respect her alike—and women as well as men—for her perfect sincerity, her sweet reasonableness. ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... sighed, but she saw the reasonableness of her mother's proposal, and pressing Lady Westborough's ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... estates is a duty of religion; it is the great reasonableness of complying with the Divine Providence, which governs all the world, and hath so ordered us in the administration of his great family. He were a strange fool that should be angry because dogs and sheep need no shoes, and yet himself is full of care ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... there is probably a moment of anguish, perhaps not even that moment, and then your wife is here with you in the land of spirits. I am sure that is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Even a man in your state of mind must see the reasonableness of this. Now, looking at the question in what you would call its most serious aspect, see how little it amounts to. It isn't worth a moment's thought, whichever way ...
— From Whose Bourne • Robert Barr
... to say the best of them, those opinions were, if the people did not swallow them down as law & reason, they were told, that the freedom they used with the characters of great men forsooth "would bring dishonor upon them" and standing armies were sent to convince them of the reasonableness of these opinions—I confess that "too great a respect cannot be paid to the honorable part of the profession of the law," but when state-lawyers, attorneys and sollicitors general, & persons advanced to the highest stations in the courts ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... character of a truly great man. With a courage which no danger could appal, he possessed the utmost calmness of temper and sweetness of disposition, by which all who conversed with him were engaged to love and esteem his character. He was naturally eloquent, both in illustrating and proving the reasonableness of his own opinions, and in converting others from their erroneous preconceived notions. Above all, he possessed that steady and persevering resolution, which not only enabled him to vanquish the greatest difficulties, but gave such appearance of success to every ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... come step by step—this extraordinary, impossible suggestion once sown in her dreaming soul—to perceive a kind of miraculous reasonableness in it, to see its necessity, and how everything pointed towards such a deliverance. It would have seemed natural to believe that the prophecies of the countryside which promised a virgin from an oak grove, a maiden from Lorraine, to deliver France, might have affected her ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... me' sometimes means. Whatever Thou shalt see fit to do for me, at least listen to my cry. Let me unburden my soul. Let me get this weight of silence off my heart. This fashion of relief is part of the true office of prayer. Herein lies the reasonableness of telling our story in the ear of One who knows that story better than we do. We need not inform the All-knowing, but we must commune with the All-pitiful. We make our life known unto God that we may ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth
... sir," returns Mr. Snagsby; "I was sure you would feel it yourself and would excuse the reasonableness of MY feelings when coupled with the known excitableness of my little woman. You see, the foreign female—which you mentioned her name just now, with quite a native sound I am sure—caught up the word Snagsby that night, being uncommon quick, and made inquiry, and got the direction and come at ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... the Supreme Court at Washington, following some tentative gestures in that direction, accepted the new dispensation outright. In Smyth v. Ames decided that year, partially overturning Munn v. Illinois, it gave notice of its intention to review in detail the "reasonableness" of railway rates set by State authority and in Holden v. Hardy it ratified, at the same term, the doctrine of freedom of contract.[70] The result of the two holdings for the Court's constitutional jurisdiction ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... Life," Service, Pain and Sorrow, Peace and Joy, and the Indwelling Christ. She was dissatisfied with the work and required some persuasion before she would consent to its being published. But its spiritual tone, its tenderness, its "sweet reasonableness," and the bright little pictures of Christian truth and life, which enliven its pages, have led some to prize it more than any ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... advice. He would betray no impatience, however specious Lind might be. He would shut down that distrust of Natalie's father that was continually springing up in his mind. He would be considerate to the difficulties of his position, ready to admit the reasonableness of his arguments, mindful of the higher duties demanded of himself. But then—but then—he bethought him of that evening at the theatre; he remembered what she had said; how she had looked. He was not going to give up his beautiful, proud-natured ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... these sermons will be struck by their thorough reasonableness,—a reasonableness which does not exclude, but includes, the deepest and warmest religious sensibility. Moral and religious feeling pervades every statement; but the feeling is still confined within a flexible framework of argument, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... it is the exaggeration of a very lovable type—the woman who gives you the feeling of rest and protection and strong motherliness, who is as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. "The meekness and gentleness of Christ" is translated by Matthew Arnold as the "sweet reasonableness," and this makes a very lovable woman. Sweet unreasonableness makes a more taking one, but not a keeping one. Butterfly women have more fascinating ways, but Spring-time comes to an end—the day will come for all women when others will come ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... threshing-floors. After duly binning, I am taken under the protecting wing of a prominent villager, who is walking about with his hand in a sling, the reason whereof is a crushed finger; he is a sensible, intelligent fellow, and accepts my reply that I am not a crushed-finger hakim with all reasonableness; he provides a substantial supper of bread and yaort, and then installs me in a small, windowless, unventilated apartment adjoining the buffalo- stall, provides me with quilts, lights a primitive grease-lamp, and retires. During the evening the entire female ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the world, whenever these truths suffer temporary obscuration? So viewed, humor is the offspring of love, and also mankind's redeemer, inasmuch as it paralyzes the influence of anger and hatred, emanations from the powers of change and finality, by laying bare the eternal principles and "sweet reasonableness" hidden even in them, and finally stripping them of every adjunct incompatible with the serenity of absolute truth. In whatever mind humor, that is, love and cheerfulness, reigns supreme, the inconsistencies and imperfections of life, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... perseverance in study. Amidst all the pleasures of novelty which his travels supplied, and in the dignity of his publick station, he preferred the tranquillity of private study, and the quiet of academical retirement. The reasonableness of this choice has been always disputed; and in the contrariety of human interests and dispositions, the controversy ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... unprincipled persons against me, unless I had now combined with those protections, which I have always possessed, the goodwill also of the men in power. I should, to the best of my belief, have followed this same line of policy even if I had had you here. For I well know the reasonableness and soberness of your judgment: I know your mind, while warmly attached to me, to be without a tinge of malevolence to others, but on the contrary as open and candid as it is great and lofty. I ...
— Letters of Cicero • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... systems within systems and policies within policies. It is not enough that you have set out to suppress something or to encourage something. You must follow his particular way. He is in terror of compromise and sees profligacy in sweet reasonableness. He knows the tragic failure of other movements with vacillating policies. This one must be saved at all costs. 'Twere better to smash the whole movement than proceed along undesirable lines. He would scorn victory that came through avenues not recognized by him. ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... of the Queensland shearers has afforded opportunity for a display of an equal faculty of logic and reasonableness. The shearers, at loggerheads with the squatters, proposed to arrange their differences by arson. They threatened openly to fire the grass upon those vast northern plains where fire is the thing most to be dreaded amongst many and terrible enemies. They not only ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... passion for facts and a strong sense of their reality. He moves with natural ease among abstract propositions, is both critical of, and fertile in, theories; indicates his essential distinction in his love of the truth for the truth's sake. He looks first to the intrinsic reasonableness of any proposition; tends to judge both men and movements not by traditional or personal values, but by a detached and disinterested appraisal of their inherent worth. He is often a dogmatist, but this fault is not peculiar to him, he shares it with the rest ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... reverse. Most reasonable. We are supposing three courses open to Destiny. One, to kill you, lawlessly—Destiny being notoriously lawless. Another to make you change your mind. A third to make me change mine. The reasonableness of suicide in the first case is obvious, if Death is not annihilation. I should catch you up. In the second, all the Hereafters in the Universe would be no worse for me than Life in the dark, without you, here ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... session at all. She knew he had doubts concerning close communion, and she had heard him say that certain 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 ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... both. The real causes of the decay of the interests of religion are set forth in a clear and lively manner, without unseasonable passions; and the whole air of the book, as to the language, the sentiments, and the reasonableness, show it was written by one whose virtue sits easy about him, and to whom vice is thoroughly contemptible. It was said by one of this company, alluding to that knowledge of the world the author seems to have, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... and however counteracted by the weight of later maxims. The examiner finds that he himself shares the mental state of the superstitious person; if not, he can easily make an effort of imagination which will enable him to comprehend its evident reasonableness. Thus, while superstitions are properly designated as survivals, it will in many cases be found that they represent a survival of ratiocination as well ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various |
