"Justification" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... him promptly into prison, and even, under certain aggravating conditions, to cause him to be hanged by the neck till he be dead. This may be a regrettable incident of our own peculiar dispositions, mother dear, but it has at least the same justification as Mr. Sikes's or the bears' and lions', that 'tis our nature to. And I feel pretty much the same way about ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... his residence there for cattle-breeding en amateur. The greatest enthusiast in butter and cheese would scarcely care to accumulate mountains of rancid firkins and boxes for the mere gratification of fancy. Access to a market is his only justification for spending a nomadic lifetime among herds, or a fortune on churns and presses. The settlement of the country must precede the birth of its industries, and the Pacific Road is the absolutely essential stimulus to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... he divides Puritanism into Calvinism, and Arminianism or Methodism. The foremost place in Calvinistic theology belongs to Predestination; in Methodist theology to Justification by Faith. Calvinism relies most on man's fears; Methodism most on his hopes. Both Calvinism and Methodism appeal to the Bible, and above all to St. Paul, for the proof of what they teach. Very well then, says Arnold, we will enquire what Paul's account of God's proceedings with man ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... There was something implied in her father's tone that made her curiously reluctant to discuss her hero. And yet, in justification of the man himself, she felt she ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... robust health once more. "He's well enough. I never seen anybody better. You'd think," said Mrs. Meecher, bearing up with difficulty under her grievance, "you'd think this here new Spanish influenza was a sort of a tonic or somep'n, the way he looks now. Of course," she added, trying to find justification for a respected lodger, "he's had ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... evoke the hostility of the other colonies and to show them what was probably in store for themselves. But while the issue certainly proved this to be the case, the course pursued by the government under existing conditions had an appearance of justification. Even Professor Goldwin Smith, who will not be accused of any sympathy with the British cabinet of that day, or of antagonism to liberal principles, admits that "a government thus bearded and insulted had its choice between abdication ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... and passion felt by my characters. It is effaced as soon as it is necessary that these should have perfect liberty in their gestures as in their cries, in their joy as in their sorrow." However much one may hesitate to subscribe to Debussy's generalities, the final justification for his procedure is in the fact that it is ideally suited to its especial purpose,—the tonal utterance of Maeterlinck's rhymeless, metreless, and broken phrases. To have set them in the sustained arioso style ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... justification that they are not sufficiently clear for an ordinary comprehension," he answered. "I do when I make a mistake, and old Rough-and-Ready is always willing to receive my excuses, as he can't spell ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... Bible-reading, an appeal was made to Pope Paul II, who prohibited the translation of the holy Scriptures "into the languages of the nations." This authority was quoted in the Council of Trent by Cardinal Pacheco, in justification of the practice of the Church of Rome in his day; but another cardinal, Madrucci, arguing against him, replied with cutting calmness that "Paul, of popes the second," or any other pope, might be easily deceived in judging of the fitness or unfitness of a law, but not so Paul the Apostle, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... principle of English common law, that in a criminal action for libel it is immaterial whether the matter of it is true or false; and a person prosecuted for libel is not allowed, in justification, to prove to the jury the truth of his statement, since the provocation, not the falsity, is to be punished. And, whether true or false, the libelous publication is equally dangerous to the public peace, and is presumed to have been made ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... an abyss of uncertainty. The conjecture was the result of years of patient gathering of facts: its corroboration would take months more of comparison and classification. But at the end of the vista victory loomed. The Professor felt within himself that assurance of ultimate justification which, to the man of science, makes a life-time seem the mere comma between premiss and deduction. But he had reached the point where his conjectures required formulation. It was only by giving them expression, by exposing them to the comment and criticism of his associates, that he could ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... The utmost we can do is to indulge our fancy in dreams of greater or less probability, and to mark out clearly the limitations of the subject. It is indeed something to have shown that the stigma of slavery and disgrace attaching to his name has no solid historical justification, and something to have suggested plausible reasons for conjecturing that his worship had a genuine spiritual basis. Yet the sincere critic, at the end of the whole inquiry, will confess that he has only cast a plummet into the unfathomable sea of ignorance. What remains, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... of Christ in an especial sense. It was this false conception that led the vow of the nun to be regarded as the vow of marriage, and to be guarded from infringement in the same way as the human marriage tie, and like it to be lasting for life. The glorious doctrine of justification by faith was replaced by ascetic mortifications of the flesh based upon the belief in meritorious works. The cell of the monk and the nun were esteemed more sacred than the family circle, and in the darkness of mediaeval times that settled down upon the life of the Church we ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... to speak of others), will make its way to all minds not rendered obdurate by selfishness or inveterate prejudice; and that, before the lapse another generation, the accident of sex, no more than the accident of skin, will be deemed a sufficient justification for depriving its possessor of the equal protection and ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... utilitarian and the moralistico-utilitarian; because those who admit only the individually useful (the desire of the individual), precisely because they are absolute hedonists, have no motive for seeking an ulterior justification for art. ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... it with impunity. It is yet questionable whether they can do it! Oh, if you knew how hard it is to live. Man goes so far that he begins to fear his own self. He is split into judge and criminal—he judges his own self and seeks justification before himself. And he is willing to pass days and nights with those that despise him, and that are repulsive to him—just to avoid ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... hanged! Remember me at my best,—that is, fullest of the desire of humility. Don't inflict me on people. There are some widows and bereaved sweethearts who remind me of the peddler in that horrible murder-story, who carried a corpse in his pack. Really, it's their stock in trade. The only justification of a man's personality is his rights. What rights has ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... Scotland, and England successively, as well as the questions of Local Option, local government for Great Britain, and of the safety of life at sea, must take precedence of it. That means the postponement of the reform of Irish Government to the Greek Kalends. What justification can be made for this change of front? No valid justification has been offered. So far from there having been any increase of crime in the interval, there has been a very marked decrease. When the Coercion Bill received the royal assent last August, ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... be remembered that an inhabitant of those distant countries has seldom an opportunity of being heard. I should feel, therefore, if I were to pass over in silence our claims or our interests, I was affording the best justification for that neglect, which for the last half century, has cramped our energies, paralized our efforts, and discouraged and disheartened ourselves. England is liberal in concessions, and munificent in her pecuniary grants to us; but is so much engrossed with domestic politics, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... Jesus would fill page after page, and if we would ponder over them and search in its blessed depths under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, would fill our hearts with "joy unspeakable and full of glory." How clear it is seen in Romans. In the fifth of Romans we read of the blessed results of justification. It is not a question of doing from our side, but it is God's doing, for everyone who believeth on the Lord Jesus Christ. Peace, perfect peace, towards God. Every believer has it with God in virtue of the blood of the cross. There peace was made. The ...
— Studies in Prophecy • Arno C. Gaebelein
... because the complaint was not of the abuse, but of the use of authority in matters of trade, which ought to have been free. He throws out a variety of invidious reflections against the Council, as if they wanted zeal for the Company's service; his justification of his practices, and his declaration of his resolution to persevere in them, are firm and determined,—asserting the right and policy of such restraints, and laying down a rule for his conduct at the factory, which, he says, will give no cause of just complaint to private traders. He ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Lind and Henrietta Sontag were allowed by the public to give out their voices naturally and lightly without straining them, and to sing piano and pianissimo, and their celebrity is a justification of this privilege." ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... particular mental organization, and that, if rigorously analyzed, its causes would be found to resolve themselves into habits of reasoning upon men and things from which courage, generosity, and masculine disinterestedness, were carefully excluded. Patriotism may be pleaded in justification—it is a ready argument, and a common defense; but, ample as its proportions are, it will not cover every thing: besides that, in Talleyrand's case it was a non-existence, for of that holy love of country which the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... of these words; and I drew from them the certain inference, that if I were so far to forget myself and all the teaching that had ever been instilled into me, as—under any pretext—with any justification—through any temptation—to become the successor of these poor girls, he would one day regard me with the same feeling which now in his mind desecrated their memory. I did not give utterance to this conviction: it was enough to feel it. I impressed it on my ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... had been forged. The cardinal did not deny that he had represented himself to Boehmer as employed by her for the purchase of the jewel which, as he said, she secretly coveted, and for the payment of its price by installments. But, as his justification, he produced a letter desiring him to undertake the business, and signed "Marie Antoinette de France." He declared that he had never suspected the genuineness of this letter, though it was notorious that such an ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge
... the Lord had fully declared his mission, and finished his work,—after he had died for our sin, and risen again for our justification,—after his disciples through the ministry of the Spirit had published the glad tidings in many lands,—the treasure still lay hidden. It was near, and yet out of sight. Those who find it, find out at the same time that they have been ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... is the Dove, which from the early centuries to the present day has constantly symbolized the third Person of the Holy Trinity. Its warrant and justification are based on the account in the Gospel of our Lord's baptism and the descent upon Him of the Spirit "in ...
— The Worship of the Church - and The Beauty of Holiness • Jacob A. Regester
... 1836.[50] The school, says Fitzjames, was in many ways very good; the boys were well taught and well fed. But it was too decorous; there was no fighting and no bullying and rather an excess of evangelical theology. The boys used to be questioned at prayers. 'Gurney, what's the difference between justification and sanctification?' 'Stephen, prove the Omnipotence of God.' Many of the hymns sung by the boys remained permanently in my brother's memory, and he says that he could give the names of all the masters and most of the boys and a history of all incidents in chronological order. Guest's eloquence ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... enkindled by subjects of trivial importance; and that however aggrieved by the intolerance of others, they were alike intolerant themselves. Against these objections, your candid judgment will not require an unqualified justification; but your respect and gratitude for the founders of the State may boldly claim an ample apology. The original grounds of their separation from the Church of England were not objects of a magnitude to ...
— Orations • John Quincy Adams
... such glowing terms, shall have reached a more mature babyhood, may find occasion to 'change the paternal note;' and he cites for us the following passage, from an essay by a sometime contributor to the KNICKERBOCKER, 'in justification ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various
... though the plural of the corresponding Hebrew word could not have been used, because it has a different signification. Grammatical inaccuracy is made the basis of a certain theological interpretation. Those who wish to see a specimen of labored ingenuity unsuccessfully applied to the justification of St. Paul's argument in this passage, may consult Tholuck's Das alte Testament in neuem Testament, p. 63, etc. Vierte Auflage. (Epist. to the Galatians ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... had her word of regret—regret mingled with self-justification. She thought she had been quite right in speaking to Thekla for allowing such familiarities; how was she to know that the man was an old friend and playmate? He looked like a right profligate good-for-nothing. And to have a servant take up her scolding as an unpardonable offence, and persist in ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... experienced; and had the orders for the movement been construed properly I doubt if it could have been executed without serious danger. Necessity knows no law, however, and when all the circumstances of this battle are fully considered it is possible that justification may be found for the manoeuvres by which the army was thus drifted to the left. We were in a bad strait unquestionably, and under such conditions possibly the exception had to be applied ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... which is harmless; so called to distinguish it from black magic, or the black art, which involves a compact with the Evil One. In rude ages the practice of the former as a means of healing, may be said to have found its justification in its philanthropic purpose. ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... done much, and dismay at Guy's illness did more. It would have been noble and generous in Guy to act as he had done, had Philip's surmises been correct, and this he began to doubt, though it was his only justification, and even to wish to lose it. He had rather believe Guy blameless. He would do so, if possible; and he resolved, on the first opportunity, to beg him to give him one last assurance that all was right, and implicitly believe him. ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... colour on him; nor did he object to bow to another as his superior. But he was prepared to suspect every one of insincerity and of faithlessness; and, being the master of the machinery of the plots, he was ready, upon a whispered justification, to despise the orders of his leader, and act by his own light in blunt disobedience. For it was his belief that while others speculated he knew all. He knew where the plots had failed; he knew the man who had bent and doubled. In the patriotic cause, perfect ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... movement actually made by the eye in following a long line; the intrinsic interest—that is, the ideal interest—of an object insignificant in form has been equated to the attractive power of a perspective which has, presumably, a merely physiological effect on the visual mechanism. What justification can be given either of this heterogeneous collection of elements or of the more or less arbitrary and external metaphor by ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... persons to arise, I announce justice triumphant, I announce uncompromising liberty and equality, I announce the justification of candor and the justification ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... admirers of money because they wish to know the lengths it can go to with the people who seem to be just now making the most money. Their interest in a phenomenon which we ourselves have not every reason to be proud of, is not without justification, as we must allow if we consider a little, for if we consider, we must own that our greatest achievement in the last twenty or thirty years has been in the heaping up of riches. Our magnificent success in that sort really eclipses our successes in every other, and the ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... strongly the necessity of clinging to the diamonds as his one great and sufficient justification. "I thought," said he, "that Mr. Camperdown had abandoned his action for the present because the ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... the supremacy of the Plantagenets or the Tudors, but at York, Upper Canada, during the forty-fourth year of the reign of George the Third. More than one eminent authority has pronounced it an unconstitutional measure. There was, however, some show of justification for it at the time of its enactment, for the Province was then overrun by disloyal immigrants from Ireland and by republican immigrants from across the borders, many of whom tried to stir up discontent among the people, and were notoriously in favour of annexation to the United States.[8] It was ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... she murmured; "I do not know what the cause is. I do not know what justification you have for ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... malicious design. He can create rumours by wholesale, and dispense them to all who will degrade themselves by accepting them. Aspersions, detractions, slanders, defamations, and calumnies he can conjure in his mind and pour out of his lips without the shadow of a justification. And as there are always persons with ready minds to receive whatever is said to the injury of others, and to circulate it as truth, the liar often succeeds in the accomplishment of his evil purpose. I will give briefly the ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... O Sanjaya, also represent unto Suyodhana, the son of Dhritarashtra, the following,—That desire of thine which torments thy heart, viz., the desire of ruling the Kurus without a rival, is very unreasonable. It had no justification. As for ourselves, we will never act in such a way as to do anything that may be disagreeable to thee! O foremost of heroes among the Bharatas, either give me back my own ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Slaves. Cruel Treatment of Adams. Murder of Dolbie. Characteristics of European Slaves. Ransom of Adams. Return of Adams to England. Justification ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... original parental types, and so the peculiar Galapagos species would come into being. The fact that the organisms living on the various islands of this group differ somewhat in lesser details adds further justification for the evolutionary interpretation, because it is not probable that all the islands would be populated at the same time by similar stragglers from the mainland. The first settlers in one place would send out colonies to others, ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... small personal magnetism and good training have done quite well, while others with large personal magnetism and no methods, have made a complete failure, and herein lies the justification for this volume. ...
— The Art of Lecturing - Revised Edition • Arthur M. (Arthur Morrow) Lewis
... away her head. Jeffrey was overcome with contrition. Ah, he had no business to speak so—he had spoiled the devotion of years. Who was he that he should have dared to love her? Silence alone had justified his love, and now he had lost that justification. She would despise him. He had forfeited her friendship ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... you the original reports of the provisions and state of the ships issued by the captains, but I must hold these for my public justification, ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... amazed that he should protest for such trifling cause, but he gave orders in German and his men ceased their rude explorations. Then, in justification of this extraordinary respect, he added ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... translation and submitting it to Harte or his publisher. Pope had already invoked Boileau's name and precedent in the letter from "William Cleland"; nothing could be more logical than for Pope to turn the esteemed Boileau's self-justification ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... South, in the course of the struggle, often took up violent and extravagant positions. My argument is that the attitude of the North, whatever its protestations, virtually threatened the institution of slavery in the old slave States, and that therefore the South had virtual, if not formal, justification for holding ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... contented myself with merely ascertaining that they bear no direct and palpable evidence; I have always endeavoured to find, and then thoroughly to sift, any expressions which might with {86} the slightest plea of justification be urged in testimony of primitive belief and practice sanctioning the invocation of saints. I find none. Brethren of the Church of Rome, search diligently for yourselves; "I speak as to wise men: Judge ye what ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... desirable that it should be so, rather than left to be gathered out of Thirty-nine Articles, written by no means in clear English, and referring, for further explanation of exactly the most important point in the whole tenor of their teaching,[156] to a "Homily of Justification,"[157] which is not generally in the possession, or even probably within the comprehension, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... seemed rather hard, and not of a piece with the many admirable institutions existing among them. I once ventured to say a part of what I thought about it to one of the Professors of Unreason. I did it very tenderly, but his justification of the system was quite out of my comprehension. I remember asking him whether he did not think it would do harm to a lad's principles, by weakening his sense of the sanctity of his word and of truth generally, that he should be led into entering ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... stripped. Had he been obliged to choose a witness to his suffering, it is probable that he would have selected a stranger from the street rather than his wife. The one thing that could have helped him, an intelligent justification of his work, she was powerless to give. In his need she had nothing except love to offer; and love, she felt instinctively, was not the balm for ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... li east from this place there is a tope commemorating the following occurrence: A hundred years after the pari-nirvana of Buddha, some Bhikshus of Vaisali went wrong in the matter of the disciplinary rules in ten particulars, and appealed for their justification to what they said were the words of Buddha. Hereupon the Arhats and Bhikshus observant of the rules, to the number in all of seven hundred monks, examined afresh and collated the collection of disciplinary books [5]. Subsequently men built at ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... tidings that Chin Ch'uan-erh had been instigated by a sense of shame to take her own life and he at once fell a prey to grief. So much so, that, when he came inside, and was again spoken to and admonished by Madame Wang, he could not utter a single word in his justification. But as soon as he perceived Pao-ch'ai make her appearance in the room, he seized the opportunity to scamper out in precipitate haste. Whither he was trudging, he himself had not the least idea. But throwing his hands ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... cannot be pleaded as a justification for an overt act made criminal by the law of the land. "Laws are made for the government of action, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices."[43] To permit a man to excuse conduct in violation of law on ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... add a few words with regard to the Essay on the Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever. But the whole question I consider to be now transferred from the domain of medical inquiry to the consideration of Life Insurance agencies and Grand Juries. For the justification of this somewhat sharply accented language I must refer the reader to the paper itself for details which I regret to have been forced to place ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in the same way, the matter of employment will send her to a business man, or some one who can advise her, when her own store of experience is too scant. The poor man often has a mean opinion of the judgment of "charitable ladies," and this opinion has not always been without a degree of justification; but the visitor who {43} takes the trouble to go on Sunday and get acquainted with the men folk, or makes occasion for them to come to her house from time to time, who proves herself, moreover, not without resource or common ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... tone? And was it her madness then?—her recovery now? It seemed to her that to have written of him enthusiastically resembled madness more than to shudder away from the union; but standing alone, opposing all she has consented to set in motion, is too strange to a girl for perfect justification to be found in reason when she ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Crime demands justification, and it is not surprising that after such violence as that which we have described, and after several states had passed disfranchising acts, there appeared in the first years of the new century several publications especially defamatory of the race. Some books unfortunately descended to a coarseness ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... no earthly reason why the "Poco Mas o Menos" Club of San Francisco should have ever existed, or why its five harmless, indistinctive members should not have met and dined together as ordinary individuals. Still less was there any justification for the gratuitous opinion which obtained, that it was bold, bad, and brilliant. Looking back upon it over a quarter of a century and half a globe, I confess I cannot recall a single witticism, audacity, or humorous characteristic that ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... genuine and important history is contemporary history. Yet reflection on this doctrine will show that it is not only consistent with a serious and steady interest in what is called Antiquity (and indeed in the past in general), but its only rational basis and justification. Were the past really past it were dead—dead and done with, and it were wisdom for us who are alive to let the dead bury their dead. Much of what has been done and suffered under the sun is indeed gone beyond recall, and is well buried in forgetfulness. In such forgetfulness lies the fact and evidence ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... that closed the sentence showed how little Slade was satisfied with himself, notwithstanding this feeble attempt at self-justification. ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... For a moment it had no seeming effect, and then Mary Louise, turning loose all the pent-up outpourings to inner questionings, in a fury of righteous self-justification: "You needn't think I haven't thought about that. You needn't think I'm shirking my duty in any way. If you knew, you wouldn't ask such a question. Before you left we were just on the ragged edge, and now—well, somebody's got to do something ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... is his new teaching? Justification through faith. If one only believes, one may live ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... good man, will never be disposed to speak evil of any, unless there be some other reason for it, besides, barely that it is true. If he be charged with having given an ill character, he will scarce think it a sufficient justification of himself to say it was a true one, unless he can also give some further account how he came to do so: a just indignation against particular instances of villainy, where they are great and scandalous; or to prevent an innocent ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... suddenly. So, she accepted her release! Then eager justification of her made him wonder if by any chance she ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... done with her?" And she said, "Forbear to slay her and send for her lord. If he be as she describeth him in grace and goodliness, she is excused, and if he be not on this wise, then slay her, and this shall be thy justification ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... The unsatisfactory state of morals, manners, and religion in the colony was attributed to this neglect. At the Revolution, the inhabitants of Maryland rose with tumultuous zeal against their Roman Catholic lords, and published a manifesto in justification of their proceedings, accusing Lord Baltimore's government of intolerable tyranny. These statements, whether true or false, afforded King William an opportunity to assume the colonial power in his own hands, 1691, and to deprive the Calverts of all rights over the country, except ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... excuse for tyranny, as a justification of slavery, the church has taught that man is totally depraved. Of the truth of that doctrine, the church has furnished the only evidence there is. The truth is, we are both good and bad. The worst are capable of some good deeds, and the best are capable of bad. ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... twenty minutes for the other party, on account of their British objection to anybody's dust. Even Mr. Mafferton looked quelled when they arrived, and Isabel quite abject, while Mrs. Portheris wore that air of justification which no circumstance could impair, which was particularly her own. She would not sit down. "It gives these people a claim on you," she said. "I did not come here to run up an hotel bill, but to see Pompeii. Pompeii I demand to see." The players on the flute and mandolin ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... present not on any sufficient grounds) that Prussia secretly supports the King of Holland. The danger is that France may without any further communication with her Allies consider the aggression of the Dutch as a justification of a corresponding movement on her part, and should this happen the Prussians would no longer deem themselves bound by the common obligations which united all the conferring and mediating Powers, and a general war would infallibly ensue. Nor is it unlikely that the French Ministry, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... of the Dead (indeed in almost every Papyrus of the Dead) we meet with a representation of the soul, whose heart is being weighed and judged. The speech made by the soul is called the negative justification, in which she assures the 42 judges of the dead, that she has not committed the 42 deadly sins which she enumerates. This justification is doubly interesting because it contains nearly the entire moral law of Moses, which last, apart from all national ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... this inflexible President, Mr. Calhoun hastened to make friends with his old opponents, Clay, Webster, and the protectionists, the advocates of the "American system," the authors and champions of the very policy which had been made the pretext or justification for nullification and resistance to Federal law and the Federal authority. This coalition of hostile factions combined in a scheme, or compromise, where each sacrificed principles to oppose the ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... mediocrity, the apotheosis of the average. Was this the best that democracy had to offer mankind? Was there no depth below the shallows? Was it impossible, even by the most patient search, to discover some justification of the formlessness of the age, of the crazy instinct for ugliness? He could forgive it all, he might eventually bring his mind to believe in it, if there were only some logical design informing the disorder. ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... and scorn; they must become the objects of a righteous popular vengeance. Such are the feelings and ideas which possess the followers of Hearst, and on the basis of which Hearst himself acts and talks. An apparent justification is reached for a systematic vilification of the trusts, the "predatory" millionaires and their supporters; and such vilification has become Hearst's peculiar stock in trade. In effect he treats his opponents very much as the French revolutionary leaders ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... German theological literature it is somewhat different, for here he tried to keep himself abreast of the times. Yet even here the books that interested him most were mainly historical, such as the first volume of Ritschl's great work on Justification (almost the only German book he read in a translation), and the three volumes of Harnack's ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... of anxious justification in Mrs. a Cleeve's voice, and knew that it was meant for him. He turned now with a half audible "Pish!" but controlled his features—superfluously, since he stood now with his back ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... had missed not one happiness, but two. He had missed the ease of this world, which men love, and he had missed also that other shining prize for which men forgo ease, the snatching and holding and triumphant bearing up aloft of which is the only justification of the mad adventurer who hazards the enterprise. And there was no second attempt. Fate has no morrow. Oleron's morrow must be to sit down to profitless, ill-done, unrequired work again, and so on the morrow after that, and the morrow after ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... galleon "San Marcos." He was commander of that vessel when Don Juan Ronquillo fought with the fleet of these islands against that of the Dutch at Playa Honda. He appealed from this sentence to the royal Audiencia, where the case is now proceeding—very slowly, because of the superfluous justification that he is presenting. This has been an affair where it is desirable to manifest great rigor; for otherwise the other correction that I have tried to apply for the honor and defense of this royal house will not ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVIII, 1617-1620 • Various
... paper from his pocket, and unfolded it. "You are prejudiced against my friend, I see, but I do not want to leave him in the false light in which he has placed himself in your eyes. May I not read this to you, and let his own words be his justification?" ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... as to why her companion was displeased; but more than that she did not know, nor what point in particular it was on which the argument had run. The one party—of Mr. Babington's kind—held that Catholics were, morally, in a state of war. War had been declared upon them, without justification, by the secular authorities, and physical instruments, including pursuivants and the rack, were employed against them. Then why should not they, too, employ the same kind of instruments, if they ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... the deserter accept the entire responsibility for his act. To try to find justification for doing what we want to do is characteristic of human beings, and the deserter is no exception. He attempts to "rationalize" his conduct and so regain his sense of self-approval and well-being by finding excuses and justifications in the conduct of others. Even when the fault is all his, ...
— Broken Homes - A Study of Family Desertion and its Social Treatment • Joanna C. Colcord
... getting Nakamura and me to sign it, as before, in testimony of its veracity. This he did in order to justify himself for broaching cargo and temporarily mounting the Hotchkiss and Maxim guns; and it may be said here that not only was his justification accepted, but his conduct was highly commended ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... all the world as prepared to conclude a peace safeguarding the vital interests of Germany. In doing so, it gave expression to the fact that it was not its fault if peace was further withheld from the peoples of Europe. With a correspondingly greater claim of justification, the German Government may proclaim its unwillingness before mankind and history to undertake the responsibility, after twenty-one months of war, to allow the controversy that has arisen over the submarine question to take a turn which might ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... he had had no reason for haste, Jim Willis would have gone farther in the matter of investigating Jan's peculiar conduct. As it was he saw every reason against delay and no justification for close study of a trail which he was desirous only of putting behind him. As a result he carried his whip for the rest of that day, and used it more often than it had been used in all the months since he first saw Jan. For, contrary to all habit and custom, Jan seemed to-day most singularly indifferent ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... at least has for its justification the flag and the life of a nation for which it stands the gleaming symbol in the sky, and in real war they do not kill the wounded or fire on women and children. Even the Turk does not fire on a hospital. But in this war which maniacs waged for gold, they fired on women and children without ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... amongst his other servants, had a maid servante which kept his house & did his household affairs, and by the intimation of some that belonged unto him, he was suspected to keep her, as his concubine; and both of them were examined ther upon, but nothing could be proved, and they stood upon their justification; so with admonition they were dismiste. But afterward it appeard she was with child, so he gott a small boat, & ran away with her, for fear of punishmente. First he went to Cap-Anne, and after into y^e bay of y^e Massachussets, but could get no passage, and had like to have been cast away; ...
— Bradford's History of 'Plimoth Plantation' • William Bradford
... coronation regulations, or promises, as they have been called, and the probability is that he never intended to adhere to them. However this may be, I must say that personally I have been unable to share the views of those who see in the breach of these so-called promises a justification of the Zulu war. After all, what do they amount to, and what guarantee was there for their fulfilment? They merely represent a very laudable attempt on the part of the Natal Government to keep a restraining hand on Zulu cruelty, and to draw the bonds of ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... is recommended by considerations far too obvious to require a formal justification. Logic is a portion of the Art of Thinking: Language is evidently, and by the admission of all philosophers, one of the principal instruments or helps of thought; and any imperfection in the instrument, or in the mode of employing it, is confessedly liable, still more than in almost any ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... social way had a purpose and that was to level up society and cause it to conform to the principles of the kingdom of God. Wherever He went He led the conversation to the better things of this kingdom. The man who quotes Jesus and His relation to society, as a justification of attendance upon numerous social functions, ought also to carry out the purpose of Jesus in bringing others to a better life; he ought also to lead the conversation to the same topics. If society sways any man from the right purposes of life, and he finds that he cannot breast its temptations ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... this is, or is not, the case; but in either event they will owe the author of 'The Origin of Species' an immense debt of gratitude. We should leave a very wrong impression on the reader's mind if we permitted him to suppose that the value of that work depends wholly on the ultimate justification of the theoretical views which it contains. On the contrary, if they were disproved to-morrow, the book would still be the best of its kind—the most compendious statement of well-sifted facts bearing ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... have satisfied myself of the soundness of the foundations on which my arguments are built, and I desire to be held fully responsible for everything I say. But, nevertheless, nay position is really no more than that of an expositor; and my justification for undertaking it is simply that conviction of the supremacy of private judgment (indeed, of the impossibility of escaping it) which is the foundation of the Protestant Reformation, and which was the doctrine accepted ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... keenly alert, may feel to be inevitable. The dramatist is bound to extract from his material the last particle of that particular order of effect which the stage, and the stage alone, can give us. If he fails to do so, we feel that there has been no adequate justification for setting in motion all the complex mechanism of the theatre. His play is like a badly-designed engine in which a large part of the potential energy is dissipated to no purpose. The novelist, with a far wider range of effects at his command, and employing no special mechanism to bring them ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... less mean than he. He knew me better than I knew myself. If he had retorted or openly exasperated me, it would have been a relief and a justification; but he had put me on a slow fire, on which I lay ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... about it. I do not expect every man to belong to my church, for men in their constitution and mental make-up can not see alike theologically. But I do accord to every member of every church the hope of getting to heaven if he lives up to the teachings of this particular sect. I believe in justification by faith and good works, but I have no use for a man who decries this doctrine when he never exercised a particle of faith nor did a good deed in his life. And so I would say to any one who thinks he stands on some lofty pinnacle and scents danger to the family ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... manager, M. Fould, and insulted the public for the gratification of a whim. No adequate reason could be guessed at for such eccentricity, not even the excuse of an affaire de coeur, which would go further in the minds of Frenchmen than any other justification of capricious courses. Her furniture and the money at her banker's were seized as security for the forfeit of four thousand pounds stipulated by her contract in case of breach of engagement, and her private papers and letters were ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... get at his point of view, his justification for such senseless action, but could only discover a sort of blind belief that something would help him pull through. He had gone to the Caribou mines to find work, and, failing, had pushed on toward Hazleton with a dim hope of working his way to Teslin ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... faith not only when faith begins anew to be in a man, but also as long as faith lasts. For it has been said above (I, Q. 104, A. 1; I-II, Q. 109, A. 9) that God is always working man's justification, even as the sun is always lighting up the air. Hence grace is not less effective when it comes to a believer than when it comes to an unbeliever: since it causes faith in both, in the former by confirming and perfecting it, in the latter by ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... not wholly agreeable. The worshippers of Sarah could say nothing more in justification of her turning her back on them, but, with true feminine logic, concluded, "If Sarah Bernhardt turns her back on the audience it is right, and that is all there ...
— What Dress Makes of Us • Dorothy Quigley
... not without justification; for crazier analogies than that between Andromache and Andrew Mackay have been gravely insisted on by persons who, like the author of "Amilec," believed that the true secret of philosophizing est ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... possessed, was left in the Medusa. When we boarded the pinnace, the officer who commanded it began excusing himself for having set off without forewarning us, as he had been ordered, and said a thousand things in his justification. But without believing the half of his fine protestations, we felt very happy in having overtaken him; for it is most certain they had had no intention of encumbering themselves with our unfortunate ...
— Perils and Captivity • Charlotte-Adelaide [nee Picard] Dard
... Using the pragmatic test of the meaning of concepts, I had shown the concept of the absolute to MEAN nothing but the holiday giver, the banisher of cosmic fear. One's objective deliverance, when one says 'the absolute exists,' amounted, on my showing, just to this, that 'some justification of a feeling of security in presence of the universe,' exists, and that systematically to refuse to cultivate a feeling of security would be to do violence to a tendency in one's emotional life which might well be ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... many people suffer from excessive and unwise eating. The sane economic ideal is to make the possession of money the clear indication of public serviceableness, and the more nearly that ideal is attained, the smaller is the justification of poverty and the less the hardship of being poor. In barbaric and disorderly countries it is almost honourable to be indigent and unquestionably virtuous to give to a beggar, and even in the more or less civilised societies of earth, so many children ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... affairs; not in temporal.' The abbe denied that he had made the statements attributed to him, and was allowed to prepare a paper which he termed his defence. The next day his defence was presented and read; but the Council considered that it did not contain anything 'material towards his justification' and ordered his removal from the province. A few weeks later, however, the inhabitants addressed a communication to Lawrence, asking for the reinstatement of the abbe. They expressed their submission to the ...
— The Acadian Exiles - A Chronicle of the Land of Evangeline • Arthur G. Doughty
... freely open to every authoritative champion of the German cause, no matter what the editorial policy of the papers may be. Never was fuller and freer opportunity for defence accorded to anyone than has been given to the friends of Germany to present in print to the American public every possible justification for Germany's acts. Only the grossest ignorance of the actual facts could ever lead anyone to make the charge in good faith that the truth about Germany has been concealed from Americans. Your letter did not contain a single statement ...
— Plain Words From America • Douglas W. Johnson
... know where America made her great mistake? Oh, what a chance you had and missed it! Why did you not declare war on Germany after our invasion of Belgium? Or after the sinking of the Lusitania? Or after the sinking of the Arabic? You had your justification and, with your money and resources, you could have changed the course of the great war. That is what we feared in Berlin. We were powerless to hurt you then and we knew you would have time to get ready. Yes, if ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... that. Rossi was in prison, therefore beyond suspicion, and she was entirely indifferent to detection. When she had done what she intended to do she would give herself up. She would avow everything, seek no means of justification, and ask for no mercy even in the presence of death. Her only defence would be that the Baron, who was guilty, had to be sent to the supreme tribunal. It would then be for the court to take the responsibility of fixing ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... most of them were killed by the watchful guards. The next day nothing but the dead and three living women were found. There were some accusations, later, that Vallejo summarily executed some captives; but he denied it, and claimed that the only justification for any such charge arose from the fact that one man and one woman had been killed, the latter wrongfully by a soldier, whom he advised ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James
... anything of the slightest interest added by Mr. Norton to the book. In his Preface he attacked Froude for fulfilling Carlyle's own wishes, of which he seems to have known little or nothing, and, by way of further justification for his interference, he added ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... necessity,' and for such reason the conduct of the coal companies during the campaign was justified. However such conduct may be viewed when confined to the private property of such corporations in their private operation, the fact remains that there is no justification when they were dealing with such territory after it had been dedicated to a public use, and particularly involving the right of the people to exercise their duties and powers as electors in ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... in Kirkwall jail. He had made a clean breast of all his crimes, and measures were rapidly taken for John Sabay's enlargement and justification. When he came out of prison Christine and Margaret were waiting for him, and it was to Margaret's comfortable home he was taken to see his mother. "For we are ane household now, John," she said tenderly, "an' Christine an' mother will ne'er leave me ...
— Scottish sketches • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... type faces noticed were on English bodies, and the composition is somewhat similar. Arabic is composed just as with English. Sanskrit possesses some little features of accents and kerned sections, which render justification quite a fine art, accents on varying bodies needing to be utilised.... The firm does much Hindustani work, and possesses seven sizes of type in this language. Amongst the curiosities are the cuneiform types, ...
— A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 • Henry R. Plomer
... the major's wife had hidden a single package of gelatine, a single tin of dried beef, and a single half pound of cornstarch. "If sickness comes to my boys" (she did not say boy), "I shall at least have saved these," she told herself, in justification of her act. "A sick man cannot live on beans." But now they were down to beans—just beans and lard boiled together. Then a day dawned when there was not even a spoonful of lard left. "Beans straight!"—it was the death knell, for beans straight—beans without ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... love amongst wild beasts and cattle and birds; also that enmity be done away with and wrongs be forbidden nor might one transgress against other; nay, if any chance to injure his fellow this offence might be for his scourging a reason, and for his death by tearing to pieces a justification. The order hath also come forth that all do feed and browse in one place whichever they please, never venturing to break the peace but dwelling in all amity and affection and intimacy one with other. Moreover they have commissioned me, very me, to overroam the wastes and gladden with good tidings ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... assistance of God the Holy Ghost, guaranteed to him in his exercise of his function of Chief Pastor, in feeding with divine doctrine the entire flock of God. Our Anglican friends seem penetrated with the utterly false notion of justification by scholarship alone; which is as untrue as it is unscriptural. Indeed, their justification by scholarship is likely to lead to very undesirable ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... his Democratic Vistas, "that the sole avenue and means to a reconstructed society depended primarily on a new birth, elevation, expansion, invigoration of women." That intuition is not without a sound basis, and if a great historical movement called for justification ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... my friend was a well man ready to go out and fight like a warrior, but when the cornetist stopped—the colic returned and he had to fight it out in the old way. In these episodes in my own experience I find ample justification for my belief and that of others that some day the music cure for human ailments will be recognized and developed to the full. Families going off to the country for the summer instead of taking a medicine-chest along with them will go provided with a music-box with cylinders ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... back to me, if you please, It will be my justification with your father if he objects to ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... applicable, we must compare Communism at its best with the regime of individual property, not as it is, but as it might be made. The laws of property have never yet conformed to the principles on which the justification of private property rests. They have made property of things which never ought to be property, and absolute property where only a qualified property ought to exist. Private property, in every defense made of it, is supposed to mean ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... a very natural tendency to self-justification, "although Beniah told me not to touch things, I did not promise not ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... absented myself from his chapel. But I was not content with the first view that had been afforded me at the Exchange. I was unwilling to decide for ever upon the character of my former friend without a complete self-justification. I went again to the house of commerce, and alone. Again I beheld Mr Clayton immersed in the doings of the place. For a week I continued my observation. Proofs of his worldliness and gross hypocrisy came fast and thick upon each other. I no longer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... of them black, in 1947.[7-44] Several commands reported that the new regulations materially improved the quality of black units by opening vacancies to better qualified men. General Paul could argue with considerable justification that in regulating the quality of its recruits the Army was following the spirit if not the letter of the Gillem Board Report. If the Army could set high enough standards it would get good men, and to this end the General ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... "If such are the evidences of justification and a saving faith, then have I had them, too; but why bring they to me no confidence or holy joy? Why is my soul cast down, and why do I feel like one who stumbles towards a pit? Alas! my flesh quivers and my heart trembles at the thought ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... his eye upon a single side of the shield." Probably no European has ever gathered such an appalling collection of degrading customs and statistics of vice as is contained in Captain Burton's translation of the 'Arabian Nights' (p. 185). He finds in the case of Mr. Payne, like myself, "no adequate justification for flooding the world (!) with an ocean of filth" (ibid.) showing that he also can be (as said the past-master of catch-words, the primus verborum artifex) "an interested rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity." But audi alteram partem—my ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... one thing you must never forget," said the Vicar, gravely, "she has a deep, religious feeling which you will find in none of Shakespeare's plays. Every one of her books has a lofty moral purpose. That is the justification of fiction. The novelist has a high vocation, if he could only see it; he can inculcate submission to authority, hope, charity, obedience—in fact, all the higher virtues; he can become a handmaid of the Church. And now, when irreligion, and immorality, and scepticism are rampant, we ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham |
