"Arbitrarily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gigantic contracts, involving an amount of more than six million dollars, were distributed with a view to influence votes in the House of Representatives upon the Lecompton Bill. Some of the lesser ones, such as those for furnishing mules, dragoon-horses, and forage, were granted arbitrarily to relatives or friends of members who were wavering upon that question. The principal contract, that for the transportation of all the supplies, involving, for the year 1858, the amount of four millions ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... haunted before we had come to live in it, that on reconsideration I discovered the serious difficulty of accounting satisfactorily for all that had occurred upon ordinary principles. A great deal we might arbitrarily set down to imagination. But even in so doing there was, in limine, the oddity, not to say improbability, of so many different persons having nearly simultaneously suffered from different spectral and other illusions during the short period for ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 2 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... words which confused us and prevented us from seeing that "the preservation of favoured races" was a cloak for "luck," and that this was all the explanation he was giving) "by which the evolution is possible; it was almost universally rejected, while such undemonstrable agencies as those arbitrarily asserted to exist by Professor Semper and Mr. George Henslow were the only means suggested by ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... act—such as in the making of a testament, in an action at law, or in the census—expressly or tacitly surrendered his -dominium-, neither he himself nor his lawful successors should ever have power arbitrarily to recall that resignation or reassert a claim to the person of the freedman himself or of his descendants. The clients and their posterity did not by virtue of their position possess either the rights of burgesses or those of guests: for to constitute a burgess ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... what is going on: men have been killed, slaughtered, murdered, massacred, and I am ignorant of it! Men have been arbitrarily imprisoned, tortured, banished, exiled, transported, and I scarcely glimpse the fact! My mayor and my cure tell me: "These people, who are taken away, bound with cords, are escaped convicts!" I am a peasant, cultivating ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... price of some things are arbitrarily fixed by law or custom, such as stamps, professional ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... an editorial retrospect of half a century presents a sad record of the newspaper work of making bricks without straw. Justly excepting the comparatively few public men who tower over mediocrity in public place, journalism gives the position and fashions the fame of most of them. It is not done arbitrarily nor from choice, as public and political necessities are often paramount with journalists, as with others, in awarding public honors; but with all its exactions and responsibilities, which are ever magnified by the greater opportunities for ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... sign '[a, x, O'x]' for the general term of the series of forms a, O'a, O'O'a,.... This bracketed expression is a variable: the first term of the bracketed expression is the beginning of the series of forms, the second is the form of a term x arbitrarily selected from the series, and the third is the form of the term that immediately follows x ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... representative of that "splendid composite of imagery," and that application of modern ideas to legendary material, or to invented material arbitrarily placed in an archaic setting, which are characteristic of this artist. The poem's sub-title is "A Medley," ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... never studied elocution or practiced debating. This was a loss to me in one way. In another way it was not. Personally I have not the slightest sympathy with debating contests in which each side is arbitrarily assigned a given proposition and told to maintain it without the least reference to whether those maintaining it believe in it or not. I know that under our system this is necessary for lawyers, but I emphatically disbelieve in it as regards general discussion of political, social, and industrial ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... do,—for there is no real doing in the case,—proceeds not at all from their own natures or wills, but purely because the author chose to have it so. So that the persons and incidents are to all intents and purposes put together arbitrarily, and not under any vital law of human nature. Any other set of actions might just as well be tacked on to the same persons; any other persons might just as well be put through the same course of action. This merely outward ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... much flagging of wing both in his verse and in his prose that, if we did not remind ourselves what flights he was born to take, we might persuade ourselves at times that there was little in his work but the dull flappings and slitherings of a penguin. His genius is intermittent and comes arbitrarily to an end. He is inspired only in fragments and aphorisms. He was all but incapable of writing a complete book or a complete poem at a high level. His irresponsibility as an author is described in that sentence in which ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... because the Fashion of the Country has establish'd it, that a Gentleman cannot do so with Honour? A Term which herein signifies nothing, but agreeably to certain measures of acting that Men have Arbitrarily made for themselves, and which are not founded upon any Principle of right Reason; however to be obey'd, it seems, by a Gentleman preferably to the Commands of Christ. If there are Cases wherein from want of a due provision in Governments against some sort of Injuries ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham
... had got myself into the habit of eating large quantities of food. Also, I had accustomed my system to certain amounts of alcohol. I was organized on that basis—fatly and flabbily organized, to be sure, but organized just the same. Now, then, when I arbitrarily cut down the amount of food and drink for which my system was organized that entire system rose up in active revolt and yelled for what it had been accustomed to get. There wasn't a minute for more ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... right of kings to rule as they please, and at once set about carrying out these ideas in a most imprudent and reckless manner. Notwithstanding he had given most solemn assurances that he would uphold the Anglican Church, he straightway set about the reestablishment of the Roman Catholic worship. He arbitrarily prorogued and dissolved Parliament. The standing army, which Charles had raised to 10,000 men, he increased to 20,000, and placed Catholics in many of its most important offices. He formed a league ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... which he used his Veto for the first time have never yet been correctly stated. A well meant but unskilful attempt had been made to complete a reform which the Bill of Rights had left imperfect. That great law had deprived the Crown of the power of arbitrarily removing the judges, but had not made them entirely independent. They were remunerated partly by fees and partly by salaries. Over the fees the King had no control; but the salaries he had full power to reduce or to withhold. That William ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... life, and knew that Eros never mingles more arbitrarily in the intercourse of a young couple than when, after a long separation, there is anything ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... any one point, or how great a difference between the two extremes is sufficient to bar identity, is one of the most uncertain things imaginable, and seems to be decided on different grounds in different cases, sometimes very intelligibly, and again at others arbitrarily and capriciously. ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... female character, so prettily drawn by poets and novelists, demanding the sacrifice of truth and sincerity, virtue becomes a relative idea, having no other foundation than utility, and of that utility men pretend arbitrarily to judge, shaping it ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... anxious to show that the Hungarians are in a minority in their own land. They hoped that intimidation and terrorism would induce even the very Magyars to disavow their language and birth. They ordered a census of races to be made. They performed it with the iron rule of martial law; and dealt so arbitrarily that thousands of women and men, who professed to be Magyars, who professed not to know any other language than the Magyar, were, notwithstanding all their protestation, put down as Sclaves, Serbs, Germans, or Wallachians, because their names had ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... destroyer of kings! In this moment he once more put the creature's full name upon him. The dog found the name alarming; perceived that he had committed some one of those offences for which he was arbitrarily punished. He relaxed the stout jaws, crawled slinkingly to the couch, and leaped upon it. Once there, he whimpered protestingly. One of the few clear beliefs he had about a perplexing social system was that nothing hurtful could befall him once he had gained that couch. ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... be very peculiar indeed to make submission to tyranny a duty. But of all conceivable legislation, none could possibly be more partial, or therefore more tyrannical, than such as should give to society a general power of dealing at its pleasure with its associates, and of arbitrarily subjecting separate classes or individuals to exceptional treatment. Even, therefore, if a law to such monstrous effect were enacted, it could have no morally binding force. It would be no one's duty ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... of the divine and the human is reached in a different way from that of Smith by MM. Hubert and Mauss, and receives in their hands a peculiar coloring.[1900] They hold that the numerous forms of sacrifice cannot be reduced to "the unity of a single arbitrarily chosen principle"; and in view of the paucity of accurate accounts of early ritual (in which they include the Greek and the Roman) they reject the "genealogical" (that is, the evolutionary) method, and devote themselves to an analysis of the two ancient rituals, the Hindu ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... men, fought shy of the women. Most of them had put the best face upon their lives, rejoicing in the occasional streaks of fat, eating the lean uncomplainingly. They led a migratory existence, moved arbitrarily, like pawns, at the will of eminent and elderly gentlemen a thousand or so miles away, whom they did not know and who did not know them. Continually, as their temporary habitations began to take on the semblance of homes, they were transferred, from mountains to plains, from the ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... committed against filial piety and the public laws. If a king is careless about publishing laws, and then peremptorily punishes in accordance with the strict letter of them, he acts the part of a swindler; if he collect the taxes arbitrarily without giving warning, he is guilty of oppression; and if he puts the people to death without having instructed them, he ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... "How can France, with her solemn assurances of liberty, arbitrarily interfere with the government of a country already possessing a representative elected by the people? How can she proclaim us as a free nation, and, at the same moment, deprive us of our liberty? Will she establish a new mythology of nations, and divide the different peoples on ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... tumours are arbitrarily divided into two classes—the innocent and the malignant. The outstanding difference between them is, that while the evil effects of innocent tumours are entirely local and depend for their severity on the environment of the growth, malignant tumours wherever situated, in addition ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... assign its exact limits to any genus. Gaps in our collections are being continually filled up, to the effacement of our dividing lines of demarcation. We are thus compelled to settle the limits of species and variety arbitrarily, and in a manner about which there will be constant disagreement. Naturalists are daily classifying new species which blend into one another so insensibly that there can hardly be found words to express the minute differences between ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... pleading, but determined. The imperious manner of the queen, instead of intimidating the pale and gentle girl, awakened her to the consciousness of her own dignity. "Majesty," she said, with cool decision, "love is not given by command, it cannot be bestowed arbitrarily." ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... extensively cleared, and there were many quiet and most picturesque nooks in the forest. Chacao was formerly the principal port in the island; but many vessels having been lost, owing to the dangerous currents and rocks in the straits, the Spanish government burnt the church, and thus arbitrarily compelled the greater number of inhabitants to migrate to S. Carlos. We had not long bivouacked, before the barefooted son of the governor came down to reconnoitre us. Seeing the English flag hoisted at the yawl's masthead, he ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... assessment and levy was peculiar. The gross amount of the taille was determined twice a year by the royal council, and apportioned arbitrarily among the twenty-four districts (generalites) of France, and then subdivided by various officials among the sub-districts (elections) and the parishes. The divisions thus made were very unequal; some provinces, sub-districts, and parishes being treated ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... devotion of his vassals. Invested with a power which for a long time resembled the command of a general of an army, he had at first no other ministers than the officers to whom he gave full power to act in the provinces, and who decided arbitrarily in the name of, and representing, the King, on all questions of administration. One minister alone approached the King, and that was the chancellor, who verified, sealed, and dispatched all ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... its cage; the magpie on the fence—are each setting in motion the complex machinery of music, and with about equal scientific knowledge of what they are doing. To the philosophic mind, however, they are not playing or singing; they are producing and controlling sound-vibrations, arbitrarily varied in duration and quality; a series of such pulsations constituting a note; a series of notes constituting an air. These vibrations are diffused from the instrument or the lips, at a speed varying with temperature, ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... should have recollected the warning of the wise man, 'Force not the course of the river.' If you divert it from the channel in which nature taught it to flow, and force it into one arbitrarily cut by yourself, you will lose its ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will ruin and divide them; for a minority of their own will secede from them, whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such a minority. For instance, why not any portion of a new Confederacy, a year or so hence, arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this. Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... to the public is the preservation of this personal liberty: for if once it were left in the power of any, the highest, magistrate to imprison arbitrarily whomever he or his officers thought proper, (as in France it is daily practiced by the crown) there would soon be an end of all other rights and immunities. Some have thought, that unjust attacks, even upon life, or property, at the arbitrary will of the magistrate, are less dangerous ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... ever the suit of doubtful or worse Prognosticks; of the Events that arbitrarily fall to Man's Lot, those things which hardly can any Prescience or Plans or Conditions of our own making amend. Thence is it that in especiall comes a serious, nay even a gloomy appearance to the Parallelogram. Your first Glance at ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... dismissal has excited strong feelings of reprobation. Certainly, whatsoever other name may be given to the act, it cannot be called a just one, to degrade an honourable man from his rank, and deprive him of the half pay (which in a great measure accrued to him from purchase,) without accusation, arbitrarily, and on secret and suborned information of having; merited the inflicted contumely. But futile has been the effort of malevolence; Sir Robert Wilson's half pay was L460 per annum, and the subscriptions in indemnification of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... in her brief authority" as Lady Chancellor, had arbitrarily imprisoned the Lord Mayor, and this the ballad converts into a persecution of the unfortunate Lady Mayoress, whom she sent"—into Wales with speed, And kept her secret there, And used her still more cruelly Than ever man did bear. She mude her wash, ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... hallucination. Therefore, an hallucination which, when we are conscious of our material environment, does compete with it in reality, is different in kind from an ordinary dream. Science gains nothing by arbitrarily declaring that two experiences so radically different are identical. Anybody would see this if he were not ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... question whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily, without any pretense, break up their Government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask, 'Is there, in all Republics, this inherent and fatal weakness? Must a Government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... oppression. Any man who is suspected, or feared, or disliked, or supposed not to approve of the proceedings of the victorious party, is arrested and imprisoned at pleasure. He may be guiltless of any offense which could be made a pretext for condemning him, but his trial is arbitrarily postponed, and when at last he is released, he has suffered the penalty of a long confinement, and is taught how dangerous it is to become obnoxious ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... his figure seemed suddenly bent forward more than usual, and his voice had a note of terrible hurt. It was as if all the ties of seven years of vicissitude had been arbitrarily cast off by his old partner; that they had become master and man. His words conveyed ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... that is to say, less than a degree to the northwest of them; that their inhabitants speak the Marquesan dialect, and that their laws, religion, and general customs are identical. The only reason why they were ever thus arbitrarily distinguished may be attributed to the singular fact, that their existence was altogether unknown to the world until the year 1791, when they were discovered by Captain Ingraham, of Boston, Massachusetts, nearly two centuries after the discovery ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... kind, and used in the same relations, always represent one class of objects; and when the office of a symbol has been once shown, the same symbol, similarly used, always fills a like office. They are never used arbitrarily. ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... guard him and at the same time support an enemy having just cause of complaint. This, however, his narrow means would not much longer permit him to do. The alternative was then offered him of either siding arbitrarily against the men and his conscience or of taking a course 'imprudent on the part of a presumptive heir,' Mr. Wythan said hurriedly at ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... can never be got rid of. Thirdly, the fact that the bad become good under certain circumstances, and the good also become bad often unexpectedly, can hardly be explained by the dualistic theory, because if good nature be so arbitrarily turned into bad and bad nature into good, the distinction of good and bad nature has no meaning whatever. According to the theory of Buddha-nature, the fact that the good become bad or the bad become good, does not imply ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... of 1 Sam. xxxi. 10 says, in a vague manner, "in the house of the Ashtaroth" (in the plural), which is corrected, somewhat arbitrarily, in 1 Chron. x. 10 iato "in the house of Dagon" (B.V.); it is possible that it was the temple at Gaza, Gaza being the chief of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... measure that it disengages the truth. In this aspect of it the work is ideal as distinct from merely actual. There is a practice in art which draws its standard of beauty, its ideal, not from nature but from other art, and which seeks to "improve nature" by the combination of arbitrarily chosen elements and by the modification of natural truth to fit a preconceived formula. The Eclectics of Bologna, in the seventeenth century, sought to combine Raphael's perfection of drawing and composition, Michelangelo's sublimity and his mastery of the figure, and Correggio's ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... their officers,—after property had lost its weight and consideration, along with its security,—after voluntary clubs and associations of factious and unprincipled men were substituted in the place of all the legal corporations of the kingdom arbitrarily dissolved,—after freedom had been banished from those popular meetings[25] whose sole recommendation is freedom,—after it had come to that pass that no dissent dared to appear in any of them, but at the certain price ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... binary point may be arbitrarily assigned to best suit the problem in hand. Two common conventions in the placement of the ...
— Preliminary Specifications: Programmed Data Processor Model Three (PDP-3) - October, 1960 • Digital Equipment Corporation
... a very odd sort of place, and widely different from what it is to-day. It was not a village, neither was it a city. It had not grown, but had been created for a special purpose. A site had been arbitrarily selected, and a city laid out on the most magnificent scale. But there was no independent life, for the city was wholly official in its purposes and its existence. There were a few great public buildings, a few large private houses, a few hotels and boarding houses, and a large number ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... new elements into the controversy in assailing as unlawful the jurisdiction of British prize courts over neutral vessels seized or detained. Briefly, Great Britain arbitrarily extended her domestic law, through the promulgation of Orders in Council, to the high seas, which the American Government contended were subject solely to international law. So these Orders in Council, under which the British naval authorities acted ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... sensuous, immediate presence of its object, and thus, through abstraction and generalization, arises the conception. The mental image may (1) be compared with the perception from which it sprang, or (2) it may be arbitrarily altered and combined with other images, or (3) it may be held fast in the form of abstract signs or symbols which intelligence invents for it. Thus originate the functions (1) of the verification of conceptions, (2) of the creative imagination, and (3) of memory; but for ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... the friendliness and civility we had hitherto experienced from the inhabitants was changing into reserve and evident distrust. Secret cabals were going on against us; and even the Government seemed inclined to act, if not with positive hostility, at least violently and arbitrarily ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... fact that man may, and often does, make a wrong choice, that he may try to traverse the wrong path, to accomplish the wrong work, and do many things in the wrong way, is a clear proof that his course in life is not arbitrarily fixed, that he has been left to the freedom of his own will, and may therefore fall short of the best, though he may be fortunate enough to attain the good or the better. Hence devolves upon every one the responsibility of putting ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... mastery of international law and practice and his art and skill in conducting delicate negotiations, we have probably never had his equal in diplomatic initiative, or in the thorough preparation and presentation of cases. He did not meet occasions merely but made them, not arbitrarily but for the world's good. Settling the Alaskan boundary favorably to the United States at every point save one, crumbling with the single stroke of his Pauncefote treaty that Clayton-Bulwer rock on which Evarts, Blaine, and Frelinghuysen in turn had tried ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the survival of the group. Groups, however, as we have already pointed out, cannot do as they please. They are always hard-pressed in competition by other groups and have to meet the standards of efficiency which nature imposes. Morality, therefore, is not anything arbitrarily designed by the group, but is a standard of conduct which necessities of social survival require. In other words, the right, from the point of view of natural science, is that which ultimately conduces to survival, not of the individual, but of the group or of the species. This ...
— Sociology and Modern Social Problems • Charles A. Ellwood
... to smoke you out, so arbitrarily I terminated negotiations with the Central California Power Company. It required all of my own courage and some of Bill Conway's to do it, but—we did it. Within three days our Los Angeles friend again arrived ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... penalties due. 11. That he had raised a great state, and got grants of Crown lands. 12. That he had advised the sale of Dunkirk. 13. That he had caused letters under the great seal to be altered. 14. That he had arbitrarily raised questions of titles to land. 15. That he had been the author of the fatal counsel of dividing the fleet in June, 1666. 16. That he had been in correspondence with Cromwell during the King's exile.] and these contrivances ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... the correct translation of [Hebrew: iqrav]. And when Jerome, in opposition to the Alex., remarks that, according to the Hebrew, the translation ought to be: Nomen ejus vocabunt, he does not contend against their use of the Singular per se, but only against their arbitrarily supplying "Jehovah" as the subject; against their explaining "The Lord shall call," instead of "one" shall call. The manner in which the false reading [Hebrew: iqrav] first arose, is clearly seen ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... every way satisfactory. The Jacobinical and precipitous assaults of the Non-intrusionists upon the rights of property are summarily put down. A great danger is surmounted. For if the rights of patrons were to be arbitrarily trampled under foot on a pretence of consulting for the service of religion; on the next day, with the same unprincipled levity, another party might have trampled on the patrimonial rights of hereditary descent, on primogeniture, or any institution ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... depends here upon the sense in which the word "experience" is used. The assumption need not necessarily be challenged except where, as is very often the case, an arbitrarily limited definition of experience is intended. From this general assumption flows the subjective theory of morals; from it is derived the conviction that the rationalistic values in religion are ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... other spirits. Artificial divination is also of two kinds: the one argues from natural causes, as in the predictions of physicians relative to the event of diseases, from the tongue, pulse, etc. The second the consequence of experiments and observations arbitrarily instituted, and is mostly superstitious. The systems of divination reduceable under these heads are almost incalculable. Among these were the Augurs or those who drew their knowledge of futurity from the flight, and various other ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... last analysis, there are few private rights which are not subordinate to the general welfare; but, on the other hand, legislation which affects private rights must have a reasonable tendency to promote the general welfare and must not arbitrarily invade the rights of particular persons or classes. Inasmuch as the hard and fast rules of an age when conditions of life were simpler are no longer practicable under the more complex relationships of modern times, there is today an inevitable tendency to ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... became united in their opposition to Mistress Anne Hutchinson. The fact that she presumed to teach men, was prominently brought up, and in November, 1637, she was arbitrarily tried before the Massachusetts General Court upon a joint charge of sedition and heresy. She was examined for two days by the Governor and prominent members of the clergy. The Boston Church, which knew her worth, sustained her, with the exception of five members, one of ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... nothing. It is only an opening. Faith is the pipe that brings the water, the flinging wide the shutters that the light may flood the dark room, the putting oneself into the path of the electric circuit. Salvation is not arbitrarily connected with faith. It is not the reward of faith but the possession of what comes through faith, and cannot come in any other way. Our 'hearts' are 'purified by faith,' because faith admits into our hearts the life, and instals as dominant in them the powers, the motives, the Spirit, which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... beginning of the 17th century, only two MSS. of the Nights existed m the libraries of Paris, one in Arabic, and the other in Turkish. The Arabic MS. contains 870 Nights, and is arbitrarily divided into 29 sections. M. Zotenberg considers that it was to this MS. that Galland referred, when he said that the complete work was in 36 parts The tales follow the order of our Table as far as No. 7 (Nos. 2ab, 2ac and 3ba are wanting), the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Writings, stands between Heliopolis and the capital of Syria. The latter ridge received from the Greeks the denomination of Anti-Libanus,—a name unknown among the natives, and which, being employed somewhat arbitrarily by historians and topographers, has occasioned considerable obscurity ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... Sense, as much as the very Words. But to what Purpose do I show this Concern about it? Can I expect that these Reasons, with all their Evidences, will be found good, when, even in regard to Musick, Reason itself is no more in the Mode? Custom has great Power. She arbitrarily releases her Followers from the Observance of the true Rules, and obliges them to no other Study than that of the Ritornello's, and will not let them uselessly employ their precious Time in the Application to Recitative, which, according to her Precepts, are the work of the Pen, not of ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... and the idea of self-government are both modern ideas, which have had their origin in Europe, and which can only be realised among peoples of a high political development; that the sense of nationhood is but slowly created, and must not be arbitrarily defined in terms of race or language; and that the capacity for self-government is only formed by a long process of training, and has never existed except among peoples who were unified by a strongly felt community of sentiment, and had acquired the habit and instinct of loyalty ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... that a foreigner has little chance of obtaining justice at Canton. The import and export duties, which by the law of the country ought to be levied ad valorem, are arbitrarily fixed according to the fancy of the collector. And although the court is at all times ready to punish, by confiscation of their property, such as have been guilty of corruption and oppression, yet ...
— 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
... directions. For instance, the north-south direction, the east-west direction, and the up-down direction. Any place or "point" in space thus is located, relative to some other point, by giving its three distances from the latter, in three (arbitrarily chosen) directions. ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... given the preference, if it were short enough and easily pronounced by Americans. If not, a translation or abbreviation might be used, while retaining as much as possible of the distinctive racial flavor. No English surname might be arbitrarily given, but such as were already well established might be retained if the owner so desired. Many such had been unwisely given to children by teachers and missionaries, and in one family I found a George ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... according to the law of the holy Olaf? or have you gone to work more arbitrarily in this than is written down ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... fundamental doctrines of their faith. With his usual frankness he therefore threw caution to the winds and reminded the pastors that it was their own failure to preach and defend the Lutheran faith that was forcing Evangelical laymen to seek in the assemblies what was arbitrarily withheld from them in the church. "Whether it be good or bad, recommendable or deplorable," Grundtvig wrote, "it is, at any rate, a fact that the spirit of the church service has changed so greatly during the last half century that it is almost impossible for an Evangelical ...
— Hymns and Hymnwriters of Denmark • Jens Christian Aaberg
... as far as Achilles is concerned, it means concubine. Of course it would have been awkward for England's Prime Minister to make Achilles say that "every man must love his concubine, if he has sense and virtue;" so he arbitrarily changes the meaning of the word and then begs us to notice the moral beauty of this sentiment and the "dignity" of the relation between Achilles and Briseis! Yet no one seems to have denounced him for this transgression against ethics, philology, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... crowd and the club it distinguishes nothing, while in the vagueness and confusion of the distance it erects the hollow idols of its own Utopia.—But when power is to be seized by assault, and a dictatorship arbitrarily exercised, the mechanical inflexibility of such a mind is useful rather than detrimental. It is not embarrassed or slowed down, like that of a statesman, by the obligation to make inquiries, to respect precedents, of looking into statistics, of calculating ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... philosophies of life we know three; two have already been passed through by humanity, and the third is that we are passing through now in Christianity. These philosophies of life are three in number, and only three, not because we have arbitrarily brought the various theories of life together under these three heads, but because all men's actions are always based on one of these three views of life—because we cannot view life otherwise than in ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... buy pictures to look out for the man who arbitrarily and suddenly changes his manner or method; he is as a cork tossed about on the surface of the waters, drifting with every breeze, submerged by every ripple, fickle and unstable; if his work possess any merit, it will be only the cheap merit of cleverness; its brilliancy will ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... part existed between English landlords and tenants for generations, is utterly unwarranted. In several respects indeed he has been treated by the Act as if the land did not belong to him, while freedom of contract, until recent years one of the most cherished principles of our law, is arbitrarily interfered with. The chief alterations made by the ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... instance, the legislature of the State of New York, or of Pennsylvania, or of Indiana, or of any State in the Union, in opposition to the expressed will of a large majority of the people whom they were chosen to represent, arbitrarily force upon them as voters all persons of the African or negro race and make them eligible for office without any other qualification than a certain term of residence within the State? In neither of the States named would the colored population, when acting together, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... defects touched any very great proportion of the population, or played any larger part in American society, as I have defined it, than the differences between the marriage laws of England and Scotland do in our own island. M. Bourget, quite arbitrarily and (I think) with a trace of the proverbial Gallic way of looking at the relations of the sexes, has attributed the admitted moral purity of the atmosphere of American society to the coldness of the American temperament and the sera juvenum Venus. It seems ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... in the most alert and lively fashion. But that's by the way.... You have only to look at all these houses below. (We should be sitting on a seat on the Gutsch and looking down on the Lucerne of Utopia, a Lucerne that would, I insist, quite arbitrarily, still keep the Wasserthurm and the Kapellbrucke.) You have only to mark the beauty, the simple cleanliness and balance of this world, you have only to see the free carriage, the unaffected graciousness of even the common people, to understand how fine and complete ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... on to say, mixing up his pronouns, in the fashion of Hebrew poetry, somewhat arbitrarily, 'all His saints are in Thy hand.' Now, what is a 'saint'? A man who answers God's love by his love. The notion of a saint has been marred and mutilated by the Church and the world. It has been taken as a special designation ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not arbitrarily and blindly reject the term punishment, "because it does not agree with our system." We not only reject the term, but also the very idea and the thing for which it stands. We mean to affirm, that the innocent do sometimes suffer under the administration ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... I do not know how to put it up." But God answered: "Go, get busy with its setting-up, and while thou art busy at it, it will rise of its own accord." And so it came to pass. Hardly had Moses put his hand upon the Tabernacle, when it stood erect, and the rumors among the people that Moses had arbitrarily put up the Tabernacle without the command of ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... now concerns us, and that is the group of anti-militarists who, for the most part arbitrarily ignoring or repudiating the other commands of their authority, fasten on those precepts that seem to inculcate the doctrine of non-resistance, and on the strength of these erect the visionary superstructure ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... certain that the standards of humanity you set up are just?" asks Eggy. "You know people are beginning to question your absolute right to fix arbitrarily the hours and wages and conditions of labor. They are suggesting that your mills produce tuberculosis as well as cloth. They are showing that, in your eagerness for dividends, you work women and children too long, and that you don't pay ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... warding off any hazard he might run, from employing the adherents of his enemies. His greatly capacious, yet only half-formed mind, could have parried, as well as braved, every danger and all opposition, had not his inordinate ambition held him as arbitrarily under control as he himself held under ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... me the more terrible since I think he was a man who never believed any such mischance could dare to happen to him. He always gave me the impression of one who read his own mortality for immortality, and was prepared to rule Time as arbitrarily as he ruled men. It does not look to an outsider as if he had gained any particular happiness from his fortune, but happiness is a word everyone spells in their own way.... I shall be back at the end of the week, for I find Marcel quite capable of finishing ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... produce similar melody himself. Nay, even if he can produce it one year it by no means follows that he will be able to produce it the next. Of all qualifications for writing poetry this inventive music is the most arbitrarily distributed, and the most evanescent. But it is the more important to dwell on its necessity, inasmuch as both good and bad poets are tempted to ignore it. The good poet prefers to ascribe his success ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... thought—that is, the property of representing to one's self that which does not exist—distinguishes mind from matter. Lastly, it has not failed to be affirmed that one thing which the mind brings into the material world is its power of emotion; and moralists, choosing somewhat arbitrarily among certain emotions, have said that the mind is the creator of goodness. We will endeavour ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... a ride of another mile and a half, the distance between the two was augmented or abbreviated arbitrarily by the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... always after him. Pelle had once or twice received a hint not to employ him, but firmly refused to submit to any interference in his affairs. It was then arbitrarily decided that Peter Dreyer should report himself ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... changed the method of the sciences from deductive to experimental, and it is now rapidly reverting from experimental to deductive. But the deductions which Bacon abolished were from premises hastily snatched up, or arbitrarily assumed. The principles were neither established by legitimate canons of experimental inquiry, nor the results tested by that indispensable element of a rational Deductive Method, verification by specific experience. Between the primitive method of Deduction and that ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... two sons by a previous marriage, and clearly one of them should have succeeded to the throne. Nevertheless, the prime minister, Takenouchi-no-Sukune, contrived to have the unborn child recognized as Prince Imperial.** Naturally the deceased Emperor's two elder sons refused to be arbitrarily set aside in favour of a baby step-brother. The principle of primogeniture did not possess binding force in those days, but it had never previously been violated except by the deliberate and ostensibly reasonable choice of an Emperor. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... of the ports of San Salvador has been ordered by Mr. Chatfield, who threatens Honduras and Nicaragua with a similar blow, unless they accede to certain demands. In a letter to the Nicaraguan Minister of Foreign Affairs, he arbitrarily lays down the boundary line between Honduras, Nicaragua and Musquitia—an assumed kingdom, under cover of which the British authorities have taken possession of the port of San Juan. Mr. Chatfield states ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... assembly of men, may publish a proclamation affixing any penalty to any particular action, but that is not immoral because such penalty is affixed. Nothing is more evident than that the epithet of virtue is inapplicable to the refraining from that action on account of the evil arbitrarily attached to it. If the action is in itself beneficial, virtue would rather consist in not refraining from it, but in firmly defying the personal consequences attached to ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... albumin, its nutritive power by unity of weight remained the same. At the present time the number of albumins is no longer limited. It is not now physical characteristics founded difficult separations which arbitrarily distinguish those bodies from each other. The individuality of each of the albumins results from its formula of deterioration, under the influence of digestive ferments, or of chemical bodies acting ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... work. On the other hand, if the preceding argument has apparently produced but little effect, he may at once begin to build his own proof. He should, however, show good reason for postponing his refutation. To ignore the previous arguments entirely, or arbitrarily to postpone answering them, is likely to give the audience ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will ruin and divide them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such a minority. For instance, why not any portion of a new confederacy, a year or two hence, arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this. Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new Union as to produce harmony ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... to publish to the world his views on this great question. His first tract appeared in 1718. It was addressed to the elders of the Friends to direct their attention to "the inconsistency of compelling people and their posterity to serve them continually and arbitrarily, and without any proper recompense for their services." See Clarkson's "History of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade," ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... special performance ratings. Such a system, he pointed out, would insure the most capable in terms of performance would be given opportunities for schooling and would eliminate the racial differential in career opportunity. It was equally important, Davenport thought, to broaden arbitrarily the list of occupational specialties, open all school courses to Negroes, and increase the black quotas for courses already ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... through the spelling-task, it was Mat's custom to give out six hard words selected according to his judgment—as a final test; but he did not always confine himself to that. Sometimes he would put a number of syllables arbitrarily together, forming a most heterogeneous combination ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... for him." So she had simply approved of his declaration, down by the run, of affection for which she was not yet ready, and she approved of him all the more fondly because he did not passionately and arbitrarily demand or expect that she should feel as he did, in return. "I didn't," she had said to herself a score of times, "and ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... the way, we may as well ease our minds just here concerning another trick of the school to which M. Renan belongs, and of which he furnishes many marked examples. We mean the trick of arbitrarily deciding by what they are pleased to call 'philological criticism,' all about all the books and nearly all the chapters in the Bible. 'Learned men are agreed that such and such chapters were not written by Isaiah.' 'It is clear, from internal evidence ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Our plea for all this is, that the good of the whole is thereby most effectually promoted. This plea, if made out, justifies the case. In England and France they believe that the good of the whole requires that the right of governing, instead of being restricted, to all adult males, as we arbitrarily determine, should be confined to that portion of the male population who hold a given amount of property. In Prussia and Russia, they believe with equal confidence, that public security and happiness ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... I reasserted this theory and, to a certain extent, elaborated it. I placed man's active consciousness in the cortical portion of the brain, and his pseudo-dormant, unconscious consciousness (arbitrarily, be it confessed) in the basilar ganglia, and called this latter consciousness, ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir
... follows: (1) That the soul is specially created by the Supreme Power at the time of conception, or birth, and that its position on earth, its circumstances, its degree of intelligence, etc., are fixed arbitrarily by that power, for some inscrutable reason of its own; (2) That the soul was pre-existent, that is, that it existed before conception and birth, in some higher state not understood by us, from whence it was thrust into human form and birth, its position on ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... and dead, deriving their whole significance from their attachment or alligation to the rewards and punishments, even as this diversely shaped and ink colored paper has its value wholly from the words or meanings, which have been arbitrarily connected therewith; or as a ladder, or flight of stairs, of a provision-loft, or treasury. If the architect or master of the house had chosen to place the store-room or treasury on the ground floor, the ladder or steps would ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... transactions, evidently tended to preserve the property of the East India Company. I must confess I was very disagreeably affected with the conduct of Mr. Hutchinson, their pensioned Governor, on the succeeding day, who very unseasonably, and, as I am informed, very arbitrarily (not having the sanction of law), framed and executed a mandate to disperse the People, which, in my oppinion, with a people less prudent and temperate would have cost him his head. The Force of ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... chosen, somewhat arbitrarily, these four writers—Mrs. Browning, D. G. Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne—as representative of the minor poets of the age; but there are many others who are worthy of study,—Arthur Hugh Clough and Matthew Arnold,[239] who are often called the poets of skepticism, but who in reality ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... disingenuous, subterranean methods which the English land magnates used in perpetuating their seizure, as so graphically described by S. W. Thackery in his work, "The Land and the Community". The land in New England was taken over boldly and arbitrarily by the directors of the Plymouth Company, the most powerful of all the companies which exploited New England. The handful of men who participated in this division, sustained with a high hand their claims and pretensions, and augmented and ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... circumstances of all Italian potentates, owing to the uncertainty of their tenure, both as conquerors and aliens, and also as the nominal vassals of the Holy See. The rights of suzerainty which the Normans had yielded to the Papacy over their southern conquests, and which the Popes had arbitrarily exercised in favour of the Angevine princes, proved a constant source of peril to the rest of Italy by rendering the succession to the crown of Naples doubtful. On the extinction of the Angevine line, however, the throne was occupied by a prince who had no valid title but ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... physics—hasn't been interfered with much, yet. It's different in other fields. For instance, all research in sonics has been arbitrarily stopped. So has a great deal of work in organic and synthetic chemistry. Psychology is a madhouse of ... what was the old word, licentiousness? No, lysenkoism. Medicine and surgery—well, there's a huge program of compulsory sterilization, and another one of eugenic marriage-control. And ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... same witness informs us that of the extraordinary imposts the Peasants paid nearly twice as much in proportion to their estimated property as the Barons, Nobles, and Burghers together. Moreover, the upper classes were assessed at their own valuation, while they arbitrarily fixed that of the Peasants, who had no voice, ("Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti." Serie I., tomo i., pp. 378, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... if the will of man be all-powerful, if states are to be distinguished from one another only by their boundaries, if everything may be changed like the scenery in a play by a flourish of the magic wand of a system, if man may arbitrarily make the right, if nations can be put through evolutions like a regiment of troops; what a field would the world present for attempts at the realization of the wildest dreams, and what a temptation would be offered to take possession, by main force, of the government of human affairs, to destroy ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... By many it was for the time believed to be the prelude to war. In very truth, as the sequel proved, it was a message of peace. It was a critical moment, and the necessity imperative for prompt, decisive action. If the Monroe Doctrine was to be maintained, Great Britain could not be permitted arbitrarily to divest Venezuela of any portion of her territory. The arbitration proposed by President Cleveland, resulting in peaceable adjustment, established what we may well believe will prove an enduring precedent. One sentence of the memorable message is worthy of remembrance ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... facts are entirely to be resolved into Divine sovereignty. God is here exercising the right of testimony, the bounties of His providence upon men, as it seems good in His sight." It is very true that God is the source of all the good in the world, but does He bestow it arbitrarily? If a man neglects being thrifty, and lives beyond his means, his offspring will inherit his poverty. There are economic as well as physical laws in the world, and the non-observance of them descends unto the third ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... between the last two revolutions. His papers seem to have averaged five or six a year. They form, with those which had been previously inserted in the Revue de Paris, a series of Portraits, now embraced in seven volumes, and divided, somewhat arbitrarily, into Portraits litteraires, Portraits contemporains, and Portraits de Femmes. The names included, which with few exceptions are those of French writers, belong to different epochs, different schools, and different departments ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... other hand, if his master has wronged him intolerably, he can take sanctuary at the Temple of Theseus, and claim the privilege of being sold to some new owner. A slave, too, has still another grievance which may be no less galling because it is sentimental. His name (given him arbitrarily perhaps by his master) is of a peculiar category, which at once brands him as a bondsman: Geta, Manes, Dromon, Sosias, Xanthias, Pyrrhias,—such names would be repudiated as an insult by ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... even my tales of tapestry, lace, old silver, and, above all, Persian carpets, to be seen behind the veiled windows, could arouse the ladies' curiosity. It was well enough to have built Amsterdam in concentric crescents, with the Heerengracht in the center, and to say arbitrarily that the further you went outwards, the further you descended in the social scale. That distinction might do for the townspeople; as for them, they would rather live in a black and brown house in the Keizergracht, ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... having the games played according to an arbitrarily fixed schedule, so as not to inconvenience patrons—that would be out of the question, being open to the objection that it would then be possible to have every game that figures in the result of the series played on the home grounds of ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... the runnel below; still before me opened the depth of blue atmosphere, deepening as I went. After many windings, the path began to branch, and soon I was lost in a labyrinth of passages, of which I knew not why I should choose one rather than another. It was useless now to think of returning. Arbitrarily I chose the narrowest way, and still ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... about that time. There wasn't quite so much one short year later, when some of those same boys learned, to their great disgust and rage, that the Confederate Congress had passed a sweeping conscription law, and that their one year's enlistment had been arbitrarily lengthened to three. Then they began ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... patronymic, which often makes the tracing of genealogies a difficult matter. It was not till the middle of the fourteenth century that surnames began to descend from father to son, and a reference to any old document of the time will show how arbitrarily such ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 185, May 14, 1853 • Various
... The Census report includes 509 closely classified occupations. Women are found in all but 43. Even allowing for the inaccuracy of such figures, and passing over the occupations which take in only an occasional woman, it is seen that "woman's sphere" can no longer be arbitrarily defined. The following facts and figures for women give us ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... a fief held of the crown, and as such liable to the regular feudal services. This was the case in every feudal land, and no one would suppose that there should be any exception in England. The amount of the service was arbitrarily fixed by the king in these ecclesiastical baronies, just as it was in the lay fiefs. The fact was important enough to attract the notice of the chroniclers because the military service, regulated in this way, would seem to be more of an innovation than the other services by which the fief ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... confessing a human precipitance and a human oversight, weaknesses, venial in others, but fatal to the pretensions of a divine teacher. Starting besides from such pretensions, he could not (as others might) have the privilege of selecting arbitrarily or partially. If upon one science, then upon all,—if upon science, then upon, art,—if upon art and science, then upon every branch of social economy, upon every organ of civilization, his reformations and advances are equally due; due as to all, if due as to any. ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... banishment; and have introduced the love motive between Beowulf and Freaware that runs through the poem to the end. Indeed the structure, language, style, description, elaboration, interpretation, and development of the story are new. Ihave arbitrarily laid the scene in England, under purely idealized conditions; and have initiated nearly all that the poem contains of womanhood, of love, of religion, of state-policy, and of domestic life and manners. It is clear, therefore, that my work must ...
— The Translations of Beowulf - A Critical Biography • Chauncey Brewster Tinker
... that it is no longer possible to determine what percentage of old native thought may still linger on in fragments here and there. In the face of all this, moral ideals, which were of common knowledge derived from the teaching of the Chinese sages, are now arbitrarily referred to the "Imperial Ancestors." Such, in particular, are loyalty and filial piety—the two virtues on which, in the Far-Eastern world, all the others rest. It is, furthermore, officially taught that, from the earliest ...
— The Invention of a New Religion • Basil Hall Chamberlain
... crown as a deodand; accordingly down to the year 1840 and even later, we find, in all cases where persons were killed, records of deodands levied by the coroners' juries upon locomotives. These appear to have been arbitrarily imposed and graduated in amount accordingly as circumstances seemed to excite in greater or less degree the sympathies or the indignation of the jury. In November, 1838, for instance, a locomotive exploded upon the Liverpool and Manchester line, killing its engineer and ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... wayward child the severest and harshest discipline, none but he can tell the bitter heart-pangs of yearning love that accompany every stroke of the rod. So it is with your Father in Heaven; with this difference, that the earthly parent may act unwisely, arbitrarily, indiscreetly—he may misjudge the necessities of the case—he may do violence and wrong to the natural disposition of his offspring. Not so with an all-wise Heavenly Parent. He will inflict no redundant ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... see this more easily if we observe the differences between written and spoken language. The written word "stone," and the spoken word, are each of them symbols arrived at in the first instance arbitrarily. They are neither of them more like the other than they are to the idea of a stone which rises before our minds, when we either see or hear the word, or than this idea again is like the actual stone itself, but nevertheless the spoken symbol and the written one each alike convey with certainty ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... indulgence of the passions which prompt those practices as "sin." When Paul calls the law the strength of sin, or says that the law came in that the trespass might abound, he states a truth, but sees it, if one may say so, out of focus; for the law was not arbitrarily imposed in order to brand a multitude of harmless acts as offences, but in proportion as the moral law is discerned by man's mind, acts which formerly were merely non-moral begin to range themselves on this side ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... render a State police statute unconstitutional so long as it has a reasonable basis;[1031] its validity does not depend on scientific or marked differences in things or persons or in their relations. It suffices if it is practical.[1032] While a State legislature may not arbitrarily select certain individuals for the operation of its statutes, a selection is obnoxious to the equal protection clause only if it is clearly and actually arbitrary and not merely possibly so.[1033] A substantial ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... the policy which has so often been followed since, and claimed territorial compensation for Bulgaria's aggrandisement; it must be remembered that it was Bismarck who, by the Treaty of Berlin, had arbitrarily confined Serbia to its ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... he avoided the latter, even when harmonically justified, as much as possible. Instead of accenting a composition in accordance with sense and rhythm, he exaggerated and prolonged the notes and intervals that were pleasing to his ear; he did not even hesitate to repeat them arbitrarily, when an expression of ecstasy frequently passed over his face. Since he disposed of the dissonances as rapidly as possible and played the passages that were too difficult for him in a tempo that was too slow compared with the rest of the piece, his conscientiousness not permitting ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... elaboration. The question really involved, was "whether discontented individuals, too few in number to control the administration according to the organic law, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without pretenses, break up the government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask, Is there in all Republics this inherent and fatal weakness? Must a government of necessity be too ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... arbitrarily that a transcendent intellect pointed out a difference between religion and religions: every mind devoted to philosophy must needs reach ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... Japan, and the edicts of its ruler expelling Spaniards from his realm, and forbidding his subjects to trade with them. Moreover, the seminary building is being erected in a place selected in violation of a royal decree, and which has been arbitrarily seized from its owners; and the monopolies granted are a grievance and injury to many persons, especially to the Indians who reside near Manila. The Audiencia accordingly revoke these, and order that the seminary building be demolished; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... for truly, in some of your letters, I could scarcely recognise my daughter. As to the boy, I beseech you not to undertake to teach him the various sounds of the letters abstractedly from the words in which those sounds are found. This must be learned arbitrarily. Go on with his a, b, &c.; and when he shall have learned the language, and not till then, can you teach him (or ought it to be attempted) the principles of the construction ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... to Arbuthnot, now arbitrarily called the "Prologue to the Satires," is a performance consisting, as it seems, of many fragments wrought into one design, which, by this union of scattered beauties, contains more striking paragraphs than could ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... will say here, the knowledge of cruelty and sin must come some time to the child; then why shield him from it now? True, it must come; but take heed that you be not the one to introduce it arbitrarily. "Stand far off from childhood," says Jean Paul, "and brush not away the flower-dust with ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... first question the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859 offered an answer. Since then we have in fact been able to represent the human race to our imagination, neither as a chaos of arbitrarily varying individuals, nor as a mosaic of homogeneous nations, but as a biological group, every individual in which differs from every other not arbitrarily but according to an intelligible process of organic evolution.[113] ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... conversation, or being in company. Attention to the continued discourse of one alone grows more painful, often, than the cares and business we come to be diverted from. He, therefore, who imposes this upon us is guilty of a double offence—arbitrarily enjoining silence upon all the rest, and likewise obliging ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... stages of history are not arbitrarily severed, but grow out of each other, we must briefly notice the mental conditions of the period in Germany which preceded the rise of rationalism; next indicate the new forces, the introduction of which was the means of generating the movement; and then explain the movement itself in ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... "private property shall not be taken; and those who have been robbed of it already, shall be kept out of it no longer; and since every man's right to his own body is paramount, he shall be protected in it." True, Congress may not arbitrarily take property, as property, from one man and give it to another—and in the abolition of slavery no such thing is done. A legislative act changes the condition of the slave—makes him his own proprietor instead of the property of another. It determines a question of original right between ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... circumstances in which another electric fish, the torpedo of our seas, gives or does not give shocks. Though this fish had been examined by numerous men of science, I found all that had been published on its electrical effects extremely vague. It has been very arbitrarily supposed, that this fish acts like a Leyden jar, which may be discharged at will, by touching it with both hands; and this supposition appears to have led into error observers who have devoted themselves to researches of this kind. M. Gay-Lussac ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... the thermal death point of most bacteria ranges from 130 deg.-140 deg. F. where the exposure is made for ten minutes which is the standard arbitrarily selected. In the spore stage resistance is greatly increased, some forms being able to withstand steam at 210 deg.-212 deg. F. from one to three hours. If dry heat is employed, 260 deg.-300 deg. F. for an hour is necessary to kill spores. Where ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... for the multitude, though not under so harsh a name. The laws they would frame for an uncultured and wretched population, would distinguish between the colonizers and the aboriginals (excepting perhaps only the native chiefs, accustomed arbitrarily to command, though not systematically to enslave the rest). The laws for the aboriginal population would still be an improvement on their previous savage and irregulated state—and generations might pass before they would attain a character ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... about L. 130,000 more remained at Sydney and in the hands of the miners: 10,000 persons were actually engaged in mining, and 5000 more concerned otherwise in the business; and as the result of the exertions of that multitude, the amount of gold fixed arbitrarily for exportation during the next twelve ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... King. This answer seems to have aroused the Governor's fury, for, arising from his seat, and striking Mr. Minifie a resounding blow upon the shoulder, he cried, "Doe you say soe? I arrest you upon suspicion of treason to his Majesty." But Harvey found that he could not deal thus arbitrarily with the Councillors. Utie and Matthews rushed up and seizing him cried, "And we you upon suspicion of treason to his Majestie". Dr. Pott, who was present and had probably been waiting for this crisis, held up his hand as a ...
— Virginia under the Stuarts 1607-1688 • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... tolerate no deviation from them. Deeply did he regret any association that might tend to weaken the respect for such principles with which he had sought to inspire the mind of his daughter. In them he knew lay the power that was to protect her in the world. But he could not interfere, arbitrarily, with his wife; that he would have considered more dangerous than to let her act in freedom. But he felt concerned for the consequence, and frequently urged her not to be too intimate ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... myself to point out three misstatements of fact in the article about myself: firstly, my supposed title of ex-St. Simonien; secondly, my supposed journey to America; thirdly, my diploma of the University of Konigsberg, which my biographer arbitrarily changes into a diploma of Doctor of Music, which was not the one ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... impossible indeed to be carried out, and to which no meaning whatever was attached, with far-fetched explanations that were either so many stupid platitudes or themselves needed an interpreter; lofty titles, arbitrarily assumed, and to which the inventors had not condescended to attach any explanation that should acquit them of the folly of assuming temporal rank, power, and titles of nobility, made the world laugh, and the Initiate ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... which was eager to find an excuse for the appropriation of a neighbour's property. On the contrary, capital punishment was only inflicted when the laws had been infringed; and there is no instance of the Khan having arbitrarily put any ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... is easy to see what would happen. Future historians would simply state that in the dark days of Queen Victoria young men at Oxford and Cambridge were subjected to a horrible sort of religious torture. They were forbidden, by fantastic monastic rules, to indulge in wine or tobacco during certain arbitrarily fixed periods of time, before certain brutal fights and festivals. Bigots insisted on their rising at unearthly hours and running violently around fields for no object. Many men ruined their health in these dens of superstition, many died there. All this is perfectly ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... chosen arbitrarily. They should be taken from the printed set of them worked out by Mr Cutter, and called the Cutter author-tables. (See Library ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... natural violence and severity of his temper made him incapable of feeling any remorse in the execution of this tyrannical purpose, he had art enough to conceal his intention, and to preserve still some appearance of justice in his oppressions. He ordered all the English, who had been arbitrarily expelled by the Normans during his absence, to be restored to their estates [y]: but at the same time he imposed a general tax on the people, that of Danegelt, which had been abolished by the Confessor, and which had always been extremely odious to the nation [z]. [FN [y] Chron. Sax. ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... forecasting what a party of planners will bring about; he is merely telling what the people will require and compel. And he could have added—which would be perfectly true—that the people will not be moved to it by speculation and cogitation and planning, but by Circumstance—that power which arbitrarily compels all their actions, and over which they ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... Albany. A second expedition in the Spring proved more successful, for he gained possession of the city and fort. No sooner was he in possession of the garrison, than most of the principal members absconded, upon which, their effects were arbitrarily seized and confiscated, which so highly exasperated the sufferers, that their posterity, for a long time, hurled their bitterest invectives against Leisler ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... the Pope the deposition of Anselm. He could not himself depose the archbishop. He could elevate him, but not remove him; he could make, but not unmake. Only he who held the keys of Saint Peter, who was armed with spiritual omnipotence, could reverse his own decrees and rule arbitrarily. But for any king to expect that the Pope would part with the ablest defender of the liberties of the Church, and disgrace him for being faithful to papal interests, was absurd. The Pope may have used smooth words, but was firm in the ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... by force, by force may be removed. It was better for the people that they should give than he should take, since that gift was indeed no more at bottom than a trust. Virgil gives us an example of this in the person of Mezentius. He governed arbitrarily; he was expelled and came to the deserved end of all tyrants. Our author shows us another sort of kingship in the person of Latinus. He was descended from Saturn, and, as I remember, in the third degree. He is described a just and a gracious prince, ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... allotted to each list as the number of voters supporting a list contains this quotient. Since each voter has as many votes as there are seats to be filled, the number of voters supporting a list is determined arbitrarily by dividing the total number of votes cast for the list by the number ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys |
