"Avoidable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... artisans in many branches of labour had to suffer. Why they had sought to see him he could not very well tell—and certainly if it had been left to Hamilton, whose mind was set on sparing the Dictator all avoidable trouble, and who, moreover, had in his heart of hearts no great belief in remedy by working-men's deputation, the poor men would probably not have been accorded the favour of an interview. But the Dictator insisted on receiving them, and they came; trooped ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... case of poisoning should there be any avoidable delay in obtaining the advice of a physician, and, meanwhile, the friends or bystanders should endeavor to find out exactly what has been taken, so that the treatment adopted may be as prompt and effective ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... overcome violence by means of peaceable coercion, instead of meeting it by the creation of a naval force so strong as to be a factor of consideration in the international situation, led us into an avoidable war. ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... it was a lively, punctual, well-conducted, and pleasant rabbit-warren. Sudden death was avoidable on the part of most of its members, nets, ferrets, gins, and wires being alike forbidden, foxes scarcely ever seen, and even guns a rare and very memorable visitation. The headland staves the southern ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... of his speech and the careless ease with which he took unnecessary and avoidable risks I had a feeling that there was deep design under everything he did. Though I couldn't have proved it if I'd been asked, I felt sure that he was trying my nerve. After all there's no better test of that ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... brief visit to the old country, and Sylvia had, no doubt, bidden him come. It was delightful to picture her welcome, and the evenings they would spend in Muriel Lansing's pretty drawing-room while he told her what he had done and unfolded his plans for the future. He could brook no avoidable delay in reading her message, and, nerving himself for a ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... phrases or clauses for unnecessary sentences. The following series of independent assertions contains avoidable repetitions: "One morning I was riding on the subway to my work. It was always my custom to ride to my work on the subway. This morning I met Harry Blake." The full thought may better be embodied in a single sentence: "One morning, while I was, as usual, riding on ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... one happens to be such; if not, then the feeblest of the two is sacrificed. In their migratory and nomadic life the mother finds it impossible to either carry or care for the two children. The male Hottentot, rather than have any avoidable infanticide in his family, or that his wife should go through and suffer the annoyance and pangs of an unnecessary and unprofitable pregnancy, generously has one testicle removed; this is something that the ordinary civilized ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... is about one third for the house and two thirds for the expense of running it, largely due to dirt and its consequences. Mr. Wells wisely says: "Most dusting and sweeping would be quite avoidable if houses were ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... necessity. The steam locomotive was all too huge and heavy for the high road—it had to be put upon rails. And so clearly linked are steam engines and railways in our minds that, in common language now, the latter implies the former. But indeed it is the result of accidental impediments, of avoidable difficulties that we travel ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... which had existed between the effort of Redmond and his colleagues and the effort of men like Lord Meath. In January Willie Redmond was posted to his battalion, the 6th Royal Irish, at Fermoy, where the 47th Brigade had its headquarters. In his case, as in my own, there had been much avoidable and most undesirable delay; but his presence with the Division was worth an immense deal. There was delay also about his younger namesake, John Redmond's son—who was for a long time refused a commission in the ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... that this is avoidable. It is just as much a mistake to allow water to run away when it might be grinding pulp, as it is to drive sulphur into the air instead of catching and selling it. You pollute the air, you kill the trees, you spend a lot of money, and you waste the ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... that the best defense is attack, and that our chief reliance should be upon keeping ourselves in such fighting trim that we can "eat 'em alive" at any time, there is no sense in running easily avoidable risks, and we should keep away from infection as far as possible. If a child comes to school heavy-eyed, hoarse, and snuffling, the teacher should send him home at once. He will only waste his time attempting to study in ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... and the others served with me on the Murmansk front. The mobile columns there had exactly the same clothing, equipment, and sledging food as we had on the Expedition. No expense was spared to obtain the best of everything for them, and as a result not a single case of avoidable frost-bite ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... CITIZENS in another, and PEOPLE in another; or what was meant by superadding to "all privileges and immunities of free citizens," "all the privileges of trade and commerce," cannot easily be determined. It seems to be a construction scarcely avoidable, however, that those who come under the denomination of FREE INHABITANTS of a State, although not citizens of such State, are entitled, in every other State, to all the privileges of FREE CITIZENS of the latter; that is, to greater privileges than they may be entitled ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... deliver her and everybody else from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness. She felt now that there might well be added to the Litany a fresh petition which should include British communities on the Continent in the list of avoidable evils. ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... to understand things, when they begin to reflect and to plan, they divide the world into the hateful and the delightful, the avoidable and the attainable. And in feeling their way toward what attracts them, or in escaping what they fear, they at first follow passively the lead of instinct: they watch themselves live, or rather sink without reserve into their living; their reactions are as little foreseen and as naturally accepted ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... was not built on those lines. Their business was to keep avoidable shooting off the programme altogether either by themselves or others, and to effect that desirable end they must be self-controlled, disciplined and tactful men. In order to be of that type every man must get thorough groundwork training in the depot division before he goes ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... carefully guarded safety lamp. Yet so culpably reckless of their own and other men's lives are a large number of people everywhere, that in spite of the most stringent and salutary rules, explosions from this cause (and, therefore, easily avoidable) take place constantly to the present day, though far less frequently than before the invention of the ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... Majesty's bottle-holder in that battle with the Finance Nightmares and Imbroglios, when so much had to be subjugated, and drilled into step, in that department. Evidently a long-headed cunning fellow, much of the Grumkow type;—standing very low in Wilhelmina's judgment; and ill-seen, when not avoidable altogether, by the Queen's Majesty. "The man was a poor Country Bailiff's (AMTMANN'S, kind of Tax-manager's) son: from Auditor of a regiment," Papa's own regiment, "he had risen to be Director of Finance, and a Minister of State. His soul was as low as his ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... mistaking a merely temporary infatuation for such a genuine spiritual affinity as will survive the satisfaction of immediate desires and prove the stable basis of a life-companionship. Hasty marriages are a common and avoidable cause of subsequent unhappiness. It is obviously undesirable that couples should enter upon matrimony until there has been a sufficiently prolonged and intimate acquaintance to enable them to become reasonably ...
— Religious Reality • A.E.J. Rawlinson
... thinks rather kindlily of The Queen Pedauque as Dumas would have equipped it... Yes, in reading here, it is the most facile and least avoidable of mental exercises to prefigure how excellently Dumas would have contrived this book,—somewhat as in the reading of Mr. Joseph Conrad's novels a many of us are haunted by the sense that the Conrad "story" ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... suggestion. It is the suggestion of the most sensible, practical, hard-headed men who have walked the earth. I only give it you at second-hand. Try it. Get your mind in hand. And see how the process cures half the evils of life—especially worry, that miserable, avoidable, shameful disease—worry! ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... depends on his discretion, and on the precautions he takes to avoid the misfortunes of which he has had warning. The line of argument holds good in all cases except when the misfortunes are predicted in a horoscope; for either the ills predicted are avoidable, in which case the horoscope is a useless piece of folly, or else the horoscope is the interpreter of destiny, in which case all the precautions in the world are of no avail. The Chevalier Farsetti was therefore a fool to imagine he had proved anything at all. He would have proved a good deal for ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... to having a remedy proposed, as if the proposer were creating a mischief instead of offering relief from one. People are so inured to the evils that they feel as if it were unreasonable, if not wrong, to complain of them. Yet, avoidable or not, he must be a purblind lover of liberty on whose mind they do not weigh; who would not rejoice at the discovery that they could be dispensed with. Now, nothing is more certain than that the virtual blotting out of the minority is no necessary or natural ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... instances of "a dead policeman" as a Non-aryan equivalent for the abstract term "death" which the inquirer wanted; of the rejoinder of "what do you want?" for the repeated outstretching of the "middle finger," a special term for which was sought, and numerous other mistakes, are often perfectly avoidable, and it was therefore desirable that the traveller, armed with an inexhaustible patience, should not content himself with a collection of words, but also add the sentences in which they occur, and, if possible, also collect fables, ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... he the right to redress the wrong he had inflicted upon himself? Feeble always, always a drifter, a good deal of a coward in his way of shrinking from avoidable pain, but never deliberately cruel or selfish. And now, was he to do a deliberately cruel and selfish thing? Or was as much mischief as might well be done ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... each, the Koro[vs]e['c] party met with comparative disaster, and the Star[vc]evic group was overwhelmed. With about fifty members apiece, the Communist and the Radi['c] parties gave expression, roughly speaking, to the discontent produced by the unsettled conditions—unavoidable and avoidable—of the new State's first two years. The Moslems came back with nearly thirty members, and a healthy phenomenon for a country in which the peasant so largely predominates was the success, apart from the Radi['c] Peasant party, of the Agrarians with some thirty ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... Ace figures a special Misfortune, Unhappiness, or Hurt to one's life, by no means avoidable, and perhaps not discernible at once. Influenced by the King of its like suit, sudden: by the Queen, long continuing ere complete; by the Knave, Fortune through Persons; by the ten, through concurrence of sundry events. By any other spade, sudden. By a ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... these rules and all avoidable disease will be annihilated. On the other hand, where hygienic and sanitary science is not enforced, filth, decay and putrifying matter is sure to accumulate. In this we have suitable material for the propagation ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... the Mediterranean while Australasian troops were perpetually passing westwards through the Mediterranean. Military forces belonging to the one belligerent Empire were, in fact, crossing each other at sea. This involved an avoidable absorption of ship-tonnage, it threw an avoidable strain upon the naval forces of the Entente, and it imposed an avoidable period of inaction upon the troops concerned. Look upon the Anzacs simply as counters ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... misunderstanding rises between the players. Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation as a railway aids travelling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space. These forms very soon become fixed, and a fine sense of propriety is cultivated with the more heed that it becomes a badge of social and civil distinctions. Thus grows up Fashion, an equivocal ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... get larger and finer ones, or are forced, in some way or other, to live where we do not choose, and in continual expectation of changing our place of abode. In the present state of society, this is in a great measure unavoidable; but let us remember it is an evil; and that so far as it is avoidable, it becomes our duty to check the impulse. It is not for me to lead you at present into any consideration of a matter so closely touching your private interests and feelings; but it surely is a subject for serious thought, whether it might not ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... court decisions in all parts of the world have now held that the water company is legally responsible for all avoidable pollution of public water-supplies, and nine ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... No, Rufio, no. Eat, my son. Eat. (He takes another turn, Rufio chewing dates meanwhile.) The Egyptians cannot be such fools as not to storm the barricade and swoop down on us here before it is finished. It is the first time I have ever run an avoidable risk. I should ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... views and intentions of His Excellency the Governor-General in Council respecting Abdur Rahman will enable you to represent them with adequate accuracy in your reply to the Sirdar's friendly overtures, and it will now be your duty to convey to Abdur Rahman, without any avoidable delay, the answer of the Government of India to the letter and message received from him. His Excellency feels assured that you will give full expression to the spirit of candour and goodwill in which these communications have been ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... it is important to keep to certain simple rules, of which these are the chief:—(1) Never discharge below a potential difference of 1.85 (or in rapid discharge, 1.8) volt. (2) Never leave the cells discharged, if it be avoidable. (3) Give the cells a special full charging once a month. (4) Make a periodic examination of each cell, determining its E.M.F., density of acid, the condition of its plates and freedom from growth. Any incipient ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... our whole world. As a matter of fact, very much of it is read and learnt in the schools.... Next to the intellectual qualification comes the physical, the man must be in sound health, free from certain foul, avoidable, and demoralising diseases, and in good training. We reject men who are fat, or thin and flabby, or whose nerves are shaky—we refer them back to training. And finally the man or woman must be ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... account of the reasons I had to doubt of innate principles. And since the arguments which are against them do, some of them, rise from common received opinions, I have been forced to take several things for granted; which is hardly avoidable to any one, whose task is to show the falsehood or improbability of any tenet;—it happening in controversial discourses as it does in assaulting of towns; where, if the ground be but firm whereon ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... somewhat eccentric humanitarianism, possibly also the advance of democracy—though it is at times somewhat too readily assumed that democracies must of necessity be peaceful—have all contributed to create a public opinion which holds that to engage in an avoidable war is the worst of political crimes. This feeling has found expression in the more ready recourse which, as compared to former times, is now made to arbitration in order to settle international disputes. Nevertheless, so long as human ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... so nobly, that I am satisfied my next interview with him must draw them forth from me. Justice, satisfaction in his exertions, and gratitude for their spirited willingness, all call upon me to give him that poor return. The danger of it, however, now, is too great to be tried, if avoidable : and I had far rather avoid seeing him, than either gratify myself by expressing my sense of his kindness, or unjustly withhold from him what I think of ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... my opinion that in cases like ours, where a set of men are deputed to examine countries, time spent on rivers is absolutely thrown away. Of course in many instances such must be the case, but where it is avoidable, marching, and especially returning by a different route, should be adopted. Rangagurrah, be it known, is only two days' march from Suddiyah in a direct line, yet we have been a month proceeding by the circuitous line of rivers ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... have come to the conclusion that more than half the disease which embitters life is due to avoidable errors in diet, ... and that more mischief, in the form of actual disease, of impaired vigor, and of shortened life, accrues to civilized man from erroneous habits of eating than from the habitual use of alcoholic drink, considerable as I know that ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... considering that the manifest ordination and progress of things demand that such thoughts be encountered. The question still returns: Why do they seek amusement in sufferings which are unnecessary and avoidable? and till they honestly and thoroughly answer this question, they must be content to be looked upon as disingenuous reasoners, who are determined to retain a ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... her very ignorant in the regions of what is commonly called education, but very quick in understanding where human relation came in. A point in construction or composition she would forget immediately; but once shown a possibility of misunderstanding avoidable by a certain arrangement, Amy would recall the fact the moment she made again the mistake. Her teachableness, coming largely of her trustfulness, was indeed a remarkable point in her character. It was partly through this that Corney gained his influence over her: superior knowledge was to her a sign ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... part, were aware of their opportunity and eager for a final recognition as an institution in industry. As yet uncertainty prevailed as to whether enough had survived of the War-time spirit of give and take to make a struggle avoidable, or whether the issue must be solved by a bitter ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... in the night-time, and by torchlight. Cicero, in one of his letters, speaks of passing through the towns of Italy by night, as a serviceable scheme for some political purpose, either of avoiding too much to publish his motions, or of evading the necessity (else perhaps not avoidable), of drawing out the party sentiments of the magistrates in the circumstances of honor or neglect with which they might choose to receive him. His words, however, imply that the practice was by no means an uncommon one. And, indeed, from ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... transmitted to the offspring of the person suffering from these diseases. If there are such diseases—and that is a question the medical profession should be able to decide—it is evident that to incur parentage while one suffers from one of them or to transmit them in any avoidable way, is a cruel, disastrous and abominable act. If such a thing is possible it seems to me that in view of the guiding principle laid down in these papers it might well be put at the nadir of crime, and I doubt if any step the State might take to deter and punish the offender, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... of 1862 bears the evidence of a conflict of purposes in almost every one of its sections. It is evident, for example, that, with the tide of civil war beating fiercely around the national capital, Congress was still under the spell of the past, and severely distrustful of any avoidable increase of public obligations. Bonds were loaned to the enterprise at the rate of sixteen thousand dollars per mile for the easy work, with treble aid for the mountain division and double for the Salt Lake Valley; but this loan was made ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... despite the Bank Holidays Act, many shops are open, chiefly those devoted to the sale of articles eatable, drinkable, and avoidable; these last being in the shape of chemists' shops, and shops for Christmas presents—to be shunned by miserly old bachelors. Let us turn into the British Museum and see sensible, decorous Boxing-day there. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... years ago caused. Boston's fine system of medical inspection in the schools is the outcome of a diphtheria scare. Smallpox is a splendid stimulator of vaccination; so much so that some of the country's leading sanitarians now advocate the abolition of pest-houses for this avoidable ailment, and dependence upon the vaccine ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... tried to discover the cause why his paternal ancestor had left the Green Island, or his maternal ancestor the land of dikes and windmills; it was sufficient that, out of resentment against conditions either avoidable or unavoidable, each had resolved to endure the ordeal of making his way in a land of strangers. Austin Selwyn bore the marks of that inheritance no less clearly than Malcolm Durwent bore the marks of his. In his features there was a certain repose, as ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... for our weakness and our frailty, we ought not to expect Him to indulge us in avoidable and needless errors. We made a mistake. Very well. We knew no better than to make it. But now that we do know better, we have no business repeating it. And right along here comes a great expanse of territory which holiness people need to cover. Here ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... the fault of the engraver,—very pardonable; scarcely avoidable,—however fatal. Fault mainly of humility. But what has your fault been, gentlemen? what the patrons' fault, who have permitted so wide waste of admirable labor, so pathetic a uselessness of obedient genius? It was yours to have directed, yours to ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... system. Means of prevention in those cases are therefore to be directed to the mother, in the manner indicated in treating of pregnancy. But other causes of death begin to act only after birth, and are to a greater or less extent avoidable. These are largely traceable to ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... come to the great and piteous tragedy of the refugee camps, the mortality, and especially the mortality among the children. That is deplorable—more deplorable even than the infant mortality in Mafeking, Ladysmith, and Kimberley. But is it avoidable? Or is it one of those misfortunes, like that enteric outbreak which swept away so many British soldiers, which is beyond our present sanitary science and can only be endured with sad resignation? The nature of the disease which is mainly ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sentimental grounds, sometimes on the more sordid calculation that bachelor life is less comfortable and more expensive, since a wife pays for her status with domestic service as well as with the other services expected of her. Now that children are avoidable, this calculation is becoming more common and conscious than it was: a result which is regarded as "a steady ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... anecdotes of the living. He had no iniquities in the human order to assail, since he believes that the order is just and that it rarely hurts any one who does not deserve to be hurt by reason of some avoidable imbecility. He made no specialty of scandal; he did not inquire curiously into the byways of sex; he let pathology alone. He appears in the book to be—as he is in the flesh—a wise old man letting his memory run through the town and recalling bits of decent, illuminating ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... announced intention of the British Government "to exercise their belligerent rights with every possible consideration for the interest of neutrals," and their intention of "removing all causes of avoidable delay in dealing with American cargoes," and of causing "the least possible amount of inconvenience to persons engaged in legitimate trade," as well as their "assurance to the United States Government ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... that, when he fastened her dropping bracelet, biting his lip and looking down, he held the wrist an instant with a clasp that left its whitened pressure there, she remembered, too, that he never spoke to her, were it avoidable, that he failed in small politenesses of the footstool or the fan, and that, if once he had looked at her in an instant's intentness of singular expression, and let a smile well up and flood his eyes and lips and face, in a heart-beat it ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... between men, judging it convenient and behoveful; there being no impossibility in nature considered by itself, but that man might have lived without any public regiment, Hooker's Eccl. Pol. lib. i. sect. 10.) Sec. 75. Thus it was easy, and almost natural for children, by a tacit, and scarce avoidable consent, to make way for the father's authority and government. They had been accustomed in their childhood to follow his direction, and to refer their little differences to him, and when they were men, who fitter to rule them? Their little ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... men's pockets, and to other still viler and far fataler forms of scoundrelism be not resorted to in England, except in cases of the very last extremity. When some new gunpowder plot may be in the wind, some double-dyed high treason, or imminent national wreck not avoidable otherwise, then let us open letters—not ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... is avoidable or even undesirable; but it is so common that it has a very important effect ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... without allowing them to bring unmerited loss to those sections of the community whose labor is no longer wanted in the old form. The instinctive conservatism of mankind is sure to make all processes of production change more slowly than they should. It is a pity to add to this by the avoidable conservatism which is forced upon organized labor at present through the unjust ...
— Political Ideals • Bertrand Russell
... later. I hold myself responsible for the safe conduct of all who travel in my scows. But it would have been at the expense of much time and labour, and, very possibly, of human life as well—an incident regrettable always, but not always avoidable." ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... remembered, that the good of the bounty is certain, and evil avoidable; that by the hope of exportation corn will be increased, and that this increase may ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... confirmed by their own reflexion. Shame is an invaluable protection to men, as a restraining feeling. But the objects to which it properly attaches are wrong-doing, unkindness, discourtesy, to others, and, as regards ourselves, ignorance, imprudence, intemperance, impurity, and avoidable defects or misfortunes. While it confines itself to objects such as these, it is one of the sternest and, at the same time, most effective guardians of virtue and self-respect. But, as soon as a man begins to care about ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... aggrieved and much surprised at the least interference. But, most important of all, he regarded this state of affairs as normal, certain, and permanent, except in the direction of further improvement, and any deviation from it as aberrant, scandalous, and avoidable. The projects and politics of militarism and imperialism, of racial and cultural rivalries, of monopolies, restrictions, and exclusion, which were to play the serpent to this paradise, were little more than the amusements of his daily newspaper, ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... is probably much less detached than is the case with other volumes in this series. But the difference was scarcely avoidable. The writer was not expounding a religious system which has no relation to his own life. On the contrary, the writer is himself a Jew, and thus is deeply concerned personally in the matters ...
— Judaism • Israel Abrahams
... academical distinction, who turns his attention to the craft, and without any adequate practical training in it, which alone could teach its right principles, makes, and in the nature of things is bound to make, great mistakes—mistakes easily avoidable. No such thing can possibly be right. Raphael himself designed for tapestry, and the cartoons are priceless, but the tapestry a ghastly failure. It could not have been otherwise under the conditions. Executant separated from designer by all the leagues ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... are essential to all speech, also concepts of class IV. Concepts II and III are both common, but not essential; particularly group III, which represents, in effect, a psychological and formal confusion of types II and IV or of types I and IV, is an avoidable class of concepts. Logically there is an impassable gulf between I and IV, but the illogical, metaphorical genius of speech has wilfully spanned the gulf and set up a continuous gamut of concepts ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... Christ could have avoided future evils by the power of His Godhead, yet they were unavoidable, or not easily avoidable by the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... for Babbage, the survey work was generally regarded as but of secondary importance, and the public looked eagerly forward to hearing of the discovery of new pasture lands, especially as the outfit had been on a most liberal scale. Considerable delay (whether avoidable or not, it is scarcely worth while to discuss) happened during the outset of this expedition; for, although the party was reported ready on the 11th February, the end of August found Babbage back in Port Augusta having passed the intervening months in surveying ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... itself full of buttercups in spring, and blackberries in autumn. But my chief remaining impressions of those days are attached to Hunter Street. My mother's general principles of first treatment were, to guard me with steady watchfulness from all avoidable pain or danger, and, for the rest, to let me amuse myself as I liked, provided I was neither fretful or troublesome. But the law was, that I should find my own amusement. No toys of any kind were at first allowed, and the pity of my Croydon aunt for my monastic poverty ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... virile Teutonic spirit does not suffer things to reach this ultimate pass without stubborn resistance, and this is one reason why shyness is often so conspicuous, seeming deliberately to court an avoidable confusion. Over and over again it forces the recalcitrant body back into the arena, preferring repeated humiliation to a pusillanimous surrender. People often wonder at the recklessness with which the shy expose themselves to disaster, ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... succeeded in stealing the image of Christ crucified for the figure-head of his Salvationist vessel, with its Adam posing as the natural man, its doctrine of original sin, and its damnation avoidable only by faith in the sacrifice of the cross. In fact, no sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... on this truth, because it is of great practical moment that we should bear in mind to how very large an extent the child lives only in the present; because it follows from it that to keep the sick child happy; to remove from it all avoidable causes of alarm, of suffering, of discomfort; to avoid, as far as may be, any direct struggle with its waywardness; and even if death seems likely to occur, to look at it from a child's point of view—not from that which our larger understanding of good and evil suggests ...
— The Mother's Manual of Children's Diseases • Charles West, M.D.
... education which the reader may have previously entertained. Universal education, we have seen, constitutes the most effectual and the only sure means of securing to individuals and communities, to states and nations, exemption from all avoidable evils of whatever kind, and the possession of a competency of this world's goods, with the ability and disposition so to enjoy them as most to augment human happiness. Yes, education, and nothing short of it, will dissipate the evils of ignorance; it will greatly ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... declares as I write that the standard of English farming could be raised 50 per cent. Hall and Voelcker have estimated that 20 million tons of farmyard manure made in the United Kingdom is wasted through avoidable causes. ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... yesterday morning," said Wemmick, "being in a certain place where I once took you,—even between you and me, it's as well not to mention names when avoidable—" ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... this kind, having encouraged me in a somewhat hardy resolution I had formed, Faraday backed his encouragement by an illustration drawn from his own life. The subject will interest you, and it is so sure to be talked about in the world, that no avoidable harm can rise ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... tenderness and forbearance. I have never seen them molested, though I have noticed them in the indulgence of many eccentricities, and happened once even to see one of them sit down in a lady's lap. But that was on the night of Saint Patrick's day. Generally all avoidable indecorums are rare in the horse-cars, though during the late forenoon and early afternoon, in the period of lighter travel, I have found curious figures there:—among others, two old women, in ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... been redeemed at a less price; but still the war taught a lesson, which, if avoidable at that instant, was certainly blamable; but it had its use in enforcing on other nations the conviction that England washed out insult with retribution, and for every drop of blood wantonly spilt demanded an ocean in return. Perhaps you will say this ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... and with a larger maturity of mind. The money difficulties on which he dwelt were also, it is now to be admitted, unquestionable. Beyond his own domestic expenses necessarily increasing, there were many, never-satisfied, constantly-recurring claims from family quarters, not the more easily avoidable because unreasonable and unjust; and it was after describing to me one such with great bitterness, a few days following the letter last quoted, that he thus replied on the following day (19th of November) to ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... why so many varieties of wines are always served on American tables, and why the sparkling champagne is never avoidable? Wealthy families will spare neither pains nor expense to spread most sumptuous dinners, and it has been reported that the cost of an entertainment given by one rich lady amounted to twenty thousand pounds sterling, although, as I have ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... indiscretion, so uncharacteristic, was due to the agitation of a surprised moment, for Duke's experience had inclined him to a peaceful pessimism, and he had no ambition for hazardous undertakings of any sort. He was given to musing but not to avoidable action, and he seemed habitually to hope for something that he was pretty sure would not happen. Even in his sleep, this gave him an ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... the whole, improbable. A mere universal disgust with war is no more likely to end war than the universal dislike for dying has ended death. And though war, unlike dying, seems to be an avoidable fate, it does not follow that its present extreme unpopularity will end it unless people not only desire but see to the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... incumbents neglected public duty to do political work and especially in Southern States, they frequently were not only inordinately active in questionable political work, but sought to do party service by secret and sinister manipulation of colored votes, and by other practices inviting avoidable and dangerous collisions between the white ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... they studied safety first. They knew that the business they had embarked on was of necessity a long and dangerous one; that they were bound to encounter many dangers, and that each of them had only one life. They took no avoidable risks. Gliding seemed to them, at first, to have been discredited by the deaths of Lilienthal and Pilcher, so they planned to try their machine by tethering it with a rope and letting it float a few feet from the ground, while they practised manipulation. The wind proved to be not strong ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... young lady of about twenty, applied a mercurial lotion to her face, which was covered with very small red points; which seemed to have been not acquired by any known or avoidable means; she was seized with inflammation of her liver, and after repeated bleeding and cathartics recovered, and in a few weeks the ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... be any bliss among mortal men, without labour it is not made manifest: it may be that God will accomplish it even to-day, yet the thing ordained is not avoidable: yea, there shall be a time that shall lay hold on a man unaware, and shall give him one thing beyond his hope, but another ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... without it," I do not offer you a genuine option, for it is not forced. You can easily avoid it by not going out at all. Similarly, if I say, "Either love me or hate me," "Either call my theory true or call it false," your option is avoidable. You may remain indifferent to me, neither loving nor hating, and you may decline to offer any judgment as to my theory. But if I say, "Either accept this truth or go without it," I put on you a forced option, for there is no standing place outside of the alternative. Every dilemma based ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... great gate of Bartram-Haugh it was dark. Old Crowl, who kept the gate, I heard enjoining the postilion to make no avoidable noise at the hall-door, for the odd but startling reason that he believed my uncle 'would be dead ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... life. Deaths of mothers in childbirth, leaving older children without suitable protection and care, once thought events to which to be resigned, however sad and pitiable, are now seen to be preventable calamities for which society is to blame. Avoidable cripplement and invalidism of workmen, once considered either their own fault or unexplained misfortune, are now listed as cause for receipt of sickness and accident benefits under Workmen's Compensation Laws. Premature old age, due to overwork and ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... stirs his sugar in his coffee, will complacently absorb all the news of the day, so many hundred thousand men killed, wounded, or diseased in the course of the Balkan campaigns, so much ugly and hopeless misery all over the earth, and all avoidable, all caused, in the last analysis, by the incompetence, obstinacy, blindness, or greed of some highly placed official whose death at an earlier stage would have made for ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... too, we had as yet not erected any system, our Government itself being not yet erected. Innovation then was unavoidable on our part, if it be innovation to establish a system. We did it on fair and general ground, on ground favorable to Spain; but they had a system, and therefore innovation was avoidable ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... Virginia, where they removed from Baltimore), the vindictive rigour to political opponents, the neglect of Washington's army, and the cabals against Washington's powers, combined to create disgust, with other less avoidable causes, as the growing depreciation of the paper-money, the ruinous loss of trade, and the augmented burdens of the war. Is the truth of this picture denied? Hear then, as witnesses, the members of Congress ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... have, however, so uniformly shown a disposition to cultivate relations of amity with that Empire that it is hoped the unequivocal tokens of the same spirit toward us which an adjustment of the affairs referred to would afford will be given without further avoidable delay. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson |
