"Optional" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Tibetans of the trade route have come to look upon the acquisition of 'foreign learning' as the stepping-stone to Government appointments at ten rupees per month. Attendance on religious instruction was left optional, but after a time sixty pupils were regularly present at the daily reading and explanation of the Gospels. Tibetan fathers teach their sons to write, to read the sacred classics, and to calculate with a frame of balls on ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... Miss Lyon, in those early days, looked forward to the needs of the future, by placing in her course of study, Sullivan's Political Class-Book, and Wayland's Political Economy. The four years' course is solid and thorough, while the optional course in French, German, and Greek is admirable. Eventually, when our preparatory schools are higher, all our colleges for women will have as difficult entrance ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton
... I prefer the Lord Chamberlain I can go to the Lord Chamberlain, who is to retain all his present functions for the benefit of those who prefer to be judged by him. But I am not so sure that the Lord Chamberlain will be able to exercise those functions for long if resort to him is to be optional. Let me be kinder to him than he has been to me, and uncover for him the pitfalls which the Joint Select Committee have dug (and concealed) in his path. Consider how the voluntary system must inevitably work. The Joint Select Committee expressly ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... advantage of turning the flywheel through two revolutions during a single cycle of operation of the piston, thus requiring a flywheel only one-fourth the size of the flywheel needed if a simple crank were used. The optional link (JK of fig. 7e) was used in the engines ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... No, he says Londres. And the same is true with Dover; Dover is not French; The French would be Douvres. However, I want to say this, that after the first three or four years after I took up Esperanto geographical or proper names were left optional and they were not given any particular spelling in the Esperanto language and are not now. Many Esperantists now would say Washington and London. But you can make the ...
— Esperanto: Hearings before the Committee on Education • Richard Bartholdt and A. Christen
... must know what the other teams have done, and are capable of doing; he must drive his own race, and he must know how the other men are driving theirs. He must decide wisely how many dogs it is well to use—that matter also being optional with him. For it is an important point to select enough dogs to keep up to the required standard, yet not too many for good team work, in which individual peculiarities have been merged in general ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... of age; universal, compulsory for literate persons ages 18-65, optional for other ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... impressed by the Pythagorean philosophy, and very often quotes it in his speeches. Socrates gave Pythagoras as an authority on the simple life, and stated that he was willing to follow him in anything save his injunction to keep silence. Socrates wanted silence optional; whereas Pythagoras required each of his pupils to live for a year without once asking a question or making an explanation. In aggravated cases he made ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... constructed in stone or marble? The answer is obvious: Certainly not, when those features suggest the mass and proportions or treatment proper only for stone or marble; but when they do not so represent the material, it is quite optional for the architect to build up his front with castings, if by so doing he can obtain greater rigidity of bearing, strength, and durability. He ought, of course, to vary the proportions of his pilasters and horizontal lintels, and make them more in accord with the material. It is the wholesale ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 324, March 18, 1882 • Various
... A nation in which, the thing governing and the thing governed being the same, there is only a permitted authority to enforce an optional obedience. In a republic, the foundation of public order is the ever lessening habit of submission inherited from ancestors who, being truly governed, submitted because they had to. There are as many kinds of republics as there are graduations between the despotism ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... reign of Louis IX., commissioners, or baillis, of the king, held provincial courts of appeal in his name. The great suzerains established, each in his own fief, like tribunals, but of more restricted authority. Louis IX. made it optional with the vassal to be tried by his immediate suzerain, or in the king's courts, which were subordinate to his council. As time went on, the authority of the royal tribunals increased, as that of the feudal courts grew weaker. In the Parliament of Paris, a corps of ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher |
