"Avoidable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and finer ones, or are forced, in some way or other, to live where we do not choose, and in continual expectation of changing our place of abode. In the present state of society, this is in a great measure unavoidable; but let us remember it is an evil; and that so far as it is avoidable, it becomes our duty to check the impulse. It is not for me to lead you at present into any consideration of a matter so closely touching your private interests and feelings; but it surely is a subject for serious thought, whether it might not be better for many of ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... spent, failing to supervise—has to be called philosophical. It comes from a failure on the part of local operators and authorities and much of the public to comprehend the immorality of deliberate avoidable pollution, and it may mean that municipal operation of treatment plants is itself often a major ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... to the great and piteous tragedy of the refugee camps, the mortality, and especially the mortality among the children. That is deplorable—more deplorable even than the infant mortality in Mafeking, Ladysmith, and Kimberley. But is it avoidable? Or is it one of those misfortunes, like that enteric outbreak which swept away so many British soldiers, which is beyond our present sanitary science and can only be endured with sad resignation? The nature of the disease which is mainly responsible for the high mortality shows ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for the safe conduct of all who travel in my scows. But it would have been at the expense of much time and labour, and, very possibly, of human life as well—an incident regrettable always, but not always avoidable." ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... possibly also the advance of democracy—though it is at times somewhat too readily assumed that democracies must of necessity be peaceful—have all contributed to create a public opinion which holds that to engage in an avoidable war is the worst of political crimes. This feeling has found expression in the more ready recourse which, as compared to former times, is now made to arbitration in order to settle international disputes. Nevertheless, so long as human nature remains unchanged, and more especially so long as the ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... system. Means of prevention in those cases are therefore to be directed to the mother, in the manner indicated in treating of pregnancy. But other causes of death begin to act only after birth, and are to a greater or less extent avoidable. These are largely traceable to ignorance, negligence, ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... speech, also concepts of class IV. Concepts II and III are both common, but not essential; particularly group III, which represents, in effect, a psychological and formal confusion of types II and IV or of types I and IV, is an avoidable class of concepts. Logically there is an impassable gulf between I and IV, but the illogical, metaphorical genius of speech has wilfully spanned the gulf and set up a continuous gamut of concepts and forms that leads imperceptibly from the ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... toward the French coast, that Captain Leicester fully realised his situation. In less than ten minutes his ship had been taken from him, and himself confined in his own cabin, a prisoner. Had he not been on deck at the time of the occurrence, he would certainly have considered it an avoidable misfortune, to be accounted for only by the most gross carelessness; but as it was, he was fully able to understand that it was entirely due to the extreme darkness of the night, and the circumstance of the lugger and the barque ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... each, the Koro[vs]e['c] party met with comparative disaster, and the Star[vc]evic group was overwhelmed. With about fifty members apiece, the Communist and the Radi['c] parties gave expression, roughly speaking, to the discontent produced by the unsettled conditions—unavoidable and avoidable—of the new State's first two years. The Moslems came back with nearly thirty members, and a healthy phenomenon for a country in which the peasant so largely predominates was the success, apart from the Radi['c] Peasant party, of ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... a benefaction like this it becomes a man to be grateful, but for all that it is a pity that a great writer and a willing reader should be held apart by any avoidable hindrances. It is quite true that an immediate popularity is no test of high merit. But the real man of genius is, after all, he who permanently appeals to the ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... rejoicing in my strength to defend him against the barbarism of authorized treatment. My only comfort was that in his time of supreme need I could give him supreme kindness, and if death must come there would not be the additional laceration of avoidable cruelty inflicted; and Nature, with every possible aid that could add comfort to the ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... and inevitably transmitted to the offspring of the person suffering from these diseases. If there are such diseases—and that is a question the medical profession should be able to decide—it is evident that to incur parentage while one suffers from one of them or to transmit them in any avoidable way, is a cruel, disastrous and abominable act. If such a thing is possible it seems to me that in view of the guiding principle laid down in these papers it might well be put at the nadir of crime, and I doubt if any step the State might take ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... to save this manuscript all avoidable delay," Chester began, "I've kept it a week. I like it—much. I think that in quieter times, with the reading world in a more contemplative mood, any publisher would be glad to print it. At the same time it seems to me to have faults of construction that ought to come out of it before ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... the most sensible, practical, hard-headed men who have walked the earth. I only give it you at second-hand. Try it. Get your mind in hand. And see how the process cures half the evils of life—especially worry, that miserable, avoidable, shameful disease—worry! ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... chief chamberlain was, therefore, a very important one; for since it confined him a large part of the day in the queen's presence, it was scarcely avoidable that the lord chamberlain should become either the confidential and attentive friend, or the malevolent and lurking enemy ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... there should be a double service for ten or twelve persons; that is, no hot dish should, if avoidable, be presented to more than six, or nine at the outside. At a dinner of twelve, for instance, two dishes each holding six portions, are garnished exactly alike and presented at opposite ends of the table. One to the lady ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... than the volume of a gas of lower density, e.g., coal-gas, if the pressure in the pipe is the same for both. This implies that on an extensive distributing system, in which for practical reasons leakage is not wholly avoidable, the loss of gas through leakage will be less for acetylene than for coal-gas, given the same distributing pressure. If v the loss of acetylene from a distributing system and v' the loss of coal-gas from a similar system worked at the same pressure, both losses being ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... on one point," Batley objected dryly. "I'm acquainted with your temperament—it's not one that would lead you into avoidable difficulties. Well, you came through and your cousin died, but you failed to pay me off when you ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... Although Christ could have avoided future evils by the power of His Godhead, yet they were unavoidable, or not easily avoidable by the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... be inevitably sacrificed to the convenience of others. In the estimate, which you have made of the two states, it appears, that the incommodities of a single life are, in a great measure, necessary and certain, but those of the conjugal state, accidental and avoidable. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... sentimental grounds, sometimes on the more sordid calculation that bachelor life is less comfortable and more expensive, since a wife pays for her status with domestic service as well as with the other services expected of her. Now that children are avoidable, this calculation is becoming more common and conscious than it was: a result which is regarded as "a steady improvement in ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... befell Margaret; but men are not delicately nurtured beings whose bloom is damaged by the rough air of reality, and the camp and the forecastle are not the stage. Perhaps nothing that is necessary shocks really sensible people; it is when disagreeable things are perfectly useless and quite avoidable—in theory—that they are most repugnant to men like Edmund Lushington. He had warned Margaret of what was in store for her, before she had taken the final step; but he had not warned himself that in spite of her bringing-up she might ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... the hand (contrary to regulations) instead of a carefully guarded safety lamp. Yet so culpably reckless of their own and other men's lives are a large number of people everywhere, that in spite of the most stringent and salutary rules, explosions from this cause (and, therefore, easily avoidable) take place constantly to the present day, though far less frequently than before the invention ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... and pain, are conversant with good and evil simply. But good is often attainable only by an effort, and evil avoidable by an effort. The effort that good costs to attain casts a shade of evil or undesirableness over it: we may shrink from the effort while coveting the good. Again, the fact of evil being at all avoidable ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... clothes, and I should recommend another to get one. A ten-pound note will suffice for all these things. The bunk should not be too wide: one rolls so in rough weather; of course it should not be athwartships, if avoidable. No one in his right mind will go second class if he can, by any hook or crook, raise money enough to ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... and amusing exercise that may be, out of all our school life? We don't expect to win a game with a sprained wrist or ankle, and there really is no reason why we should plan to sprain the back of school or college life by avoidable mistakes. ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... remembered, that the good of the bounty is certain, and evil avoidable; that by the hope of exportation corn will be increased, and that this increase may be ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... the scalp must receive immediate attention. This roughness, or milk crust, is entirely avoidable; it is the result of accumulated oil and dirt. When it has formed a complete crust or cake, it may quickly become eczematous and require a physician's advice; however, in the beginning, at the first sight of brown patches or roughness, oil the scalp ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... devoid of stirring incident and adventure—should be written in the first person. At the same time, the writer of this unpretentious story of a summer's tramp cannot but feel that he owes his readers—should he have any an apology for any avoidable egotism. His excuse is that, no twit notwithstanding ding the glamour attaching to the old mining towns, it is almost incredible how little is known of them by the average Californian; for the Eastern tourist ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... "Kitchener's Great Army" in the spring of 1915. But one after another these anticipations were belied by events. And now the nation blithely accepts the further forecasts of the men who are chargeable with this long sequence of avoidable errors. ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... knowledge,—it hath been necessary for me to give an account of the reasons I had to doubt of innate principles. And since the arguments which are against them do, some of them, rise from common received opinions, I have been forced to take several things for granted; which is hardly avoidable to any one, whose task is to show the falsehood or improbability of any tenet;—it happening in controversial discourses as it does in assaulting of towns; where, if the ground be but firm whereon the batteries are erected, ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... failure of college women to marry can not be exhaustively investigated here, but for the purposes of eugenics they may be roughly classified as unavoidable and avoidable. Under the first heading must be placed those girls who are inherently unmarriageable, either because of physical defect or, more frequently, mental defect,—most often an over-development of intellect at the expense of the emotions, which makes a girl either ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... aware of their opportunity and eager for a final recognition as an institution in industry. As yet uncertainty prevailed as to whether enough had survived of the War-time spirit of give and take to make a struggle avoidable, or whether the issue must be solved by a bitter conflict ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... reflexion. Shame is an invaluable protection to men, as a restraining feeling. But the objects to which it properly attaches are wrong-doing, unkindness, discourtesy, to others, and, as regards ourselves, ignorance, imprudence, intemperance, impurity, and avoidable defects or misfortunes. While it confines itself to objects such as these, it is one of the sternest and, at the same time, most effective guardians of virtue and self-respect. But, as soon as a man begins to care about what others will say of circumstances ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... any circumstances; and it is idle, considering that the manifest ordination and progress of things demand that such thoughts be encountered. The question still returns: Why do they seek amusement in sufferings which are unnecessary and avoidable? and till they honestly and thoroughly answer this question, they must be content to be looked upon as disingenuous reasoners, who are determined ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... to have destroyed any lingering hope that he had left for the future of American democracy. He spoke of it as "a perfectly avoidable war forced on by a band of unscrupulous politicians" who had behind them "a roaring mob."[201] The taking of the Philippines and the subsequent war in these islands confirmed him in his despair. In a private letter ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... keep a cash account to be submitted to him on his return from Canada, not, he said, to serve as a check upon extravagant or foolish expenditures, but that he might be better able to advise them and to point out avoidable mistakes. ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... handicaps to all-round health, control, and efficiency as the prevalence of wrong feeding habits—e.g., giving children food between meals and the insufficient provision of fresh fruit and vegetables in the daily diet and the abuse of sweets. Other prominent and avoidable handicaps, seriously affecting many children throughout the Dominion, which ought to receive more serious attention are insufficiency of sunlight and fresh air in the home and at school, insufficient daily outing and exercise, lack of adequate ...
— Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders • W. H. Triggs, Donald McGavin, Frederick Truby King, J. Sands Elliot, Ada G. Patterson, C.E. Matthews
... gas-holder tank at Settle, which when turned into the river killed nearly all the fish between that town and Mitton. Several other instances occur to me, but these two are sufficient to show the great mischief occasioned by avoidable neglect and carelessness. Such mischief should not ...
— Essays in Natural History and Agriculture • Thomas Garnett
... ask all just men of generous hearts to join with the men who feel in their souls that lift upward which bids them refuse to be satisfied themselves while their fellow countrymen and countrywomen suffer from avoidable misery. Now, friends, what we progressives are trying to do is to enroll rich or poor, whatever their social or industrial position, to stand together for the most elementary rights of good citizenship, those elementary rights which are the ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... might have been redeemed at a less price; but still the war taught a lesson, which, if avoidable at that instant, was certainly blamable; but it had its use in enforcing on other nations the conviction that England washed out insult with retribution, and for every drop of blood wantonly spilt demanded an ocean ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... advice and management of the physician. No greater mistake can be made than to resort to the advertising quack, the druggist's clerk, or the prescription furnished by an obliging friend. Skillful treatment, resulting in a complete radical cure, may save him much suffering from avoidable complications and months or years of ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... poisoning should there be any avoidable delay in obtaining the advice of a physician, and, meanwhile, the friends or bystanders should endeavor to find out exactly what has been taken, so that the treatment adopted may be as prompt and ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... That subjugation which is a vital condition to the Normal Social Life does not seem to be necessary to the Great State. It may or it may not be necessary. And here we enter upon the most difficult of all our problems. The whole spirit of the Great State is against any avoidable subjugation; but the whole spirit of that science which will animate the Great State forbids us to ignore woman's functional and temperamental differences. A new status has still to be invented for women, a Feminine Citizenship differing in certain respects from the normal masculine citizenship. ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... pin-worms in the rectum may wander into the vagina, and the little girl feel a constant annoyance, which rubbing allays temporarily, but which results in the evil habit of the use of the hands to produce an agreeable sensation. Thus through avoidable causes the evil habit may be acquired. Then it may be taught by one thus learning it to another who, without this instruction, ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... with one's companions on the shingle, and preferred this exercise to the study of God's Word, it was a symbol of a terrible decline, the angle of which would grow steeper and steeper, until one plunged into perdition. He was, himself, timid and reclusive, and he shrank from all avoidable companionship with others, except on the footing of a master and teacher. My stepmother and I, who neither taught nor ruled, yearned for a looser chain and lighter relationships. With regard to myself, my ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... Trade, as the booksellers call themselves, while admitting that they can no longer stand under a protective principle, feel certain difficulties as to their future career, for unquestionably there is something peculiar in their business, in as far as a nominal price for their wares is scarcely avoidable. If so, the question is, How is it to be adjusted? at a lower allowance for the retailer? In that case, some would still undersell others; and the old troubles would still be experienced. Ought there, then, to be no fixed retailing price at all, but simply one for the publisher to exact ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... phrases or clauses for unnecessary sentences. The following series of independent assertions contains avoidable repetitions: "One morning I was riding on the subway to my work. It was always my custom to ride to my work on the subway. This morning I met Harry Blake." The full thought may better be embodied in a single sentence: "One morning, while I was, as usual, riding ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... anchor is said to be foul, or fouled, either when it hooks some impediment under water, or when the ship, by the wind shifting, entangles her slack cable a turn round the stock, or round the upper fluke thereof. The last, from its being avoidable by a sharp look-out, is termed ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... to understand things, when they begin to reflect and to plan, they divide the world into the hateful and the delightful, the avoidable and the attainable. And in feeling their way toward what attracts them, or in escaping what they fear, they at first follow passively the lead of instinct: they watch themselves live, or rather sink without reserve into their living; their reactions are ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Dulwich fields on one side, and was itself full of buttercups in spring, and blackberries in autumn. But my chief remaining impressions of those days are attached to Hunter Street. My mother's general principles of first treatment were, to guard me with steady watchfulness from all avoidable pain or danger, and, for the rest, to let me amuse myself as I liked, provided I was neither fretful or troublesome. But the law was, that I should find my own amusement. No toys of any kind were at first allowed, and the pity of my Croydon aunt for ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... of his morning newspaper into his muddy brain as he stirs his sugar in his coffee, will complacently absorb all the news of the day, so many hundred thousand men killed, wounded, or diseased in the course of the Balkan campaigns, so much ugly and hopeless misery all over the earth, and all avoidable, all caused, in the last analysis, by the incompetence, obstinacy, blindness, or greed of some highly placed official whose death at an earlier stage would have made for the salvation of ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... we go to the root of what he means, there is no such thing as evil, though much that to our narrow and impatient sight has the look of it. This may be true if we use that fatal word in an arbitrary and unreal sense, for the avoidable, the consequent without antecedent, or antecedent without consequent. If we consent to talk in this way, and only are careful to define terms so that there is no doubt as to their meaning, it is hardly deniable that evil is a mere word and not ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Nightmares and Imbroglios, when so much had to be subjugated, and drilled into step, in that department. Evidently a long-headed cunning fellow, much of the Grumkow type;—standing very low in Wilhelmina's judgment; and ill-seen, when not avoidable altogether, by the Queen's Majesty. "The man was a poor Country Bailiff's (AMTMANN'S, kind of Tax-manager's) son: from Auditor of a regiment," Papa's own regiment, "he had risen to be Director of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... The Avoidable Causes of Disease, Insanity, and Deformity. By John Ellis, M.D., Professor of the Principles and Practice of Medicine in the Western Medical College of Cleveland, Ohio; Author of "Marriage and its Violations." A Book for the People as well as for the Profession. New York. Mason Brothers. 16mo. ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... the sap side must be turned up, and framing or cutting of timbers shall not be permitted, if avoidable. All cut surfaces of timbers shall be saturated with hot asphaltum, thinned with creosote oil. The heads of piles when cut shall be promptly coated with the hot asphaltum and oil, even ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 - Tests of Creosoted Timber, Paper No. 1168 • W. B. Gregory
... though severely animadverting on the flagrant enormities of prize-agents, his lordship, nevertheless, candidly acknowledged, that there might be instances where the delays of the payment of prize-money resulted, not from the villainy of the agents, but from accidents by no means easily avoidable in the common course of human affairs. In regarding the naval interests of his country, Lord Nelson was not unmindful of it's commercial prosperity; in censuring criminal abuses, he was careful not to involve ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... express my opinion that in cases like ours, where a set of men are deputed to examine countries, time spent on rivers is absolutely thrown away. Of course in many instances such must be the case, but where it is avoidable, marching, and especially returning by a different route, should be adopted. Rangagurrah, be it known, is only two days' march from Suddiyah in a direct line, yet we have been a month proceeding by the circuitous line of rivers between ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... nervously). No, Rufio, no. Eat, my son. Eat. (He takes another turn, Rufio chewing dates meanwhile.) The Egyptians cannot be such fools as not to storm the barricade and swoop down on us here before it is finished. It is the first time I have ever run an avoidable risk. I should ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... other matters, I am silent, till I can choose my conclusion: but, with respect to war, I am forced to speak, by the necessities of the time; and forced to act, one way or another. The conviction on which I act is, that it causes an incalculable amount of avoidable human suffering, and that it ought to cease among Christian nations; and if therefore any of my boy-friends desire to be soldiers, I try my utmost to bring them into what I conceive to be a better mind. But, on the other hand, I know certainly that the most beautiful characters yet ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... of passing through the towns of Italy by night, as a serviceable scheme for some political purpose, either of avoiding too much to publish his motions, or of evading the necessity (else perhaps not avoidable), of drawing out the party sentiments of the magistrates in the circumstances of honor or neglect with which they might choose to receive him. His words, however, imply that the practice was by no means an uncommon one. And, indeed, from some passages in writers of the ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... to the conclusion that more than half the disease which embitters the latter half of life is due to avoidable errors in diet, and that more mischief in the form of actual disease, of impaired vigour, and of shortened life, accrues to civilized man in England and throughout Central Europe from erroneous habits of eating than from the habitual ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... knowing how far I may have to go down the river before we reach a station where we can obtain a fresh supply, and knowing from my last trial of going to the eastward how much the horses suffered from the want of water, I determined not to put them to such suffering again if avoidable. In the middle of the day Fisherman, Jemmy, and I heard a loud report of what we thought was a gun probably discharged by Mr. Bourne or Jackey, and expected them to arrive immediately. I am very anxious about them, especially as it would be inconvenient ...
— Journal of Landsborough's Expedition from Carpentaria - In search of Burke and Wills • William Landsborough
... secondary importance, and the public looked eagerly forward to hearing of the discovery of new pasture lands, especially as the outfit had been on a most liberal scale. Considerable delay (whether avoidable or not, it is scarcely worth while to discuss) happened during the outset of this expedition; for, although the party was reported ready on the 11th February, the end of August found Babbage back in Port Augusta having passed the intervening months in surveying ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... where he did excellent work, and the others served with me on the Murmansk front. The mobile columns there had exactly the same clothing, equipment, and sledging food as we had on the Expedition. No expense was spared to obtain the best of everything for them, and as a result not a single case of avoidable frost-bite was reported. ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... rate of pay from which English artisans in many branches of labour had to suffer. Why they had sought to see him he could not very well tell—and certainly if it had been left to Hamilton, whose mind was set on sparing the Dictator all avoidable trouble, and who, moreover, had in his heart of hearts no great belief in remedy by working-men's deputation, the poor men would probably not have been accorded the favour of an interview. But the Dictator insisted on receiving them, and they came; trooped into the room awkwardly; at first seemed ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... sections. It is evident, for example, that, with the tide of civil war beating fiercely around the national capital, Congress was still under the spell of the past, and severely distrustful of any avoidable increase of public obligations. Bonds were loaned to the enterprise at the rate of sixteen thousand dollars per mile for the easy work, with treble aid for the mountain division and double for the Salt Lake Valley; but this loan was made a first mortgage, twenty-five per cent, was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... a strange cat on the back porch. This indiscretion, so uncharacteristic, was due to the agitation of a surprised moment, for Duke's experience had inclined him to a peaceful pessimism, and he had no ambition for hazardous undertakings of any sort. He was given to musing but not to avoidable action, and he seemed habitually to hope for something which he was pretty sure would not happen. Even in his sleep, this gave him an air ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... important to keep to certain simple rules, of which these are the chief:—(1) Never discharge below a potential difference of 1.85 (or in rapid discharge, 1.8) volt. (2) Never leave the cells discharged, if it be avoidable. (3) Give the cells a special full charging once a month. (4) Make a periodic examination of each cell, determining its E.M.F., density of acid, the condition of its plates and freedom from growth. Any incipient growth, however small, must be carefully watched. (5) If any ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... government to temporize with the difficulty, to overcome violence by means of peaceable coercion, instead of meeting it by the creation of a naval force so strong as to be a factor of consideration in the international situation, led us into an avoidable war. ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... Lord to deliver her and everybody else from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness. She felt now that there might well be added to the Litany a fresh petition which should include British communities on the Continent in the list of avoidable evils. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... monde, as Madame de Motteville and Bussy-Rabutin call him,—flattering that he might win, avaricious that he might be magnificent, winning kings by jewelry and princesses by lapdogs,—too cowardly for any avoidable collision,—too cool and economical in his hatred to waste an antagonist by killing him, but always luring and cajoling him into an unwilling tool,—too serenely careless of popular emotion even to hate the mob of Paris, any more than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... issuing a warning immediately before sinking a vessel will, in the view of the Austrian Government on the one hand, involve hardships otherwise avoidable, while, on the other, it may in certain circumstances be calculated to prejudice the rightful interests of the belligerent. In the first place it cannot be denied that saving lives at sea is nearly always a matter of blind uncertainty, since the only alternatives are to leave ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... our whole world. As a matter of fact, very much of it is read and learnt in the schools.... Next to the intellectual qualification comes the physical, the man must be in sound health, free from certain foul, avoidable, and demoralising diseases, and in good training. We reject men who are fat, or thin and flabby, or whose nerves are shaky—we refer them back to training. And finally the man or woman must be ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... of kin to picking men's pockets, and to other still viler and far fataler forms of scoundrelism be not resorted to in England, except in cases of the very last extremity. When some new gunpowder plot may be in the wind, some double-dyed high treason, or imminent national wreck not avoidable otherwise, then let us open ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... in a clean, sunny, well-aired place, where he can found a home, and bring up healthy children, will do more work, and better work, than the workman who lives in a damp, dark, ill-ventilated tenement, and who goes to his day's work with a heart sullen and broken because of avoidable illness and sorrow in his poor little home. Five thousand employees who have a night-school, luncheon-rooms, little houses and gardens, a savings-bank, and a library of books and pictures are worth more than those who are given no ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... 158. When avoidable, gunpowder is not to be sent from vessels to powder-houses, nor from powder-houses to vessels, in wet weather, nor when there is a probability of wetting the barrels or cases; and the packages must be conveyed in covered boats or wagons showing a ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... academical distinction, who turns his attention to the craft, and without any adequate practical training in it, which alone could teach its right principles, makes, and in the nature of things is bound to make, great mistakes—mistakes easily avoidable. No such thing can possibly be right. Raphael himself designed for tapestry, and the cartoons are priceless, but the tapestry a ghastly failure. It could not have been otherwise under the conditions. Executant separated from designer by all ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... comfortable,—that she should be weeping her lost lord, and subject to the desolation of bereavement. But as the world goes now, young widows are not miserable; and there is, perhaps, a growing tendency in society to claim from them year by year still less of any misery that may be avoidable. Suttee propensities of all sorts, from burning alive down to bombazine and hideous forms of clothing, are becoming less and less popular among the nations, and women are beginning to learn that, let what misfortunes will come upon them, it is well for them to be as ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... to say, both as to its form and as to certain great principles to be remembered by the messenger always and everywhere. It does matter much as to the manner in which the truth is expressed. It is possible to prevent the glorious results the message should produce by avoidable faults in the presentation of it. It is the preacher's duty, for the truth's sake, to make his sermons so attractive and so interesting that hearers shall not be repelled from partaking of the Divine provision for hungry and thirsty souls. It is his duty to ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... to lose track of a lone man in a country as big as this," he returned suavely. "We all got here, so what's the odds? I guess we'll stick here till morning. We can't make the round trip this afternoon, and I'm not camping on the hills when it's avoidable." ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to teach the housewives of the country the veriest elements of thrift. No such instruction was needed by the housewives of the Continent. They were simply told how much food they could have, and their natural competence did the rest. There is never any avoidable waste there, either in peace or in war. A French housewife has little use for a garbage can, save as a depository for uplifting literature. She does her best with the means at her disposal, not only in war ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... my investigations I wrote a series of articles for the Detroit Tribune on the bad habits which cause diseases, insanity, and deformity; and, as opportunity offered, I gave lectures upon such subjects; and finally I wrote a work entitled the "Avoidable Causes of Disease," of 348 pages, of which I printed several editions, the first of which was in 1859, and furnished to different publishers, and advertised to a limited extent; after that it was published for several years by Messrs. Mason ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis
... he who laid the shawl on her shoulders, if she remembered, that, when he fastened her dropping bracelet, biting his lip and looking down, he held the wrist an instant with a clasp that left its whitened pressure there, she remembered, too, that he never spoke to her, were it avoidable, that he failed in small politenesses of the footstool or the fan, and that, if once he had looked at her in an instant's intentness of singular expression, and let a smile well up and flood his eyes and lips and face, in a heart-beat it had faded, and he was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... scattered over the world, dispersed, conflicting, unawakened... I see human life as avoidable waste and curable confusion. I see peasants living in wretched huts knee-deep in manure, mere parasites on their own pigs and cows; I see shy hunters wandering in primaeval forests; I see the grimy millions who slave for industrial ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... lithographed figures drawn to scale. In greater detail the principal crops are treated. The staple crop of rice in its many varieties and harvests at different seasons is lucidly brought before the Government, in language which it would have been well to remember or reproduce in the subsequent avoidable famines of Orissa and North Bihar. Indigo is set before us with the skill of one who had grown and manufactured it for years. The hemp and jute plants are enlarged on in language which unconsciously anticipates the vast and enriching development given to the latter ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... Teutonic spirit does not suffer things to reach this ultimate pass without stubborn resistance, and this is one reason why shyness is often so conspicuous, seeming deliberately to court an avoidable confusion. Over and over again it forces the recalcitrant body back into the arena, preferring repeated humiliation to a pusillanimous surrender. People often wonder at the recklessness with which the shy expose themselves ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... yesterday morning," said Wemmick, "being in a certain place where I once took you,—even between you and me, it's as well not to mention names when avoidable—" ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... of shelter is about one third for the house and two thirds for the expense of running it, largely due to dirt and its consequences. Mr. Wells wisely says: "Most dusting and sweeping would be quite avoidable if houses were ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... huge and heavy for the high road—it had to be put upon rails. And so clearly linked are steam engines and railways in our minds that, in common language now, the latter implies the former. But indeed it is the result of accidental impediments, of avoidable difficulties that ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... him and Waugh, and that gave Waugh's tremendous shoulders and fists a chance to produce a subduing visual impression. A man, even a young man, who is nervous on the subject of his dignity, will, no matter how brave and physically competent, shrink from avoidable encounter that means doubtful battle. And dignity was a grave matter with ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... this feeling so often is, exclusively exercised upon the past. I do not suppose his more eminent contemporaries ever quite knew how generous his enthusiasm for them had been, how free from any under-current of envy, or impulse to avoidable criticism. He could not endure even just censure of one whom he believed, or had believed to be great. I have seen him wince under it, though no third person was present, and heard him answer, 'Don't! don't!' ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... conclusion that more than half the disease which embitters the middle and latter part of life is due to avoidable errors in diet, ... and that more mischief in the form of actual disease, of impaired vigor, and of shortened life accrues to civilized man ... in England and throughout central Europe from erroneous habits of eating than from the habitual use of alcoholic drink, considerable as I ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... rules and all avoidable disease will be annihilated. On the other hand, where hygienic and sanitary science is not enforced, filth, decay and putrifying matter is sure to accumulate. In this we have suitable material for the propagation of disease germs, which cause all communicable and contagious ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... his speech and the careless ease with which he took unnecessary and avoidable risks I had a feeling that there was deep design under everything he did. Though I couldn't have proved it if I'd been asked, I felt sure that he was trying my nerve. After all there's no better test of that than the crowded traffic of a big city. I've ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... the schools is the outcome of a diphtheria scare. Smallpox is a splendid stimulator of vaccination; so much so that some of the country's leading sanitarians now advocate the abolition of pest-houses for this avoidable ailment, and dependence ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... contributed more than any other man to defeat the compromise and settlement for which Mr. Lincoln and his chief adviser, Mr. Seward, were anxious in the exciting, expectant Winter of 1860-61, and to precipitate an avoidable bloody war. It was he, carrying a majority of the Republican party with him, who kept insisting, in the early stages of the conflict, that the emancipation of the slaves was an indispensable element of success. Mr. Lincoln stood out and resisted, ridiculing an ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... vessel carrying them being driven ashore by enemy's cruisers, Graves did not learn their contents until his return to port, August 16. The information sent by Hood of his coming was also intercepted. After Hood's arrival, it does not appear that there was avoidable delay in going to sea; but there does seem to have been misjudgment in the direction given to the fleet. It was known that De Barras had sailed from Newport with eight ships, bound probably for the Chesapeake, ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... little. She found her very ignorant in the regions of what is commonly called education, but very quick in understanding where human relation came in. A point in construction or composition she would forget immediately; but once shown a possibility of misunderstanding avoidable by a certain arrangement, Amy would recall the fact the moment she made again the mistake. Her teachableness, coming largely of her trustfulness, was indeed a remarkable point in her character. It was partly ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... abstinent and my youthful romanticism kept me chaste until my married life was well under way. Then in all directions I relaxed. I did a large amount of work, but I never troubled to think whether it was my maximum nor whether the moods and indolences that came to me at times were avoidable things. With the coming of plenty I ate abundantly and foolishly, drank freely and followed my impulses more and more carelessly. I felt no reason why I should do anything else. Never at any point did I use myself to the edge of my capacity. The emotional crisis of my divorce did not produce ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... principles of morality, and leave to the disposal of a wise and overruling Providence the mystery of all seemingly untoward events. In every condition of life, evils arise, and most of those which are encountered are avoidable. Humanity should be held accountable for those evils which it ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... were continually passing through our camp, and I had many opportunities of studying the morale of individuals of all ranks. The result was interesting and worth setting down. My experience was that the good heart of fighting men was affected by only two avoidable causes. The first was the large number of young able-bodied men engaged in occupations, on the lines of communications and at the base, which might have been carried through effectively by others. These young men never were in danger, ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... all their gliding experiments they studied safety first. They knew that the business they had embarked on was of necessity a long and dangerous one; that they were bound to encounter many dangers, and that each of them had only one life. They took no avoidable risks. Gliding seemed to them, at first, to have been discredited by the deaths of Lilienthal and Pilcher, so they planned to try their machine by tethering it with a rope and letting it float a few feet from the ground, while they practised manipulation. The wind ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... because it is of great practical moment that we should bear in mind to how very large an extent the child lives only in the present; because it follows from it that to keep the sick child happy; to remove from it all avoidable causes of alarm, of suffering, of discomfort; to avoid, as far as may be, any direct struggle with its waywardness; and even if death seems likely to occur, to look at it from a child's point of view—not from that which our larger understanding of good and evil suggests ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... to say anything against your father that is avoidable, but for your own safety and my own protection I realize that you and I must be quite open with ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... American parlour-car system struck me as evils that were not only unnecessary, but easily avoidable. The first of these is that most illiberal regulation which compels the porter to let down the upper berth even when it is not occupied. The object of this is apparently to induce the occupant of the lower berth to hire the whole "section" of two berths, so as to have more ventilation and more ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... kindlily of The Queen Pedauque as Dumas would have equipped it... Yes, in reading here, it is the most facile and least avoidable of mental exercises to prefigure how excellently Dumas would have contrived this book,—somewhat as in the reading of Mr. Joseph Conrad's novels a many of us are haunted by the sense that the Conrad "story" is, in its essential beams and stanchions, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... the World," began his study of Blackstone, and acquired a settled habit of reading novels. So business languished. Early in 1833 Berry and Lincoln sold out to another adventurer. This also was a credit transaction. The purchaser without avoidable delay failed and disappeared. Berry then died of drink, leaving to Lincoln the sole responsibility for the debts of the partnership. Lincoln could with no difficulty and not much reproach have freed himself by bankruptcy. As a matter ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... troublesome game, and not a misunderstanding rises between the players. Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids traveling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space. These forms very soon become fixed, and a fine sense of propriety is cultivated with more heed, that it becomes a badge of social and civil distinctions. Thus grows up Fashion, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the whole, improbable. A mere universal disgust with war is no more likely to end war than the universal dislike for dying has ended death. And though war, unlike dying, seems to be an avoidable fate, it does not follow that its present extreme unpopularity will end it unless people not only desire but see to ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... human beings with even less vitality than themselves, and take no pains to keep the simplest laws of health, or to teach their children to do so, just so long there will be plenty of sorrow of an avoidable kind, and thousands of shipwrecked, and failing, and inadequate, and useless lives in the fullest sense of the word. How can those who preach to the soul hope to be heard by those who do not even make ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the mother generally smothers the female, if one happens to be such; if not, then the feeblest of the two is sacrificed. In their migratory and nomadic life the mother finds it impossible to either carry or care for the two children. The male Hottentot, rather than have any avoidable infanticide in his family, or that his wife should go through and suffer the annoyance and pangs of an unnecessary and unprofitable pregnancy, generously has one testicle removed; this is something that the ordinary civilized white man would not do, even if ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... that the storage is freed or reallocated (and thus moved) through one alias and then referenced through another, which may lead to subtle (and possibly intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the allocation history of the malloc {arena}. Avoidable by use of allocation strategies that never alias allocated core, or by use of higher-level languages, such as {LISP}, which employ a garbage collector (see {GC}). Also called a {stale pointer bug}. See also {precedence lossage}, {smash the stack}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... to reproach myself, now the cruel creature has escaped me; For what would that do, but add to my torment? since evils self-caused, and avoidable, admit not of palliation or comfort. And yet, if thou tellest me, that all her strength was owing to my weakness, and that I have been a cursed coward in this whole affair; why, then, Jack, I may blush, and be vexed; but, by my soul, I cannot ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... today accounts for about another third of the family expenditure on the average, I want to repeat again: your government will continue to take all necessary measures to eliminate unjustified and avoidable price increases. And we are today taking measures to "roll back" ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... "death" which the inquirer wanted; of the rejoinder of "what do you want?" for the repeated outstretching of the "middle finger," a special term for which was sought, and numerous other mistakes, are often perfectly avoidable, and it was therefore desirable that the traveller, armed with an inexhaustible patience, should not content himself with a collection of words, but also add the sentences in which they occur, and, if possible, also ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... 'unsoling.' It was barbarous, we know barbarous, because unnecessary and easily avoidable. It was practised, however, certainly very little more than two decades ago, and practised by men of standing in the profession. Without dragging the case to light again by mentioning the names of those concerned, we may mention that not many years ago a highly respected member ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... delightful to picture her welcome, and the evenings they would spend in Muriel Lansing's pretty drawing-room while he told her what he had done and unfolded his plans for the future. He could brook no avoidable delay in reading her message, and, nerving himself for a struggle, he set ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... in stealing the image of Christ crucified for the figure-head of his Salvationist vessel, with its Adam posing as the natural man, its doctrine of original sin, and its damnation avoidable only by faith in the sacrifice of the cross. In fact, no sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... actual lack of adequate physical comforts is an essential element in the common good, an object in which all are bound to concern themselves, which all have the right to demand and the duty to fulfil. Any common life based on the avoidable suffering even of one of those who partake in it is a life not of harmony, ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... of His Excellency the Governor-General in Council respecting Abdur Rahman will enable you to represent them with adequate accuracy in your reply to the Sirdar's friendly overtures, and it will now be your duty to convey to Abdur Rahman, without any avoidable delay, the answer of the Government of India to the letter and message received from him. His Excellency feels assured that you will give full expression to the spirit of candour and goodwill in which these communications have been ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... no mind to be called as a witness at a possible inquest; and business of far greater import urged him, the real business of his life, this: to discover the whereabouts of Marian Blessington with the least avoidable delay. ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... for men: in all times the lot of the dumb millions born to toil was defaced with manifold sufferings, injustices, heavy burdens, avoidable and unavoidable; not play at all, but hard work that made the sinews sore and the heart sore. As bond-slaves, villani, bordarii, sochemanni, nay indeed as dukes, earls and kings, men were oftentimes made weary ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... primitive impulses are of themselves neither good nor evil, but become one or the other according to the objects for which they are employed. That neglect, suppression, and premature forcing of some instincts at the expense of others, are responsible for many avoidable ills, there can be no doubt. But the moral is not to leave them alone to follow their own "spontaneous development," but to provide an ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... also be as safe as human ingenuity can make it. Many of our leading roads have been foremost in the adoption of the most approved safeguards for the protection of travelers and employees, yet the list of clearly avoidable accidents continues unduly large. The passage of a law requiring the adoption of a block-signal system has been proposed to the Congress. I earnestly concur in that recommendation, and would also point out to the Congress ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... tried to discover the cause why his paternal ancestor had left the Green Island, or his maternal ancestor the land of dikes and windmills; it was sufficient that, out of resentment against conditions either avoidable or unavoidable, each had resolved to endure the ordeal of making his way in a land of strangers. Austin Selwyn bore the marks of that inheritance no less clearly than Malcolm Durwent bore the marks of his. In his features there was a certain ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... who would free the father from responsibility is even less defensible when, as we commonly find, they are prepared to make the mother's responsibility more extensive and less avoidable than ever. Why this distinction? And if parental responsibility is a "fetish" when it refers to a father, why is it not the same when it refers to a mother? In the schemes of Mr. H. G. Wells, kaleidoscopic in their glitter and inconsistency, there remains from year to year this one ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... children, and supposing other bastardly, wild, and illegitimate ones in their room, and necessitating her to nourish and cherish the one instead of the other; and that too in those principles which concern things good and bad, desirable and avoidable, proper and strange, the energy of which ought to be more clearly distinguished than that of hot and cold, black and white. For the imaginations of these things are brought in by the senses from without; but those have their original bred from the good things which we have within ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... to his next step. His heart was very sore. The condition of Mile End—those gaunt-eyed women and wasted children, all the sordid details of their unjust avoidable suffering weighed upon his nerves perpetually. But he was conscious that this state of feeling was one of tension, perhaps of exaggeration, and though it was impossible he should let the matter alone, he was anxious ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... chairman of Rothamsted declares as I write that the standard of English farming could be raised 50 per cent. Hall and Voelcker have estimated that 20 million tons of farmyard manure made in the United Kingdom is wasted through avoidable causes. ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Far otherwise. The factions and divisions prevailing at their town of York (in Virginia, where they removed from Baltimore), the vindictive rigour to political opponents, the neglect of Washington's army, and the cabals against Washington's powers, combined to create disgust, with other less avoidable causes, as the growing depreciation of the paper-money, the ruinous loss of trade, and the augmented burdens of the war. Is the truth of this picture denied? Hear then, as witnesses, the members of Congress themselves. We ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... the United States each year. The enormous loss of life and the great suffering involved certainly demand that every boy scout do what he can to improve conditions in this respect. Some accidents happen under all circumstances, but, on the other hand a great many accidents are avoidable and probably quite one half of the injuries which occur in the United States yearly could be prevented if common ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... sufficient to refer to the reputation in England of "hot-houses" and "bagnios." It was not until toward the end of the eighteenth century that it began to be recognized that the claims of physical cleanliness were sufficiently imperative to make it necessary that the fairly avoidable risks to morality in bathing should be avoided and the unavoidable risks bravely incurred. At the present day, now that we are accustomed to weave ingeniously together in the texture of our lives the conflicting ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... should be turned over to an oligarchy composed of such women as have been and are identified with the agitation for the political emancipation of their sex? Saloons, brothels and gaming-houses might vanish before such an administration; wars avoidable with safety and honor might not be undertaken, and taxes might be diverted to purposes of general sanitation and higher education, but neither in these respects nor in the efforts to lift the bowed and strengthen the weak would the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness be placed ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... have previously entertained. Universal education, we have seen, constitutes the most effectual and the only sure means of securing to individuals and communities, to states and nations, exemption from all avoidable evils of whatever kind, and the possession of a competency of this world's goods, with the ability and disposition so to enjoy them as most to augment human happiness. Yes, education, and nothing ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... have come to the conclusion that more than half the disease which embitters life is due to avoidable errors in diet, ... and that more mischief, in the form of actual disease, of impaired vigor, and of shortened life, accrues to civilized man from erroneous habits of eating than from the habitual use of alcoholic drink, ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... the truth or falshood of those judgments, they must take place wherever we form the judgments; nor will there be any difference, whether the question be concerning an apple or a kingdom, or whether the error be avoidable or unavoidable. For as the very essence of morality is supposed to consist in an agreement or disagreement to reason, the other circumstances are entirely arbitrary, and can never either bestow on any action the character of virtuous or vicious, or deprive ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... tobacco not stamped out;—the flaming cinders of a railroad train,—a match dropped among dry leaves before spark and blaze have both been destroyed,—these be the first and only causes of the average forest fire. All are avoidable. None is avoided. And the loss to property and to life and to natural resources is ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... accumulates fat and morbid products in his blood, it declines in its collective efficiency and vigour and secretes discomfort and misery. Every phase of its evolution is accompanied by a maximum of avoidable distress and ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... Sabrina. They recur when he moralizes; and his morality is too interwoven with the texture of his piece to be other than obtrusive. He fatigues with virtue, as Lucan fatigues with liberty; in both instances the scarcely avoidable error of a young preacher. What glorious morality it is no one need be told; nor is there any poem in the language where beauties of thought, diction, and description spring up more thickly than in "Comus." No drama out of Shakespeare has furnished such a number of the noblest familiar quotations. ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... of court decisions in all parts of the world have now held that the water company is legally responsible for all avoidable pollution of public water-supplies, and nine tenths ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... them forth from me. Justice, satisfaction in his exertions, and gratitude for their spirited willingness, all call upon me to give him that poor return. The danger of it, however, now, is too great to be tried, if avoidable : and I had far rather avoid seeing him, than either gratify myself by expressing my sense of his kindness, or unjustly withhold from him what ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... passengers with such unfailing tenderness and forbearance. I have never seen them molested, though I have noticed them in the indulgence of many eccentricities, and happened once even to see one of them sit down in a lady's lap. But that was on the night of Saint Patrick's day. Generally all avoidable indecorums are rare in the horse-cars, though during the late forenoon and early afternoon, in the period of lighter travel, I have found curious figures there:—among others, two old women, in the old-clothes business, one of whom was ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... much grief and misery and unmerited and avoidable suffering in the world, it is pitiful to see the Christian millions squander such a wealth of time and energy and ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... Well, this crisis was avoidable. It will not be difficult for you to see from this letter who is responsible for this destructive change in the soul of a young, an excellent, and hitherto thoroughly obedient youth. I should never have sent him to Berlin. Yes, it is this so-called scientific theology, this theology that flirts ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... contract, which, if he possessed it, would save him from many a foolish undertaking and protect him from many a business betrayal, Far from it. All the disagreeable, and many of the painful incidents of his subsequent life, all equally avoidable if knowledge regarding them had been instilled into him in his early years, he must buy with money and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... a special Misfortune, Unhappiness, or Hurt to one's life, by no means avoidable, and perhaps not discernible at once. Influenced by the King of its like suit, sudden: by the Queen, long continuing ere complete; by the Knave, Fortune through Persons; by the ten, through concurrence of sundry events. By any other spade, sudden. By a Heart, Ill-Fortune in the Affection. ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... constitutional objection to seeing patients slip through ma fingers when it's avoidable, Mrs. Mossop, and I'll do ma best for your father, but ma medicine will na do him any good without your medicine to back me up. He needs a tight hand on him ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse |
