"Probity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... they were angels of light and purity and goodness whose mission it was to marry and reform us, and above all pity and sympathize with us when we defiled ourselves, because we couldn't help it, and they believed it. We told them they didn't really care for moral probity in man, and they believed it. We told them they had no brains, that they were illogical, unreasoning, and incapable of thought in the true sense of the word, and, by Jove! they took all that for granted, such was their beautiful confidence ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... my resolutions; it braced me for my struggles against the strongest passion which youth admits, and counteracted the evil vapors of that air in which Vivian's envenomed spirit breathed and moved. Without the influence of such a home, if I had succeeded in the conduct that probity enjoined towards those in whose house I was a trusted guest, I do not think I could have resisted the contagion of that malign and morbid bitterness against fate and the world which love, thwarted by fortune, is too inclined of itself to conceive, and in the ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... old days; but he wisely declined that too. It was in Brandenburg, by what he silently founded there, that he did his chief benefit to Germany and mankind. He understood the noble art of governing men; had in him the justness, clearness, valor, and patience needed for that. A man of sterling probity, for one thing. Which indeed is the first requisite in said art:—if you will have your laws obeyed without mutiny, see well that they be pieces of God Almighty's law; otherwise all the artillery in the world will ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... that he would not communicate the intelligence save personally, and to both the Princes while together, perhaps because he felt that to mention so well contrived and hopeful a scheme to Louis whilst in private, might be too strong a temptation to the wavering probity of that Monarch, and lead him to assist, rather than repel, the intended sally. He determined, therefore, to watch for an opportunity of revealing the secret whilst Louis and Charles were met, which, as they were not particularly fond of the constraint imposed by each other's society, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... often dreamed of the City of London as the seat of magic; and taking the City's contempt for authorcraft and the intangible as, from its point of view, justly founded, she had mixed her dream strangely with an ancient notion of the City's probity. Her broker's shaking head did not damp her ardour for shares to the full amount of her ability to purchase. She remembered her satisfaction at the allotment; the golden castle shot up from this fountain ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... accomplished it; and, in fact, no one else of high consequence had any disposition to try. In brains, in scientific warfare, and in statesmanship the Constable Richemont was the ablest man in France. His loyalty was sincere; his probity was above suspicion—(and it made him sufficiently conspicuous in that trivial ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... thought a sign of a sluggish and sordid mind not to preserve carefully one's natural beauty; but it is likewise infamous among them to use paint. They all see that no beauty recommends a wife so much to her husband as the probity of her life, and her obedience: for as some few are catched and held only by beauty, so all are attracted by the other excellences which charm ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... continued the subject of considerable emotion and anxiety. He informed his wife of the matter; but she did not credit the first word. She was of different temper to him. He was very anxious during the night, and slept little. How could he, when his character for probity was implicated, and his business was likely to suffer? The first opportunity he had he went to see Mrs. Baker, to inquire into the facts of the case. She was glad to see him. Upon the statement of the story, ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... time, away in the country homestead and cottage, the good Marsian or Sabine mother is a veritable pattern of domestic probity and discipline. If she possesses handmaids, she teaches them their work in the kitchen or at the loom; if she possesses none, she brings up her big daughters in the right ways of modesty, frugality, and obedience to the gods; and her ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... sagacious, mild yet resolute, With prudence, probity and—what beside From the other world he ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... bribing electors is almost unknown, while it is notoriously and publicly carried on in England. In the United States I never heard a man accused of spending his wealth in corrupting the populace; but I have often heard the probity of public officers questioned; still more frequently have I heard their success attributed to low ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... Smith as commissary, acting quartermaster, and acting ordnance officer.[413] His jurisdiction was to extend over northwestern Arkansas and over the Indian Territory. Now Pike had had dealings already with Pearce and thought that he knew too well the limits of his probity. Exactly when Pike heard of Pearce's promotion is not quite clear; but, on the twenty-third, Hindman sent him a conciliatory note explaining that his intention was "to stop the operations of the commissaries of wandering companies in the Cherokee Nation, ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... after the six first centuries, the prodigies of the Lives of the Saints are noticed by numerous authors of all countries, whose talents, learning, probity, holiness, and dignity, render them respectable to the most searching critics. They are supported by incontrovertible evidence, by juridical depositions, by authentic acts, and by splendid monuments which have been erected to their memory by bishops, princes, magistrates, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... The police were easily persuaded of his innocence; and, after he had given what help he could in the subsequent investigation, he was even complimented by one of the chiefs of the detective department on the probity and simplicity of his behavior. Several persons interested themselves in one so unfortunate; and soon after he inherited a sum of money from a maiden aunt in Worcestershire. With this he married Prudence, and set sail for ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... grin demanded by convention, anxious to get at the source of inspiration, which it presently appeared lay in a paragraph circumstantially describing our modest and humdrum habitation. "Case III.," it began. "The following particulars were communicated by a young member of the Society, of undoubted probity and earnestness, and are a chronicle of actual and recent experience." A fairly accurate description of the house followed, with details that were unmistakable; but to this there succeeded a flood of ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... despair of reformers, in 1874 Tammany returned to power, electing its candidate for mayor by over 9000 majority. The new boss who maneuvered this rapid resurrection was John Kelly, a stone-mason, known among his Irish followers as "Honest John." Besides the political probity which the occasion demanded, he possessed a capacity for knowing men and sensing public opinion. This enabled him to lift the prostrate organization. He persuaded such men as Samuel J. Tilden, the distinguished ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... full of honour, courage, and probity, and exceedingly regular in the performance of his duties. Bonaparte's attachment to him arose more from habit than liking. Berthier did not concede with affability, and refused with harshness. His abrupt, egotistic, and careless manners did not, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Council as I would think none save innocent man should do, and looked the Queen straight in the face. He was not witched with her gramary; and soothly I count in all that hall he was the sole noble that escaped the spell. A brave man was he, of great probity, prudent in council, valiant in war: maybe something too readily swayed by other folks (the Queen except), where he loved them (which he did not her), and from this last point came ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... make the Heart sincere, To arm our Lives with honesty severe, To shake the wretch beyond the reach of Law, Deter the young, and touch the bold with awe, To raise the fal'n, to hear the sufferer's cries, And sanctify the virtues of the wife, Old Satire rose from Probity of mind, The noblest ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... emigrants not to be deceived by the Texan accounts of the place. Immense profits have been made, to be sure; but now even the Mexican smugglers and banditti are beginning to be disgusted with the universal want of faith and probity. ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... had conceived so great a hope and opinion of the probity, integrity, and prudence of your predecessor, that, from his care and vigilance, we securely trusted that the business and affairs of this your Order, which hitherto has always wont to be of no slight assistance to our most Holy Faith, and to the Christian name, would as far ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various
... parliament, or supreme tribunal of Burgundy, and minister of state, and was recognised as one of the ablest jurists and most skilful politicians in the kingdom. An elderly man, with a tall, serene forehead, a large dark eye and a long grey beard, he presented an image of vast wisdom and reverend probity. He possessed—an especial treasure for a statesman in that plotting age—a singularly honest visage. Never was that face more guileless, never was his heart more completely worn upon his sleeve, than when he was harbouring the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... distinguished public men. Among men of whatever party, and however much some of them differed from him in opinion or political principle, there was not one of them all but felt pleasure if he spoke, and respected his uncommon ability and probity, and his fair and upright demeanor in his place and station. He took at once his appropriate position. Of his associates and admirers in the other house, there are some eminent persons now living who were occasional listeners to his speeches and much struck with his ability; together with ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... the human race. No doubt amongst the mass are noble minds who have a perception of the true object of their calling, who feel a just and laudable pride that they are the employers and benefactors of mankind; whose names, even amongst distant hordes of untaught men, pass current, as a security for probity and honour; who write a few lines in London and move the antipodes; who within the last fifty years have either actually erected or laid the stable foundation of six great empires, offsets of that strong nation who, ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... still, forcing our recognition as a separate and independent power, and creating for the new confederation of states a place among the brotherhood of nations. Confident that Mr. Jefferson's astuteness, erudition, and probity would make a powerful impression upon those whom it was so much to our interest to attach to us, Congress had, on the 7th day of May, 1784, appointed him Minister Plenipotentiary for the negotiation of foreign commercial treaties. Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, his co-workers, were ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... else some trick of the tongue. Now Macaulay has contributed no philosophic ideas to the speculative stock, nor has he developed any one great historic or social truth. His work is always full of a high spirit of manliness, probity, and honour; but he is not of that small band to whom we may apply Mackintosh's thrice and four times enviable panegyric on the eloquence of Dugald Stewart, that its peculiar glory consisted in having 'breathed the love of virtue into whole generations of pupils.' He has painted ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... who brings you this letter, is the son of one of the best men in Massachusetts, a man whose name is a proverb among merchants for his probity, for his sense and his information. The son, who bears his father's name, is a favorite among all the young people for his sense and spirit, and has ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... world you rove, Thus uphold your banners; Give these reasons why you prove Hearts of men and manners: "To reprove the reprobate, Probity approving, Improbate from approbate ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... we are going to serve you, and not you us, you are greatly mistaken. You thought that the steps of the ladder on which you will ascend are composed of rascals? Hold on! We, who have elected you—we, in whose probity you do not believe—we will watch you and judge you. If you are guilty we will crush you. We have elected ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... memories of the past, and that strong affection which comes from long habit, and a constant exchange of services rendered. Whatever M. Favoral might have done, they only saw in him now the friend, the host whose bread they had broken together more than a hundred times, the man whose probity, up to this fatal night, had remained ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... continuing economy in the shift of government activities which must follow every change in a developing country. Beyond this many of the independent agencies of the Government must be placed under responsible Cabinet officials, if we are to have safeguards of efficiency, economy, and probity. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... men who executed it had the reputation and appearance of honesty, and their victims were hypnotized into security by accepting standing in the community, great business prestige, and enormous wealth as guarantees of individual probity. The only capital employed in capturing three millions of "made dollars" and the control of a great corporation was respectability. I contend, then, that the magnitude and success of the deal do not make it ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... much at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind, with hardly any attempts at regulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling, and become at once, if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic, or casually associate. Thus, the Puritan elders, in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... intense sympathy and pity. By an instinctive process somehow linked with other experiences, I seemed to be able to enter into the feelings of these two outcasts, to understand the fearful yet fascinating nature of the impulse that had led them to elude the vigilance and probity of a world with which I myself was at odds. I pictured them in a remote land, shunned by mankind. Was there something within me that might eventually draw me to do likewise? The desire in me to which my father had referred, which would brook no opposition, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... judge could not safely be entrusted with the power to punish.'[410] He endeavours to give a rather more precise distinction by subdividing 'ethics in general' into three classes. Duty may be to oneself, that is 'prudence'; or to one's neighbour negatively, that is 'probity'; or to one's neighbour positively, that is 'benevolence.'[411] Duties of the first class must be left chiefly to the individual, because he is the best judge of his own interest. Duties of the third class again are generally too vague to be enforced by the legislator, though a man ought ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... management of human affairs; since those often yield to a besetting weakness who are nearly irreproachable in other matters. Bluewater was glad to hear this declaration; his own simplicity of character inducing him to fancy it was an indication to the general probity of his companion. ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... more common than a Traveller's beginning the Account of his Voyages with one of his own Family; in which, if he can't boast Antiquity, he is sure to make it up with the Probity of his Ancestors. As it can no way interest my Reader, I shall decline following a Method, which I can't but think ridiculous, as unnecessary. I shall only say, that by the Death of my Father and Mother, which happen'd ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... "very expensive," for he had heard his grandfather say so. Like many extremely upright people Ger was gentle in his judgments of others. Himself of the most crystalline honesty, he could yet conceive of circumstances wherein a like probity might be hard for somebody else: at all costs poor Reggie must be screened, but it was equally clear to him that his brother and sister must not lose the pleasure long looked-forward-to as the opening joy ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... political dream to the volume of an Utopia, but from action or administration he would have been soon discarded as a dreamer. Liberty must come of the claim of the mass; of the general enlightenment, firmness, and probity. It is no great physical secret, which a single brain, finding, may announce and so establish: it is a moral truth, which, like a gem, hides its ray and its preciousness in obscurity, nor becomes refulgent till ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... measure, as all and utterly vile; the other class applauding her as being possessed of every virtue? Says one of the latter: "In Sappho, a warm and profound sensibility, virgin purity, feminine softness, and delicacy of sentiment and feeling, were combined with the native probity and simplicity of the Eolian character; and, although endued with a fine perception of the beautiful and brilliant, she preferred genuine conscious rectitude to every other source of human enjoyment." It is probable a medium between these two extremes would give the true character ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... the most influential men in the country, the reader will not be surprised to learn that he was also a member of the Storthing; and in this august body, by the well-known probity of his public and private life even more than by his mighty intellect, he wielded a powerful influence even over the peasant deputies elected in such large numbers in the ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... there is a very large reserve belonging to the Huron or Wyandot Indians. These, though speaking a dialect of the Iroquois tongue, are more in connexion with the Delawares than with the Iroquois. The Wyandots are much esteemed by their white neighbours, for probity and good behaviour. They dress very tastefully. A handsome chintz shawl tied in the Moorish fashion about the head—leggings of blue cloth, reaching half way up the thigh, sewn at the outside, leaving a ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... is a feminine characteristic to apply anything she is to judge to herself first, and then to make her choice. That she does this, rests on the eminent overweight of emotion. So Schopenhauer says: "Women are very sympathetic, but they are behind man in all matters of justice, probity, and scrupulous conscientiousness. Injustice is the fundamental feminine defect.''[1] Schopenhauer should have added, "because they are too sympathetic, because emotion takes up so much place in their minds that they have not enough left for justice.'' According to Proudhon, "The conscience ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... feeling, though he has never seen them? Or who but loathes Tarquinius Superbus, Spurius Cassius, Spurius Maelius? We have fought for empire in Italy with two great generals, Pyrrhus and Hannibal. For the former, owing to his probity, we entertain no great feelings of enmity: the latter, owing to his cruelty, our country has detested and always ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... employment of his time, in the routine of his lessons; to let no one save persons worthy of confidence come near him; to ward off all dangers, and notify the King of the least indisposition,—such is the duty of the governor. It requires more prudence than learning, more probity than genius. M. de Damas was a royalist too tried, too fervent a Christian, for his nomination not to provoke many murmurs. His place, moreover, had been desired by so many people, that there was no lack of those who were displeased and jealous. There was a ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... half-deceiving nature, the moral hybrid. Chiappino comes before us as a much-professing yet apparently little-performing person, moody and complaining, envious of his friend Luitolfo's better fortune, a soured man and a discontented patriot. But he is quite sure of his own complete probity. He declaims bitterly against his fellow-townsmen, his friend, and the woman whom he loves; all of whom, he asseverates, treat him unjustly, and as he never could, by any possibility, treat them. While he is thus protesting to Eulalia, his ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... genius a small portion of the riches that he was about to create. Judge of my surprise when I found the celebrated Burke at their head. Is it possible, then, that men may devote themselves to deep studies, possess knowledge and probity, exercise to an eminent degree oratorical powers that move the feelings, and influence political assemblies, yet sometimes be deficient in plain common-sense? Now, however, owing to the wise and important modifications introduced by Lord Brougham in the laws relative to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... Seventy, arriv'd at Trinity-Island, which exceeds Sicile, both in Amplitude and Fertility, and is contiguous to the Continent on that side where it toucheth upon Paria, whose Inhabitants, according to their Quality, are more addicted to Probity and Vertue, than the rest of the Indians; who immediately published an Edict, that all the Inhabitants should come and cohabit with them. The Indian Lords and Subjects gave them a Debonair and Brotherly Reception, serving them with wonderful Alacrity, furnishing them with dayly Provisions ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... though it was one of simple probity, astonished and gratified Mr. Cheetham. He looked on the young man with marked respect. "You are hard; but you are very square. I'll be true as steel to you, and we'll outwit our tyrants together, till I get a chance to put my foot on them. Yes, I'll be open with you; there are plenty of orders ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... Provincial authorities, who represented that he was of a haughty disposition, that he had taken upon himself to introduce innovations in the rites and ceremonies, that overtly, while he endeavoured to enjoy the reputation of probity and uprightness, he, secretly, combined the nature of the tiger and wolf; with the consequence that he had been the cause of much trouble in the district, and that he had made life intolerable for the people, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... second notability, so far as most of us are concerned, is, that they are contrary to the general consent of travellers. That there are excellent men, and honest among them, is a fact; and it is a fact, that in general matters of bargaining, you may trust to them. But when the idea of probity is carried out, so far as to imply a view of things comparatively disparaging to Christian morals, it mounts to an anti-climax, and falls over into the province of nonsense. The Koran has provided them with much ethical guidance, of which individual Turks, of any pretence to religion, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... Ida a hard-fisted miser before, but now she began to look like a slippery-palmed spendthrift. They began almost to suspect the probity of the poor old maid. Worse yet, they feared that a later will might turn up bequeathing all her money to some abominable charity or other. She had been addicted to occasional subscriptions during ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... maxims which we have been brought up from childhood to revere and associate with the welfare of the Republic. We believe that unless a man is born virtuous, he will never acquire virtue, unless he has always lived in an environment of honesty and probity and given it his earnest attention. See with what contempt democrats trample these doctrines under foot and never stop to ask what training a man has had for public office. On the contrary, anyone who merely professes zeal in the public interests is welcomed with open arms. It is instantly assumed ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... probity, truth, duty, honor, purity, uprightness, excellence, integrity, rectitude, virtuousness, faithfulness, justice, righteousness, worth, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... listened to this speech; willingly or not he approved of it, and applauded the good sense of the king, and said:—"What his majesty, whose dominion is eternal, is pleased to remark is the mirror of probity and essence of good policy, for had he been brought up in the society of those vagabonds, and confined to their service, he would have followed their vicious courses. Your servant, however, trusts that he may be instructed to associate with the virtuous, ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... description. There was neither show nor luxury in his home. The family fortune had been left to his father in an embarrassed condition: his father's care and diligence had for the time saved it. The atmosphere that surrounded the young Kosciuszko was that of domestic virtue, strict probity. He had before his eyes the example of the devoted married life of his parents. He went freely and intimately among the peasants on his father's property, and thus learnt the strong love for the people that ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... try me. I am a king, and can only be tried by my peers and by the pope, who is the head of Christendom. I might refuse to plead, refuse to take any part in this assembly, and appeal to the pope, who alone has power to punish kings. But I will waive my rights. I rely upon the honour and probity of the barons of Germany. I have done no man wrong, and would appear as fearlessly before an assembly of peasants as before a gathering of barons. Such faults as I may have, and none are without them, are not such ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... Man of a very handsome Person and Shape, tall and comely; his Eyes were blewish, his Nose long, and his Countenance venerable: He joined a most exemplary Piety and Probity to an eminent Degree of Knowledge and Learning. No Day pass'd over his Head, wherein he employ'd not several Hours in the Exercise of Prayer, and reading of the Scriptures. He wou'd never permit his Picture to ...
— Franco-Gallia • Francis Hotoman
... factory go quietly on, but was always interrupting the daily work with new inventions and contrivances, and was therefore both expensive and unsafe. But the baron, naturally enough, considered his probity and intelligence to be the main point, and valued the theoretical skill of the manager in proportion ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... employs only his own stock in trade, there is no trust; and the credit which he may get from other people, depends, not upon the nature of the trade, but upon their opinion of his fortune, probity and prudence. The different rates of profit, therefore, in the different branches of trade, cannot arise from the different degrees of trust reposed ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... friend of the bank manager. I might go on to give a score of examples showing how innocent rate-payers are fleeced by barefaced robbers, but the catalogue would be only wearisome. Let any man of probity venture to force his way into one of these dens of thieves and see how he will fare! It is a comic thing that the gangs of jobbers consider that they have a prescriptive right to plunder at large, and ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... Coleridge, Wordsworth; the root of the evil had been Shelley, who was mad, and in imitation of whose madness, modern men of genius must many of them be mad also, until it had come to such a pass-that if a gifted man conducted himself throughout life with probity and propriety we instantly began to doubt the value of his gifts. Rossetti evidently thought that in all this I was covertly hitting out at himself, and cut short the conversation with an unequivocal hint that he had no affectations, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... of doors for the best parts of his days and nights, he has manifold weather and seasons in him, and the manners of an animal of probity and virtues unstained. Of our moralists he seems the wholesomest; and the best republican citizen in the world,—always at home, and minding his own affairs. Perhaps a little over-confident sometimes, and stiffly individual, dropping society clean out of his theories, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... administration of justice being, according to the revealed principles, a divine office, was naturally to be confided to persons carefully selected for their intelligence, probity, incorruptibility, and superiority to every human regard; these are therefore invested with a judicial representation of the Divinity on earth, and are enjoined to proceed according to the rules of the strictest justice, without ever deferring either to the pitiable condition of the poor, ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... taking the place of indignation and revenge. At this sight the two men left him. The Inspector was at last convinced, both of the man's probity and of one stern, disconcerting fact: that the real culprit—the man whose guilty fingers had launched the fatal arrow—had been, as Travis said, one of the twenty-two persons who had been moving about for hours not only under his eyes ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... to Nature, to simple and unsophisticated habits of life, or rather to find a way through Nature to a better civilisation, which would restore the natural values of life to their rightful place and would be compatible with truth and virtue, sincerity and probity of character. ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... the Stoics. Zeno was a subtle reasoner, and exceedingly popular. He taught a strict system of morals and exhibited a pleasing picture of moral discipline in his own life. As a man, his character appears deserving of the highest respect. He became exceedingly respected and revered at Athens for the probity and severity of bis life and manners, and consistency thereof with his doctrine. He possesed so large a share of public esteem that the Athenians decreed him a golden crown, and on account of his approved integrity, deposited the keys of their citadel in his hands. Antigouus Gonates, ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... of tragedy and of romances is in a moral union of two superior persons, whose confidence in each other for long years, out of sight, and in sight, and against all appearances, is at last justified by victorious proof of probity to gods and men, causing joyful emotions, tears, and glory,—though there be for heroes this moral union, yet they, too, are as far off as ever from an intellectual union, and the moral union is for comparatively low and external purposes, like the cooeperation of a ship's company, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... inhabitants were sealed over to irremediable wretchedness, without the most distant ray of hope respecting the future. And were it severed from Britain in any other way, the reverse felt in India would be unspeakably great. At present all the learning, the intelligence, the probity, the philanthropy, the weight of character existing in Britain, are brought to bear on India. There is scarcely an individual sustaining a part in the administration of affairs who does not feel the weight of that tribunal formed ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... service, must be sent back; that those who are to be in personal attendance on the rulers must be selected for that duty; that ceremonial etiquette should be the predominant principle; that men noted for probity and adherence to high principle should be rewarded by more than ordinary distinction; that the petitions and complaints of the poor and lowly should be heard and redress granted; that the petitions of temples and shrines should be dealt with on their ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... had been consistent and rapid during the space of 150 years, so now will its downward course be not less marked or swift, until, in the very hour of apparent dissolution, the empire will find safety in the valor and probity of an English officer, Charles George Gordon, and in the ability and resolution of the empress-regents and their two great soldier- statesmen, Li Hung ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... burdens, nor molested by the exactions of their lords, are ever prompt to avenge an injury. Hence arise their distinguished bravery in the defence of their country; hence their readiness to take up arms and to rebel. Nothing so much excites, encourages, and invites the hearts of men to probity as the cheerfulness of liberty; nothing so much dejects and dispirits them as the oppression of servitude. This portion of the kingdom, protected by arms and courage, might be of great use to the prince, ...
— The Description of Wales • Geraldus Cambrensis
... to a mild impudence. If you ask a well-dressed black the way to a house, he may still reply, 'I wonder you dar 'peak me without making compliment!' The true remedy, however, is still wanting, a 'court of summary jurisdiction presided over by men of honour and probity.' [Footnote: Wanderings in West Africa, ii. ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... in my opinion, to keep up simply a level, though it be a high level, of probity and of patriotism. The mere virtue of civic honesty is not sufficient to preserve this assembly from the fate which has overcome so many other assemblies, the products of democratic forces. More than this is required, more than this was given to us by Mr. Gladstone. Those who seek to ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... short, he was an extraordinary and very valuable man, much admired by the gentry; even those of the best quality, and by all others of the more inferior rank, that had any manner of regard for probity, sagacity, diligence, and humility. I say humility, because, though he was so much famed for his knowledge, and might, therefore, have lived very reputably without his trade, yet he continued it to his death, not thinking it to be at all beneath him. Mr. BAGFORD and he used frequently ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... arts of poetry and painting, and had her life been prolonged, she might probably have excelled most of the prosession in both[1]. Mr. Dryden is quite lavish in her praise; and we are assured by other cotemporary writers of good probity, that he has done no violence to truth in the most heightened strains of his panegyric: let him be voucher for her ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... had his spells of doubting the probity of Tomaso's brother; of secretly wondering whether the story of the plane might not be a ruse to lure him away from Sinkhole. But then, how would Tomaso or his brother know that Johnny would care anything about whether an airplane "sat" ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... a college; or through their irregularities and stupidity never made the least improvement while they were there. I have at least[11] forty of the latter sort now in my eye; several of them in this town, whose learning, manners, temperance, probity, good-nature, and politics, are all of a piece. Others of them in the country, oppressing their tenants, tyrannizing over the neighbourhood, cheating the vicar, talking nonsense, and getting drunk at ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... Switzerland to settle in London as merchants, bringing with them a considerable capital. They exported English manufactured goods to the East Indies, Holland, Germany, and Italy; and imported large quantities of raw silk, principally from Spain and Italy, carrying on their business with uniform probity and credit. In course of time Estienne married Magdalen Baudoin, the daughter of a refugee gentleman from Touraine,—the members of refugee families usually intermarrying for several generations after their settlement in England. The issue of this marriage ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... engaged in wrestling with the divine mysteries, and having made oath in the upper spheres not to use the power of the Name till he was forty years old save four, and though outwardly he was clad in coarse garments and broken boots, yet all his fellow-townsmen felt the purity and probity that seemed to emanate from him. He was seen to perform ablutions far oftener than of custom; and in disputes men came to him as umpire, nor was even the losing party ever dissatisfied with his decision. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Bartolozzi. The character and works of this artist are thus described by Fuseli: "The fertility of his invention, the graces of his composition, and the seductive elegance of his forms, were only surpassed by the probity of his character, the simplicity of his manners, and the benevolence of his heart." A few plates were engraved by ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... to the marriage of the clergy he wrote: "If a permission to the clergy to marry can not be granted, may not married men of learning and probity be ordained, according to the custom of the eastern church; or married priests be tolerated for a time, provided they act according to the Catholic and Christian faith? And it may be justly asked ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... it. My Lord, nothing can be learned from such examples, except the danger of being kings, queens, nobles, priests, and children, to be butchered on account of their inheritance. These are things, at which not vice, not crime, not folly, but wisdom, goodness, learning, justice, probity, beneficence, stand aghast. By these examples our reason and our moral sense are not enlightened, but confounded; and there is no refuge for astonished and affrighted virtue, but being annihilated ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... business in Granada, we started for Masaya, where I wished to consult a lawyer, Senor Rafael Blandino, who most deservedly bears a very high character in Nicaragua for probity and ability. We had a difficulty in obtaining horses, and did not get away until noon. The road was a good one, having been made by the late President, Senor Fernando Guzman, who seems to have done what little lay in his power to develop the resources of the country. The ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... wandering as a penalty, symbolized in "The Wandering Jew," "The Flying Dutchman," and the character of Kundry, in "Parsifal," has application in the legend of Peter Rugg. This strange man, who lived in Middle Street, Boston, with his wife and daughter, was esteemed, as a person of probity and good manners except in his swearing fits, for he was subject to outbursts of passion, when he would kick his way through doors instead of opening them, bite tenpenny nails in two, and curse his wig off In the autumn of 1770 he visited Concord, with his little girl, and on the way ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... You cannot hurt me; nothing shall save you." He repeated these words over and over again, and he received from his confidant assurance upon assurance of secrecy and unlimited devotion. And up to the period of Allcraft's return from France, the gentleman had every reason to rely upon the probity and good faith of his associate; nor in fact had he less reason after his return. Were it not that "the thief doth fear each bush an officer," he had no cause whatever to suspect or tremble: his mind, for any actual danger, might have been at rest. But what did he behold? Why, Planner ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... the blood of the world," have very generally appeared to the plain man of goodwill as very defective in the art of living. If their aspirations have been above the standards of their day, their practice has often been below them in such essentially social qualities as probity, faithfulness, consideration for others. Moreover their outlook upon life, intense and inspiring though it be, is often a very partial one. Even so, it does not follow that because a poet or a philosopher is not in every ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... attendant on the foundations of colonies, those difficulties were greatly augmented, in New South Wales, by the character of the first settlers. The offenders who were transported in the past century to America, were sent to communities the bulk of whose population were men of thrift and probity; the children of improvidence were dropped in by driblets amongst the mass of a population already formed, and were absorbed and assimilated as they were dropped in. They were scattered and separated from each other; some acquired habits of honest industry, and all, if not reformed ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne
... goods seized, and if one vessel's cargo escaped out of two or three, it was a profitable trade. The measures of Government were then thought to be so stringent and despotic, that men of principle, of probity, and integrity in all other respects, manifested great obliquity of vision in viewing the traffic in smuggled goods, and felt no compunctious visitings in embarking in that trade. In the better class of houses in the district, hiding holes and places of concealment were always to be found, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... settin' in the Red Light, whilin' away time between bev'rages with argyments, when Enright comes ploddin' along in with the tidin's. Cherokee an' me, by a sing'lar coincidence, is discussin' the topic of 'probity' that a-way, although our loocubrations don't flourish none concernin' ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... statement of the relations between Talent and Probity on the one hand and Government and Society on the other, in an age that considers itself to be progressive. Without this prefatory explanation a recent occurrence in Paris would seem improbable; ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... So far as I know anything of the after fortunes of my college mates, they did honor to their alma mater,—if older and more learned foundations will not grudge our institution that name. As a body, they were distinguished for probity and excellent conduct; some attained eminence. Even that Alexander of Wuertemberg, whom we so lightly esteemed, I afterwards heard spoken of as one of the most estimable young princes of the court he graced. Seven years ago I met at Naples (the first ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... De Monts and likewise to President Jeannin, [73] a man venerable with age, distinguished for his wisdom and probity, and at this time having under his control the finances of the kingdom. They both pronounced it excellent and ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... at my distrusting him. My faith in his probity was, he said with dignity, the one thing he valued in this world. I dismissed him with a little to tide him over the next week, thoroughly determined that the man's good name should be cleared. The crocodile partner must disgorge, and the eyes of my benevolent friend and of Conn must be finally opened ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... not forgotten him; but I have nothing satisfactory to tell you. Mr. Bingley does not know the whole of his history, and is quite ignorant of the circumstances which have principally offended Mr. Darcy; but he will vouch for the good conduct, the probity, and honour of his friend, and is perfectly convinced that Mr. Wickham has deserved much less attention from Mr. Darcy than he has received; and I am sorry to say by his account as well as his sister's, Mr. Wickham is by no means a respectable young ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... substantial confidence of the people you must spend several years of right living among them. And you have no time to waste in building up confidence at your period of life. That is an asset which your whole career of unsuccessful probity should have accumulated for you; and it is dissipated if you remove from among those in whose minds ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... Phanariot family; was a Russian officer; although young, is bald and feeble. His appearance and voice are much against him. He does not so much want talent as ferocity. He possesses personal courage and probity, and may be said to be the only honest man that has figured upon the stage of the Revolution. He does not favour, but has never openly opposed, the party of the captains. He felt he had not the power to do it with success, and therefore showed his good sense in refraining. ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... excess—a barbarous intensity of every passion. The first half of the sixteenth century marks the beginning of the third period. Secularity appears now as gaining a consciousness of its intrinsic worth; it becomes aware that it possesses a value of its own in the morality, rectitude, probity, and activity of man. The consciousness of independent validity is aroused through ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... John Fenwick was a gentleman of good repute, whom he had heard of before now. He had married the Lady Mary Howard, daughter of the Earl of Carlisle, and, though a stanch Jacobite, it was supposed, he was nevertheless looked upon as a man of undoubted probity and honour. What could have been his business, then, with thieves, or at best with the companions of thieves? This was a question which Wilton could no ways solve; and after having teased himself for some time therewith, he at length ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... do to give up in this way. If all she knew of the affair was what she had heard from the people in the street, it might be only gossip, after all, which always exaggerates everything. M. Grandguillot a fugitive; M. Grandguillot a thief; that was monstrous, impossible! A man of such probity, a house liked and respected by all Plassans for more than a century past. Why people thought money safer there than in the Bank ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... modern music: he wrote the text of modern life; the text of manners: he drew the man of England and Europe; the father of the man in America: he drew the man, and described the day, and what is done in it; he read the hearts of men and women, their probity, and their second thought, and wiles; the wiles of innocence, and the transitions by which virtues and vices slide into their contraries: he could divide the mother's part from the father's part in the face of the child, or draw the fine demarcations of freedom and of fate: he knew the laws of repression ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... not dealing with it at second hand, through the perceptions of somebody else. Nature seems to authorize trade, as soon as you see the natural merchant, who appears not so much a private agent as her factor and Minister of Commerce. His natural probity combines with his insight into the fabric of society to put him above tricks, and he communicates to all his own faith that contracts are of no private interpretation. The habit of his mind is a reference ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... mind, chaste as the Nautilus, Spreading her pearly spangles to the sun: The joyous welcome of parental love, The heart-inspiring kiss a sister yields, A brother's greeting, and the cheering smiles Of relatives and friends, and aged domestics, Time-honor'd for their probity and zeal, Whose silvery locks recall to mem'ry's view Some playful scene of earliest childhood, When frolic, mirth, and gambol led the way, Ere reason gave sobriety of thought.- Now bear the busy Cads ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... of opposite parties, and he could say with truth and pleasure that during the late session he was in conference quite as often, if not oftener, with Democrats than Whigs; and he "found in the Democratic party quite as much patriotism, devotion to the Union, honor, and probity as in the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... many titles to respect, who possessed eminent talents both for administration and for debate, who understood the public interest well, and who meant fairly by the country, but who had seen so much perfidy and meanness that he had become skeptical as to the existence of probity. Weary of the cant of patriotism, Walpole had learned to talk a cant of a different kind. Disgusted by that sort of hypocrisy which is at least a homage to virtue, he was too much in the habit of practising the less respectable hypocrisy which ostentatiously displays, and sometimes even ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... we Americans are an unconscionably greedy people, ever hasting to get rich, never satisfied with our gains, and, in the frantic eagerness of accumulation, disregarding alike justice, truth, probity, and moderation. Under this impulse our trade becomes an incessant and hazardous adventure, like the stakes of the gambler upon the turn of the dice, or upon the figures of the sweat-cloth; a feverish impatience for success pushes everything to the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... to her, for his father had been a man of exceptional probity and, without self-flattery, she knew that she herself was the most transparently honest person on earth. As the boy grew older his opportunities for showing this fatal deficiency increased. Whatever she said or did, and however sweetly he accepted her persuasions and punishments, ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... functions, and associated with himself Lamoignon, keeper of the seals, for the execution of this project. Lamoignon was skilled in coups d'etat. He had audacity, and combined with Maupeou's energetic determination a greater degree of consideration and probity. But he made a mistake as to the force of power, and what it was possible to effect in his times. Maupeou had re-established parliament, changing its members; Lamoignon wished to disorganize it. The first of these means, if it had succeeded, would only have produced temporary ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... his lost limb was supplied by a wooden one; and industry, temperance, probity, and zeal, supplied the place of a regiment of legs, when employed to prop up a ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... my strength. If you had to work unwittingly you would resist and resist and resist. I should have to waste my power on you. As it is, you will resist only at first, then you will begin to understand. You will see how we will bring a man down—a man, you understand, with a great name, standing for probity and honour. You will see the nets drawing closer and closer, and you will begin to understand. Then you will cease resisting, that ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... department as expensive as possible. To this Mr. Hastings answers, that "he is convinced by experience it will be better performed"; and yet he immediately after subjoins, "This defect can only be corrected by the probity of the person intrusted with so important a charge; and I am willing to have it understood, as a proof of the confidence I repose in Mr. Fowke, that I have proposed his appointment, in opposition to a general principle, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... age of twenty-four, with two other young men, whose capital like his own was little more than energy, probity, and business knowledge, he founded a firm in London for the sale of Manchester cotton prints on commission. Soon the firm was printing its own goods in Lancashire, and Mr. Cobden, prospering greatly from the first, took up his residence in Manchester, to watch over that end of the business. ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... search of that honey of Hybla, vulgarly called money; neither art, science, learning, nor pleasure can seduce them from its pursuit. This unity of purpose, backed by the spirit of enterprise, and joined with an acuteness and total absence of probity, where interest is concerned, which might set canny Yorkshire at defiance, may well go far towards obtaining ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... of a sluggish and sordid mind not to preserve carefully one's natural beauty; but it is likewise infamous among them to use paint. They all see that no beauty recommends a wife so much to her husband as the probity of her life and her obedience; for as some few are caught and held only by beauty, so all are attracted by the other excellences ...
— Utopia • Thomas More
... charge. But he was set down as an unprincipled liar, and one of whom an example must be made. Forthwith he was condemned to four hours at the post on the charge of fighting and endeavouring to impugn the probity of the German guard, who can ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... did not despise him, that she did not resent his entering her heart again with the intimacy of that look. Her heart ran out to welcome him back; but from the sense of furtiveness she shrank back with her lifetime habit and experience of probity, with the instinctive distaste for stealth engendered only by long and unbroken acquaintance with candor. With a mental action as definite as the physical one of freeing her feet from a quicksand she turned ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... who spoke Dutch fluently and accurately, has, I understood, sold to English merchants whose probity was beyond dispute the proceeds of some of his "firm's" operations. This game went on for a time, the Parisian lady with the false hair being one of the confederates. He disappeared, however, and I am glad to think that for some considerable time society will ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... she was going to sail after him, fold him in her forgiving arms, and bring him back to Jamaica, where she and her uncle would see to it that his past sins were forgiven on account of his irresponsible mind, and where, for the rest of his life, he would tread the paths of peace and probity. In this letter she had not yielded to the earnest entreaty which was really the object and soul of Master Newcombe's epistle. Many kind things she said to so kind a friend, but to his offer to make ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... Time and again he cursed that spirit of braggadocio, that thoughtless lack of moral scruple, which had led him into this predicament. He vowed that he was done with false pretences; henceforth the strictest probity should be his. No more false poses. Praise won by dissimulation and deceit was empty, anyhow, and did he escape this once, henceforth the world should know J. Wallingford Speed for what he was—an average individual, with no uncommon gifts of mind ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... habit of the Commissioners to visit every establishment registered under the act and unfortunately, they are men—I mean of course that, fortunately, they are men of the most absolute probity, but given to over-riding, sometimes, the considered opinion of those in close touch with the cases they are brought in contact with. They would undoubtedly make strict enquiries into the truth of the story that Lord Rochester has just put up, and the ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... of Aquitaine in the time of Charlemagne, Louis made himself esteemed and loved; his justice, his suavity, his probity, and his piety were pleasing to the people, and his weaknesses disappeared under the strong hand of his father. When he became emperor, he began his reign by a reaction against the excesses, real or supposed, of the preceding reign. Charlemagne's morals were far ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... can we trust in these times? There is no faith left among men. I saw Sinbad perish with my own eyes, as did also the passengers on board, and yet you tell me you are that Sinbad. What impudence is this? To look on you, one would take you to be a man of probity, and yet you tell a horrible falsehood, in order to possess yourself of what does not belong to you." "Have patience," replied I; "do me the favour to hear what I have to say." "Very well," said he, "speak, I am ready to hear you." Then ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... was axing me to take vine, that I would vager a stiff glass of viskey, vich you vill ax me to take by and by, that you vouldn't know me on the first occasion of my visit. 'Steel Spring,' said the governor, 'it can't be did;' and ven I pledged my vord as a gentleman and a man of probity, that I vould vrite to him the result, in a strict sense, he shook my 'and, and said I was a honor to the land wot give me birth, and that he 'oped he should never be called upon to part vid me. Ven ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... theologian, the inconsequent theist, calls atheists, let us return to the calumnies which are so profusely showered upon them by the deicolists. According to Abady, in his Treatise on the Truth of the Christian Religion, "an atheist cannot be virtuous: to him virtue is only a chimera; probity no more than a vain scruple; honesty nothing but foolishness;—he knoweth no other law than his interest: where this sentiment prevails, conscience is only a prejudice; the law of nature only an illusion; right no more than an error; benevolence hath no longer any foundation; the bonds of ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... Principles in this Confederacy, their Tributaries, Dependents and Allies: And the more so, as it is neither extant in Print, nor is this Part taken Notice of so fully in the Manuscript History above-mentioned. It was communicated by a Gentleman of good Understanding and Probity; one who is very well skill'd in the Indian Affairs,[2] adopted into one of their Tribes, is of their Council, and their constant Interpreter at the Philadelphia Treaties, to a Friend of his, who sent it to his ...
— The Treaty Held with the Indians of the Six Nations at Philadelphia, in July 1742 • Various
... Some years after, an English ship touching there, the guardians faithfully discharged their trust, and put him on board with the captain, who brought up the boy with care, acting by him as became a man of probity and honor. ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... hardly have chosen an unhappier argument. Mrs. Barraclough's devotion was a byword in the parish. To be treated thus by a totally unknown clergyman was not to be tolerated. Her doubt as to the probity of this person fostered by Jane and Flora took definite shape. She decided to interrogate and, if necessary, expose him without ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... benevolent spider. Wealthy as he was fat, while many men had cursed him, many more had blessed him. His business interests were wide and complex, reached into many fields, and usually came to a good end. Also, to be the accredited agent of Cornelius Houten was in itself a recommendation as to probity and worth greatly to be desired. Rarely did his judgment err; the men who had failed to measure up to his estimate of them ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Privateer marrabisto. Privation senigo. Privilege privilegio. Privily sekrete. Prize premio. Prize sxati. Probable kredinda—ebla. Probability kredebleco, kredindeco, igxebleco. Probation provtempo. Probationer novico. Probe sondi, esplori. Probity honesteco. Problem problemo. Proboscis rostro. Proceed procedi. Proceedings (law) proceso—ado. Proceeding procedo. Procession procesio. Process procedo, rimedo. Proclaim proklami. Procrastinate prokrasti. Procure havigi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... which his great accomplishments could have full scope. He filled that office with eminent ability, to the complete satisfaction of King Ferdinand, and when he died, on February 22, 1512, he left behind a name untarnished, a reputation for probity unsullied. Despite the honors accorded him by the kings of Spain and Portugal, however, and the high positions he occupied, he left no fortune for his heirs. His valuable papers were bequeathed to his nephew, Juan Vespucci, whom he loved like a son; but his widow was left ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... inferiority of the African States to the trading Republics of the Mediterranean was a potent factor in bringing about this satisfactory arrangement; but it is only right to admit the remarkable fairness, moderation, and probity of the African princes in the settlement and maintenance of these treaties. As a general rule, Sicily and the commercial Republics were allied to the rulers of Tunis and Tilims[a]n and Fez by bonds of amity and mutual advantage. One after the other, Pisa, Genoa, Provence, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... that a Man of the least Probity, whilst he is writing in Behalf of Virtue and the Christian Religion, should commit such an immoral Act as to calumniate his Neighbour, and willfully misrepresent him in the most atrocious Manner. If Dion had read The Fable of the Bees, he ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... employed in the elections, which, of course, I personally do not admit, I do not think it would make very much difference in the confidence which the vast majority of the Leaguers repose in their chiefs. Yet we have so insisted upon the probity of our position as opposed to Railroad chicanery, that I believe it advisable to quell this distant suspicion at once; to publish a denial of these rumoured charges would only be to give them too much importance. However, can you not write me a letter, stating exactly how the ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... straits in which China Aster had left his family had, besides apparently dimming the world's regard, likewise seemed to dim its sense of the probity of its deceased head, and though this, as some thought, did not speak well for the world, yet it happened in this case, as in others, that, though the world may for a time seem insensible to that merit which lies under a cloud, yet, sooner ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... by the difference of their moral qualities, to espouse one party from a sense of justice, to oppose another even with indignation when excited by iniquity, are the common indications of probity, and the operations of an animated, upright, and generous spirit. To guard against unjust partialities, and ill grounded antipathies; to maintain that composure of mind, which, without impairing its sensibility or ardour, proceeds in every ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... easy. Drusus soon had given his orders to cabinet-makers and selected the frescoer's designs. It remained to purchase Cornelia's slave-boy. He wanted not merely an attractive serving-lad, but one whose intelligence and probity could be relied upon; and in the dealers' stalls not one of the dark orientals, although all had around their necks tablets with long lists of encomiums, promised conscience or character. Drusus visited, several very choice boys ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... highly respectable agents for Berwick & Co. of Edinburgh, the celebrated brewers of Scotch ale. His position being one of considerable responsibility, he was obliged to find security in the sum of L500, which he obtained from the relative who had always stood his friend. But such was his probity and general good conduct, that his employers cancelled the security, and returned the bond as a mark of their appreciation ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... adept, being able to hold my own and More, in almost every Game that is to be found in Hoyle. And so our card-playing did result, not only to mutual pleasure, but to my especial Profit; for I was very lucky. But I declare that I always played fair; and if any man doubted the strict probity of my proceeding, there was then, as there is now, my Sword ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala |
