"Nugatory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this desire to prove that what such senses as we have tell us is impossible, is in fact possible, which causes the overthrow of many an earnest, seeking heart and renders its work, conducted on false lines, quite nugatory. These will trust to themselves and their own intelligence and not be content to spring from the cliffs of human experience into the everlasting arms of that Infinite which are stretched out to receive them and to give them rest and the keys of knowledge. When will man learn ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... would appear to make this matter ahsolute1y certain is, that unless the prohibition that "no bailiff, &c;., of ours shall hold pleas of our crown," apply to all officers of the king, justices as well as others, it would be wholly nugatory for any practical or useful purpose, because the prohibition could be evaded by the king, at any time, by simply changing the titles of his officers. Instead of calling them "sheriffs, coroners, constables and ...
— An Essay on the Trial By Jury • Lysander Spooner
... pretended evidence. If we attend to the meaning, say they, an immediate inference does not really express any new judgment; the fact expressed by it is either the same as its evidence, or is even less significant. If from No men are gods we prove that No gods are men, this is nugatory; if we prove from it that Some men are not gods, this is to emasculate the sense, to waste valuable information, to lose the commanding sweep of our ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... attention. He little thought that there were about five hundred orders from the admiralty tacked on to them, which, like the numerous codicils of some wills, contained the most important matter, and to a certain degree make the will nugatory. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... In writing to a friend, that "after the inflammatory character of the oratory of the Carlton Club, it is quite supererogatory for me to state (it being notorious) that all conciliatory measures will be rendered nugatory," he thus expressed himself:—"After the inflammawhig character of the orawhig of the nominees of the Carlton Club, it is quite supererogawhig for me to state (it being nowhigous) that all conciliawhig ...
— Punch, Volume 101, Jubilee Issue, July 18, 1891 • Various
... metaphysic, we have assigned unto it the inquiry of formal and final causes; which assignation, as to the former of them, may seem to be nugatory and void, because of the received and inveterate opinion, that the inquisition of man is not competent to find out essential forms or true differences; of which opinion we will take this hold, that the invention of forms is of all other parts of knowledge the worthiest ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... kind are commonly fancied; and, when real, are technical and nugatory, not to be rejected, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... to abolish some oaths which oppress him; your answer is that he does not respect oaths. Then why subject him to the test of oaths? The oaths keep him out of Parliament; why, then, he respects them. Turn which way you will, either your laws are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by religious obligations as you are; but no eel in the well-sanded fist of a cook-maid, upon the eve of being skinned, ever twisted and writhed as an orthodox parson does when he is compelled by the gripe ...
— English Satires • Various
... degree, conduct waits on intelligence. Deep will only answer unto deep; and great characters only come with much meditation on the things that are highest. And, on the other hand, the misconstruction of life's meaning flings man back upon himself, and makes his action nugatory. Byronism was driven "howling home again," says the poet. The universe will not be interpreted in terms of sense, nor be treated as carrion, as Carlyle said. There is no rest in the "Everlasting No," because it is a wrong view of man ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... either side of the car, the latter protesting with an injured air that he was not so young as he was, and that, if I wanted him to survive the summer, I had better keep my ears open, while, to judge from his behaviour, the reflection that his recent output of vigour had been rendered nugatory by my unreadiness was hurrying Mr. Dunkelsbaum into the valley of insanity. Purple in the face from the unwonted violence of his physical and mental exercise, streaming with perspiration and shaking with passion, the fellow stormed and raved like a demoniac, and, if Berry had not stepped in front ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... time of my going to Gloucester approaches. I made a very stout resistance a fortnight ago, notwithstanding Harris's importunate summons, and now he plainly confesses in a letter which I received from him to-day, that my coming down upon that pretended meeting would have been nugatory, as he calls it. The Devil take them; I have wished him and his Corporation in Newgate a thousand times. But there will be no trifling after the end of this next week. The Assizes begin on Monday sevennight. Then the Judges will be met, ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... edict was published accordingly; but failing of its intended effect, was followed by another, in which the depreciation was increased to ten per cent. The payments of the bank were at the same time restricted to one hundred livres in gold, and ten in silver. All these measures were nugatory to restore confidence in the paper, though the restriction of cash payments within limits so extremely narrow kept up ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... daring, was none the less deliberate and sane. Its authors must not be charged either with panic or a passion for adventure. All the data of a judgment were in view, and delay could add no new fact, except one which would make any decision nugatory because too late. It was wisdom in those with whom lay the cast of the die, to take their determination while a school remained for which they ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... done, and usually results in nothing but litigation. You see for yourself how absurd it would be to treat a paper drawn or executed after a will was made as part of it, for that would render the requirements of the statute nugatory." ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... for dinner, it occurred to him—it was not for the first time—that, after all, it would take very little to render Rainham's bungling devotion, and his own meritorious aberrations from the path of truth, worse than nugatory. For what if Kitty should split?—so he elegantly expressed his fears—what if the girl, of whom he had heard nothing since the day of that deplorable scene, should break loose, and throw up the part which she had undertaken ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... it might seem as if this arrangement rendered nugatory the attempt to take advantage of the rise and fall of the buoy; but it is not so when the relations of the four buoys to one another are considered. Although the frame is free to move up and down upon the uprising shaft, still its ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... expressed this delightfully in the essay on the old manor-house. Compared with his possession of its beauties, its walks, tapestried walls and family portraits, nay, even of the ghosts of former proprietors, the possession by the legal owner was utterly nugatory, unreal: ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... and drink, for to-morrow we die." This teaching was accompanied by a spirit of cold-blooded egotism which extinguished every spark of Confucian altruism. Even the pretended disciples of Confucius confused the precepts of the Master, and by stripping them of their narrow significance rendered them nugatory. It was at this point that Mang-tsze, "Mang the philosopher," arose. He was sturdy in bodily frame, vigorous in mind, profound in political sagacity and utterly fearless in denouncing the errors of his countrymen. He had been brought up ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... victorious party generally. The American commissioners would only agree that there should be no further confiscations and prosecutions, and that congress should recommend the several states to revise their laws concerning them. These articles were nugatory. Nothing short of a renewal of the war could have induced the Americans to forego their revenge, and if the war had gone on longer, the loyalists' fate would have been no better. Everywhere, with the exception of South Carolina, they were treated with barbarity. Some 60,000 persons ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... country, and it is impossible to glance at them without being impressed with the conviction that, if any description of franchise depend solely on the oaths of the holders, every species of enquiry will be nugatory; and it will be just as wise to establish at once a system of universal suffrage, as to establish a system of franchise in such a manner. These corporations, thus formed by persons holding a franchise of this description, acquired solely by their own swearing, and without ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... retreat by. The only alternative was to make a circuit round the bigger of the two buildings—and an interminable circuit it seemed—and all the while I knew my compass-course 'south-east' was growing nugatory. I passed a padlocked door, two corners, and faced the void of fog. Out came the compass, and I steadied myself for the sum. 'South-east before—I'm farther to the eastward now—east will about do'; and ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Lara and Jacqueline contains the plain statement that "the reader ... may probably regard it [Lara] as a sequel to the Corsair"—an admission on the author's part which forestalls and renders nugatory any prolonged discussion on the subject. It is evident that Lara is Conrad, and that Kaled, the "darkly delicate" and mysterious page, whose "hand is femininely white," is Gulnare in a transparent and ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... recommending to your consideration the expediency of more adequate provision for giving energy to the laws throughout our interior frontier and for restraining the commission of outrages upon the Indians, without which all pacific plans must prove nugatory. To enable, by competent rewards, the employment of qualified and trusty persons to reside among them as agents would also contribute to the preservation of peace and good neighborhood. If in addition ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... est." (C. R. 37, 148.) According to his own confession, therefore, Calvin's subscription to the Augustana, at least as far as the article of the Lord's Supper is concerned, was insincere and nugatory. In fact Calvin must be regarded as the real originator of the second controversy on the Lord's Supper between the Lutherans and the Reformed, even as the first conflict on this question was begun, not by Luther, but by his opponents, Carlstadt, Zwingli, and Oecolampadius. For the adoption ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... at sea, they could have henceforth but little influence in European affairs. It is singular that the revival of Britain's activity began under a Government which was one of the most incapable that ever controlled the affairs of the country. Had their deliberate purpose been to render nugatory the expedition which—after innumerable vacillations and changes of purpose—they despatched to Portugal, they could hardly have acted otherwise than ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... of Pompilia's guilt or innocence as established by the previous enquiry; and as we have seen, the formal result of this enquiry was unfavourable to her. The Count obtained his verdict, though the subsequent treatment of the offenders made it almost nugatory; and de Archangelis rings the changes on the stock arguments of his client's outraged honour, and his natural if not ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... massed in rear of the infantry and rendered inert. Sheridan with his ten thousand troopers was held idle and inactive while Warren, Sedgwick and Burnside were given the task of defeating Lee's veteran army without Sheridan's help. All his plans were rendered nugatory. He became satisfied that his efforts were useless. About noon he went to Meade's headquarters and they had an interview which is one of the famous historical episodes of the civil war. He told Meade that, inasmuch as his plans were to be interfered with, his orders countermanded, ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd |
