"Censurable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the convention with the Republic of New Granada signed at Washington on the 10th of September, 1857, has been long delayed from accidental causes for which neither party is censurable. These ratifications were duly exchanged in this city on the 5th of November last. Thus has a controversy been amicably terminated which had become so serious at the period of my inauguration as to require me, on the 17th of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... laws against sedition, calling for new and sharper laws against sedition, writing democratic dramas, writing Laureate odes panegyrising Marten, panegyrising Laud, consistent in nothing but an intolerance which in any person would be censurable, but which is altogether unpardonable in men who, by their own confession, have had such ample experience of their own fallibility. We readily concede to some of these persons the praise of eloquence and poetical invention; nor are we by any means disposed, even where ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Was it perhaps a new idea for people of his class to try to reestablish their fortune by means of matrimony? How about the dukes and high born princes who sought gold in America, giving their hand to daughters of millionaires of origin more censurable ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... probability have been called by its right name, and incurred the penalty of the gallows—as piracy. Ought it then to be deemed less criminal because transpiring on the free soil of the American Republic? I think not. Nor was it less censurable on ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... Jessup announced that, after due consideration, he was of opinion the conduct of Pease was so censurable that the interference of Hiram was very proper, if ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... is not so great as I at first supposed," said the nun. "You are pardonable for receiving the man, who, with your father's consent, is in time to become your husband; but, nevertheless, in meeting him within the convent grounds you are censurable for lack of discipline, and also for conniving at a breach of our rule which excludes all male ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... with a really perverted will, so long or so often as the higher perception is closed against appeal. The imposing of other physical punishment, e.g. that of depriving the pupil of food, partakes of cruelty. The view which sees in the rod the panacea for all the teacher's embarrassments is censurable, but equally undesirable is the false sentimentality which assumes that the dignity of humanity is affected by a blow given to a child, and confounds self-conscious humanity with child-humanity, to which a blow is the most natural form of reaction, in which all other forms of influence ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... United States; and for long months, ay, for more than a year, sir. I have resisted, with all my efforts and all my personal influence, the approach of that crisis which is now upon us and before us. The President has clone many, very many, censurable acts: but I could not, on my conscience. say that he should be holden to answer upon a charge of "high crimes and misdemeanors" until something could be made tangible whereby ha had brought himself in open conflict with the Constitution and laws ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... largely upon the HISTORY and SYMPTOMS of the Bibliomania, it now remains, according to the original plan, to say a few words upon the PROBABLE MEANS OF ITS CURE. And, indeed, I am driven to this view of the subject from every laudable motive; for it would be highly censurable to leave any reflecting mind impressed with melancholy emotions concerning the misery and mortality that have been occasioned by the abuse of those pursuits, to which the most soothing and important considerations ought to ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... obtain possession of a few rich anecdotes of the Paphians and their paramours." "I have already enough of the latter," said I, "to fill a dozen albums, without descending to the meanness of becoming a listener. Amorous follies are the least censurable of the sins of men, when they are confined to professed courtezans. The heartless conduct of the systematic seducer demands indignation; but the trifling peccadillos of the sons of fortune and the stars of fashion may be passed by, without any serious personal exposure, since ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... had full leisure to enjoy these and similar high-souled thoughts, fostered by that wild spirit of chivalry, which, amid its most extravagant and fantastic flights, was still pure from all selfish alloy—generous, devoted, and perhaps only thus far censurable, that it proposed objects and courses of action inconsistent with the frailties and imperfections of man. All nature around him slept in calm moon-shine or in deep shadow. The long rows of tents and pavilions, glimmering ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... and oligarchical haughtiness which Marcius, on the other hand, displayed in his, were the abhorrence of the Roman populace. Neither of these courses can be called commendable; but a man who ingratiates himself by indulgence and flattery, is hardly so censurable as one who, to avoid the appearance of flattering, insults. To seek power by servility to the people is a disgrace, but to maintain it by terror, violence, and oppression, is not a disgrace only, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... as possessing one of the happiest tempers and disposition, and give her the name of never having done a censurable ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... not be a 'desecration of the Sabbath' by the municipal authorities themselves, but they are assuredly responsible for its profanation. Appointed to guard the public morals, they are assuredly censurable if licentiousness is suffered to run its wild career unnoticed and unchecked. We do not ask to be believed. We would prefer to have skeptical rather than credulous readers. We should prefer that all would arise from the perusal of this article in doubt, and determine to examine for themselves. We ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... 30th of April, two days would have sufficed to send an account of it, and it might have arrived along with the plan which it affected. If, therefore, such a change was in agitation before the sailing of the ships, and yet was concealed when it might have been communicated, the concealment is censurable. It is not improbable that some change of the kind was made or meditated before the sailing of the ships for Europe: for it is hardly to be imagined that reasons wholly unlooked-for should appear for ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... persons who received the stock would be held totally innocent. That was the judgment of the House of Representatives which acquitted the members who had received the stock, but held Ames, who had conducted the transaction, censurable. A large number of the members voted for his expulsion. Ames was a successful business man. He was regarded by his neighbors as a man of integrity. He was generous and public spirited. But he and his associates in the Union Pacific Railroad seemed, in this matter, to be ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... and I think, that, when you have once distinctly informed them that you do not design to inspect New York, they ought to see plainly that you cannot change your whole plan of operations out of gratitude to them, and that the part of true politeness is to withdraw. But they even go beyond a censurable urgency; for an old gentleman and lady, evidently unaccustomed to travelling, had given themselves in charge of a driver, who placed them in his coach, leaving the door open while he went back seeking whom he might devour. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... wood-carving. On the contrary, the same laws govern all manner of sculpturesque composition—scale or material making no difference whatever. A sculptured marble frieze or a carved ivory snuff-box may be equally censurable as being either so bare that they verge on baldness and want of interest, or so elaborate that they look like layers ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... First. His most celebrated work is, a Treatise on the Knowledge and Love of God, in five volumes,—a noble effusion of the sublimest piety. The only work by which he is known in this country is, his Life of the Baron de Renty: our author esteemed it much, but thought it censurable for mentioning, in terms of commendation, the mode in which the baron, to save his honor, indirectly put himself in the way of fighting ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... confine myself to specific instances, I choose rather those on which the evidence is not open to question; and which prove against More, not the zealous execution of a cruel law, for which we may not fairly hold him responsible, but a disregard, in the highest degree censurable, of his obligations as ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... at Joan's naive way of referring to her advice as if it had been a valuable present to a hostile leader who was saved by it from making a censurable blunder of omission, and then he went on to admire how ingeniously she had deceived that man and yet had not told him anything that was not the truth. This troubled ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... sins have been poured. This is an artistic as well as ethical error. As Porson finely said to Rogers, "In drawing a villain, we should always furnish him with something that may seem to justify him to himself"; and Schiller, in his aesthetic writings, lays down the same rule. Yet this censurable habit does not seem to proceed from anything cynical in the author's own nature, but rather from inexperience, and from a personal directness which moves only in straight lines. It seems as if she were so single-minded in her good intents as to assume all bad ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... you marvel that to-day, in Ireland, as in every century of all those through which I have traced this state of things, the people and the law scowl upon each other? Gentlemen, do not misunderstand the purport of my argument. It is not for the purpose—it would be censurable—of merely opening the wounds of the past that I have gone back upon history somewhat farther than the solicitor-general found it advantageous to go. I have done it to demonstrate that there is a truer reason ...
— The Wearing of the Green • A.M. Sullivan
... again, all that belong to the altered system of chiaroscuro, and it is evident that we must not be surprised at finding many deficiencies or faults in such works, especially in the earlier of them, nor even suffer ourselves to be withdrawn by the pursuit of what seems censurable from our devotion to ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... hopes painful as doubts,—little did he think what a brave, loving spirit was hid under the silken vesture of Amelie de Repentigny, and how hard was her struggle to conceal from his eyes those tender regards, which, with over-delicacy, she accounted censurable because ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... sort of thing one repeated to Aunt Kate. It was, like much of Annie's conversation, so daring as to be a little shocking. But Annie had so much manner, such a pleasant, assured voice, that somehow Norma never found it censurable ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... see them myself, eclipsed the glories even of the lottery puffs. But alas! the publication of the very first number was delayed beyond the day announced for its appearance. In the second number an essay against fast days, with a most censurable application of a text from Isaiah for its motto, lost me near five hundred of my subscribers at one blow. In the two following numbers I made enemies of all my Jacobin and democratic patrons; for, disgusted by their infidelity, and their adoption of French morals with French psilosophy; ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... in the first six years of their wedded life made of that eagerness to accumulate riches almost a censurable ambition. Dona Pia was comely, strong, and healthy, yet it was in vain that she offered novenas and at the advice of the devout women of San Diego made a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Kaysaysay [40] in Taal, distributed alms to the poor, and danced at midday in May in the procession of the Virgin ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... of the most fearful injustice justice is best perceived. When the hour shall have come for settling accounts—it will not be long delayed—we shall have forgotten much of what we have suffered and a censurable pity will creep over ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... hardly too fanciful—on seeing its covering slide away, its switches swinging, its turn-tables revolving, its drawbridges opening—to declare that such a road is an animal—an animal proving its nature, according to Aristotle, by the power to move itself. Nor is it at all censurable to ask of a road like this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... personal detraction, and the violent measures that are turned upon this body of men, who, however they may err in judgment or in spirit, are among the most exemplary and benevolent in the land? If Abolitionists are censurable for taking measures that exasperate rather than convince and persuade, are not their opponents, who take exactly the same measures to exasperate Abolitionists and their friends, as much to blame? If Abolitionism prospers by the abuse of its advocates, ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... But never were they regarded in the same light, or treated in the same spirit, as the Separatists. To object to the vestments and the ceremonies of the church, as the livery of Antichrist, was held to be extremely censurable and worthy of punishment; but to separate from the church altogether, and renounce all ecclesiastical allegiance, was an unpardonable offence. The Nonconformists generally agreed in this latter judgment, and frequently compounded for their own sins of omission by ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... Unless we can show, as is no doubt attempted, that the set of opinions that happen to be consecrated at any one time, whether right or wrong, were essential to the existence of society,—then the attempt to improve upon them was truly meritorious, instead of being censurable. If the good of society as a whole is not plainly implicated, there remains only the interest of the place-holders under the existing system, as opposed to the interest of the mass of the people, who are, one and all, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... whose names I omit to mention; yet justified by recollection of the insults which the ignorant, the incapable, and the presumptuous, have heaped upon these and my other writings, I may be permitted to anticipate the judgment of posterity upon myself, I shall declare (censurable, I grant, if the notoriety of the fact above stated does not justify me) that I have given in these unfavourable times evidence of exertions of this faculty upon its worthiest objects, the external universe, the moral and religious sentiments ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... to a sarcasm that the etiquette of the Greek court permitted; for on all ordinary occasions, it would not have offended the Presence more surely, literally, to have drawn a poniard, than to exchange a repartee in the imperial circle. Even the sarcasm, such as it was, would have been thought censurable by that ceremonious court in any but the Patriarch, to whose high ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of Corneille, are gallant; his heroines tender, like those of Racine; but this has been too severely censured by many, without a due consideration of the requirements of the Opera. To me he appears censurable only for the selection of subjects, whose very seriousness could not without great incongruity be united with such triflings. Had Metastasio not adopted great historical names—had he borrowed his subject-matter ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... splendour of impossible assonance is attained in the "Worlds-girls" atrocity. Mr. Crowley needs a long session with the late Mr. Walker's well-known Rhyming Dictionary! Metrically, Mr. Crowley is showing a decided improvement of late. The only censurable points in the measure of this piece are the redundant syllables in lines 1 and 3, which might in each case be obviated by the substitution of "I've" for "I have", and the change of form in the first half of the concluding stanza. Of the general phraseology ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... Arab is one of the finest studies of the group: you almost see the breath of his nostrils; the hinder parts and tail of the horse are not quite of equal merit. These are but a few of the points of excellence in the picture: its colouring is censurable for its roughness, especially by those who enjoy the smoothly-finished productions of certain British artists; but we may look to such in vain for the powerful drawing and forcible expression which characterize this, the finest ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 541, Saturday, April 7, 1832 • Various
... unmerited, for poetry or ideality, and untruth are assuredly very different things. The one may vivify, while the other, kills. When St. John extends the notion of a soul to 'souls washed in the blood of Christ' does he 'fib'? Indeed, if the appeal to ideality is censurable, Christ himself ought not to have escaped censure. Nor did he escape it. 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?' expressed the sceptical flouting of unpoetic natures. Such are still amongst us. Cardinal Manning ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... some rather strange reports concerning your conduct lately; your actions have certainly been highly censurable, and the least that can be said is that you have exceeded your authority here ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... work with decided perseverance (the only commendable thing about the transaction), sometimes three or four of them working away at one stone, lifting and rolling it along. Benjamin was never half so zealous in cutting candle-wicks as he was in perpetrating this censurable act. He was second to no one of the number in cheerful active service on ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... held him not censurable is shown by its statement that as "Captain Harding has been appointed to the command of the frigate at Norwich named the 'Confederacy,' which prevents our giving that ship to ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... father; yet they all pursued their father's purpose of abolishing the ancient superstitions of the Romans and other pagans, and of propagating the Christian religion throughout the Roman Empire. The thing itself was commendable and excellent; but in the means employed there was much that was censurable. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... require constant assurances. He will not understand my position!" She remembered the day at Besworth, of which Adela (somewhat needlessly, perhaps) had told her; that it had revealed two of the family, in situations censurable before a gossiping world, however intrinsically blameless. That day had been to the ladies a lesson of deference to opinion. It was true that Cornelia had met her lover since, but she was then unembarrassed. She had now to share in the duties of the household—duties abnormal, hideous, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... [6] Censurable as that practice may appear, it belonged to the age of Sidney. Amusements were permitted the English on the seventh day, nor were they restricted until the Puritans gained ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Titanic disaster has served several good purposes. It has officially established the fact that all nations are censurable for insufficient, antiquated safety regulations on ocean vessels, and it has emphasized the imperative necessity for united action among all maritime countries to revise these laws and adapt them ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... him for us to pass it over in silence. He had been one of the examiners nominated by Pope Innocent X. to inquire into the writings of Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, and he had convinced himself that the five propositions which appeared to be censurable in those writings might be tolerably explained in a certain theological sense. Those who are themselves upright are not easily brought to think ill of others, particularly in difficult affairs, and they sometimes endeavor to justify them, through charitable ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... midway between Tasso's Aminta and Marino's Adone, and appealing to the dominant musical enthusiasms of the epoch, Guarini's Pastor Fido may have merited the condemnation of far-sighted moralists. Not censurable in itself, it was so related to the sentimental sensuality of its period as to form a link in the chain of enervation which weighed ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... in every thing that has happened, I cannot tell: since in some part of the time, in which my conduct appears to have been censurable, I was not myself; and to this hour know not all the methods taken ...
— Clarissa, Volume 6 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... power here to bind the consciences of men? By what rule of ethics, then, does he undertake to use his influence, from this high place of power, in order to gain the same object, I am at a loss to determine. Sir, this movement of the Senator is far more censurable and dangerous, as an attempt to unite Church and State, than were the petitions against Sunday mails, the report in opposition to which gained for you, Mr. President, so much applause in the country. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... derived great additional force from the political theories he was understood to hold. It was known that, in his judgment, the constitution of the United States was rather chargeable with imbecility, than censurable for its too great strength; and that the real sources of danger to American happiness and liberty, were to be found in its want of the means to effect the objects of its institution;—in its being exposed to the encroachments ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... bound by any opinion, sentiment, or expression, which these contain. It is acknowledged, that, towards the middle of the last century, they used in their devotional exercises, particularly in their hymns, many expressions justly censurable: but these have been corrected. They consider Lutherans and Calvinists, to be their brethren in faith, as according with them in the essential articles of religion; and therefore, when any of their members reside at a distance from ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... in his person a different community from Laban's, of which he was to be the Patriarch, his mode of acquiring wealth out of Laban would have been censurable. But his conduct towards Laban was consistent with what was subsequently allowed under the Mosaic laws on the part of the Jews towards other nations. They could, for instance, make slaves of the nations round about;—they could take usury of them;—they ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... content with passive resistance. He should have interposed actively, and kept Saul from executing his blood design. And granted that Abner could not have influenced the king's mind in this matter, (93) at all events he is censurable for having frustrated a reconciliation between Saul and David. When David, holding in his hand the corner of the king's mantle which he had cut off, sought to convince Saul of his innocence, it was Abner who turned the king against the suppliant fugitive. "Concern not thyself about it," he said to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... of gossipping, drinking and gaming. And it is with great sorrow that I acknowledge that many English husbands indulge too much in a similar habit. Drinking clubs, smoking clubs, singing clubs, clubs of odd-fellows, whist clubs, sotting clubs: these are inexcusable, they are censurable, they are at once foolish and wicked, even in single men; what must they be, then, in husbands; and how are they to answer, not only to their wives, but to their children, for this profligate abandonment of their homes; this breach of their solemn vow made to the former, ...
— Advice to Young Men • William Cobbett
... ladies, indulging in copious lamentations, are falling down on the earth with their faces towards the ground, and slowly approaching thee, O Keshava! Alas, why did Arjuna of pure deeds perpetrate such a censurable act, since he struck off the arm of a heedless warrior who was brave and devoted to the performance of sacrifices. Alas, Satyaki did an act that was still more sinful, for he took the life of a person of restrained soul while sitting in the observance ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... to which favour and preference do not properly apply. Impartiality, however, does not seem to be regarded as a duty in itself, but rather as instrumental to some other duty; for it is admitted that favour and preference are not always censurable, and indeed the cases in which they are condemned are rather the exception than the rule. A person would be more likely to be blamed than applauded for giving his family or friends no superiority in good offices over strangers, when he could do so without violating any ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill |
