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Arbiter   /ˈɑrbɪtər/   Listen
Arbiter

noun
1.
Someone with the power to settle matters at will.  Synonym: supreme authority.
2.
Someone chosen to judge and decide a disputed issue.  Synonyms: arbitrator, umpire.  "The arbitrator's authority derived from the consent of the disputants" , "An umpire was appointed to settle the tax case"



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"Arbiter" Quotes from Famous Books



... nymphs now appear at the temple, and the foremost, who is veiled, is appealed to by Damon and Alexis to give her decision. She reveals herself as Amarillis, and Damon, fearing that she will decide against him, refuses to be bound by the award of so partial an arbiter. Alexis thereupon goes off to fetch Laurinda, who shall force him to abide by his oath, while Damon in a fit of rage seeks to prevent Amarillis' verdict by slaying her. He wounds her with his spear and leaves ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... capacities. Old residents say he was the best judge at a horse-race the county afforded; he was occasionally second in a duel of fisticuffs, though he usually contrived to reconcile the adversaries on the turf before any damage was done; he was the arbiter on all controverted points of literature, science, or woodcraft among the disputatious denizens of Clary's Grove, and his decisions were never appealed from. His native tact and humor were invaluable in his work as a peacemaker, ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... and effective method of warfare; whereas the sinking of an occasional merchant ship with its passengers and crew is a method of warfare nowhere effective, and almost universally condemned. If war, with its inevitable stratagems, ambuscades, and lies must continue to be the arbiter in international disputes, it is certainly desirable that such magnanimity in war as the conventions of the last century made possible should not be lost because of Germany's behavior in the present European convulsion. It is also desirable ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... her silent was the realization that while she felt herself helpless, under the control of some omnipotent will, here was one who cried out to her as arbiter. It was strange and she wanted to laugh again but, refusing that easy comment, she came upon a thought which terrified and comforted her together. She was responsible for what she had done; Zebedee would know that, and he would have ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young

... the sort of stuff that we all of us wrote more or less after we left school," said the Baron with a bored expression—he was acting his part of arbiter of taste who has seen everything. "We used to deal in Ossianic mists, Malvinas and Fingals and cloudy shapes, and warriors who got out of their tombs with stars above their heads. Nowadays this poetical frippery ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac

... the reins of speech, that your words may be grander and more becoming to you. Neither do you, Protagoras, go forth on the gale with every sail set out of sight of land into an ocean of words, but let there be a mean observed by both of you. Do as I say. And let me also persuade you to choose an arbiter or overseer or president; he will keep watch over your words and ...
— Protagoras • Plato

... which had grown to be one of his nature's chief cravings. The Korps life had done its work in the direction of his character, developing his latent love of organisation and law, accustoming him to look upon cold steel as the arbiter of right, and upon his country as the strongest among those that ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... "Corpo di Bacco," and the Duca de Montepulciano does reply, "E' bellissima certamente." And their creator might conceivably remark "Non cuivis contigit." But Lady Fanny Flummery's ladies could not dress as Ouida's ladies do: they could not quote Petronius Arbiter; they had never heard of Suetonius. No age reproduces itself. There is much of our old fashionable authoress in Ouida's earlier tales; there is plenty of the Peerage, plenty of queer French in old novels and Latin yet more ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang

... Your consciences will sting, and that destroys peace; or if they do not sting, they will be torpid, and that destroys peace, for death is not peace. Unless we take Christ for our love, for the light of our minds, for the Sovereign Arbiter and Lord of our will, for the home of our desires, for the aim of our efforts, we shall never know what it is to be at rest. Unsatisfied and hungry we shall go through life, seeking what nothing short of an Infinite Humanity can ever give us, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... expression of admiration at the peaceable manner in which this revolution had been accomplished. "With what ability and skill he has effected this sudden change!" And he added, "I tell him, if he uses his opportunities well, he will become the arbiter ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... things are grotesque or eccentric, or fail of their sanity. Nothing out of its place is good, and nothing in its place is bad. He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions, neither more nor less. He is the arbiter of the diverse, and he is the key. He is the equaliser of his age and land: he supplies what wants supplying, and checks what wants checking. If peace is the routine, out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... world. 'Tis talked of everywhere. It pleased you to add threats too: you were to call me to account —Why, do it now then; I shall be proud of such an arbiter. ...
— The Gamester (1753) • Edward Moore

... upon an innocent person? And now and then we are brought to the realization that all men do not admit the validity of all our maxims. Judgments differ as to what is right and what is wrong. Who shall be the arbiter? Not infrequently a rough decision is arrived at in the assumption that we have only to interrogate "conscience"—in the assumption, in other words, that we carry a watch which can be counted upon to give the correct time, even if the ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... will necessarily pass final judgment upon the conduct of the parties concerned in this infernal struggle. Many times in the course of the book he refers emphatically to that "decent respect to the opinions of mankind" to which Jefferson appealed in our Declaration of Independence as the final arbiter upon our conduct in throwing off the British yoke and declaring our right to be an independent nation. That this "public opinion of the world" is the final tribunal upon all great international contests is illustrated by the fact that all mankind, including Great Britain ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck

... untrammeled Shakespearian play, Goetz von Berlichingen, and by his open defiance, announced in Werther, of the authority of all artistic rules and standards; and Buerger, asserting the right of the common man to be the only arbiter of literary values, were, each in his own way, upsetting the control of an artificial "classicism." Immanuel Kant, whose deep and dynamic thinking led to a revolution comparable to a cosmic upheaval in the geological world, compelled his generation ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... and perquisites of the priests for administering the sacraments: "This charge is a purely civil and temporal operation, since it resolves itself into a levy of so many pence on the citizen. Bishops and priests should not be allowed to decide here.[5152] The government alone must remain the arbiter between the priest who receives and the person who pays." Sometimes, he intervenes in the publication of plenary indulgence: "It is essential[5153] that indulgences should not be awarded for causes which might be contrary to public order or to the welfare of the country; the political ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... esse prolaturum. Novimus quanta lepore descripserit colloquia illa antemeridiana, symposia illa sobria et severa, sed eadem festiva et faceta, in quibus totiens mutata persona, modo poeta, modo professor, modo princeps et arbiter, loquendi, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... or modern novel, is also thought to have begun in the first century with the satirical tale ascribed to Petronius Arbiter, or perhaps with the translation of the Milesian tales of Aristides from the Greek by Sisenna. The Petronii Arbitri Satiricon is a romance in prose and verse, and was probably written in the first century by an author ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence

... the heart with some attention; and am convinced every parent, who will take the pains to gain his children's friendship, will for ever be the guide and arbiter of their conduct: I ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke

... the friction in Unit 42-D became greater and greater. Roger and Astro continually needled each other with insults, and Tom gradually slipped into the role of arbiter. ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell

... nothing—before I—I met you—I believed such a marriage would not only permit me mental tranquillity, but safely anchor me in the harbour of convention, leaving me free to become what I am fashioned to become—autocrat and arbiter in my own world. And now! and now! I don't know—truly I don't know what I may become. Your love forces my hand. I am displaying all the shallowness, falseness, pettiness, all the mean, and cruel and callous character which must be truly my real self. ... Only I shall not marry you! You ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers

... class came a natural increase in the importance and influence of the notaries, already and through the Spanish traditions very considerable in this region. In many parts of the province the notary is recognised as an unofficial, but authoritative, social arbiter, to whom may be safely referred for settlement all sorts of disputes, including very often questions of property which would elsewhere be taken before the courts of law. It was pleasant to see that the relation thus established between M. Labitte and the people generally ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... to line both sides of the long road by which the emperor passed. Their princes quitted their capitals, and thronged the towns, where the great arbiter of their destiny was to pass a few short moments of his journey. The empress, and a numerous court, followed Napoleon; he proceeded to confront the terrible risks of a distant and perilous war, as if he were returning victorious and triumphant. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... by reason, follow, without inquiry, the manners which are prevalent in their own time. The practice of that age in controversies between states and princes, seems to have been to choose a foreign prince as an equal arbiter, by whom the question was decided, and whose sentence prevented those dismal confusions and disorders, inseparable at all times from war, but which were multiplied a hundred fold, and dispersed into every corner, by the nature of the feudal governments. It was thus that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume

... the actors. Well, not to lengthen my history unduly, an open rivalry and enmity at last arose between myself and poor George. We had been spurred on to hate each other, and narrowly escaped having an 'affair' together—appealing to the pistol as the arbiter. ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... Lufton was not clear-sighted in those matters, and believing it to be impossible that Mr. Sowerby should actually endeavour to defraud his friend, had smoothed down the young lord's anger, and recommended him to get the case referred to some private arbiter. All this had afterwards been discussed between Robarts and Mr. Sowerby himself, and hence had originated their intimacy. The matter was so referred, Mr. Sowerby naming the referee; and Lord Lufton, when the matter was given against ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... Alabama Claims the last dispute about boundaries between the United States and Canada was settled at this time. This also was settled by arbitration, the new-made German Emperor being chosen as arbiter. "This," said President Grant, "leaves us for the first time in the history of the United States as a nation, without a question of disputed boundary between our territory and the ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... use of dodging the fact—the lever of the whole world, by which it and its multifarious cargo of men and matters, mountains and mole hills, wit, wisdom, weal, woe, warfare and women, are kept in motion, in season and out of season. It is the arbiter of our fates, our health, happiness, life and death. Where it makes one man a happy Christian, it makes ten thousand miserable devils. It is no use to argufy the matter, for money is the "root of all evil," more or less, and—as Patricus ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... his hands, and, after inspecting them, looked round to make comparison with the original. Barbara met his gaze placidly, with gracefully poised head, her hands joined behind her. It was such a long time before the arbiter found anything to remark, that the situation became a little embarrassing; Zillah laughed girlishly, and her sister's ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing

... many white elephants, lord of the mines of gold, silver, rubies, amber, and the noble serpentine, Sovereign of the empires of Thunaparanta and Tampadipa, and other great empires and countries, and of all the umbrella-wearing chiefs, the supporter of religion, the Sun-descended Monarch, arbiter of life, and great, righteous King, King of kings, and possessor of boundless dominions, and supreme wisdom, the following presents." The reading was intoned in a uniform high recitative, strongly resembling that used when our ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... strawberries and drinking milk out of the basins of the peasants; how they fell in with the strangest and most picturesque figures of Italian society; how they climbed mountains and read books and modelled in clay and played on musical instruments; how Browning was made a kind of arbiter between two improvising Italian bards; how he had to escape from a festivity when the sound of Garibaldi's hymn brought the knocking of the Austrian police; these are the things of which his life ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... believer in Solomon's maxim that to spare the rod is to spoil the child. The whip was his arbiter in all differences which arose between his pupils and himself. He never paused, as Mr. Montieth has lately done, to consider that at least two-thirds of the offences for which children are flogged at school are "crimes for which they are in ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens

... stay," said the Baron; "if there is any fraud, you will be pleased to detect it, and, if all that is affirmed be true, you will not shut your eyes against the light; you are concerned in this business; hear it in silence, and let reason be arbiter in your cause." ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve

... that to the sun unplaits And spreads the gold Love's fingers weave, and braid O'er her fine eyes, and all around her head, Fetters my heart, the wishful sigh creates: No nerve but thrills, no artery but beats, Approaching my fair arbiter with dread, Who in her doubtful scale hath ofttimes weigh'd Whether or death or life on me awaits; Beholding, too, those eyes their fires display, And on those shoulders shine such wreaths of hair, Whose witching tangles my poor heart ensnare. But how this magic's wrought ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... over his big bulging forehead, power and decision and resolution were stamped on every line of his face; a small army of men worked for him—worked underground or on railroads, or looked to him as the donor of dividends, the regulator of their incomes, the arbiter of their ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch

... out to this frozen wilderness. Snow, snow everywhere. The tall alders, whose vivid coloring so inspired me when I arrived, are now black and gaunt, and the pitiless desert wind comes tearing and howling from the north to bend and crack their stiffened joints. I often wonder—am I any more the arbiter of my fate than these lifeless snow-draped ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr

... criticism, critique, notice, report. decision, determination, judgment, finding, verdict, sentence, decree; findings of fact; findings of law; res judicata[Lat]. plebiscite, voice, casting vote; vote &c. (choice) 609; opinion &c. (belief) 484; good judgment &c. (wisdom) 498. judge, umpire; arbiter, arbitrator; asessor, referee. censor, reviewer, critic; connoisseur; commentator &c. 524; inspector, inspecting officer. twenty-twenty hindsight[judgment after the fact]; armchair general, monday morning quarterback. V. judge, conclude; come to a conclusion, draw ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... him of excitement or emotion. All the conservative strength of his nature, all the immense dumb force of belief in established things, all that stubborn hatred and dread of change, that incalculable power of imagining nothing, which, since the beginning of time, had made Horace Pendyce the arbiter of his land, rose up within his sorely ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... public, that last arbiter in a democracy, whose referendum, for a year at least, confirms or renders null and void all critical legislation good or bad? The general public is apparently on the side of the novelist; to borrow a slang term expressive here, it is "crazy" about fiction. ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... man the arbiter of his own destiny? He is like the leaf of the tree, which the wind blows about. You are ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas

... tyranny. I share this horror when certain socialists begin to propound their schemes. There is a dreadful amount of forcible scrubbing and arranging and pocketing implied in some socialisms. There is a wish to have the state use its position as general employer to become a censor of morals and arbiter of elegance, like the benevolent employers of the day who take an impertinent interest in the private lives of their workers. Without any doubt socialism has within it the germs of that great bureaucratic tyranny which Chesterton and Belloc ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... thought grew busy with her father's later words. Was there then a knight—a man—somewhere in the world, so unknown to her that she would pass him in the street without the slightest premonition that he was the arbiter of her destiny? Was there some one, to whom imagination could scarcely give shadowy outline, so real and strong that he could look a new life into her soul, set all her nerves tingling, and her blood coursing in mad torrents through her veins? Was there a stranger, whom now she ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... ever more sanguine than facts at the moment justify, he would remain torpid, or be sunk in sensuality. It is on this ground that I sympathize with what is called the "Transcendental party," and that I feel their aim to be the true one. They acknowledge in the nature of man an arbiter for his deeds,—a standard transcending sense and time,—and are, in my view, the true utilitarians. They are but at the beginning of their course, and will, I hope, learn how to make use of the past, as well ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... blessings we actually enjoy, such as they are, have grown up in the shadow of the wars of antiquity. The various ideals were backed by fighting wills, and when neither would give way, the God of battles had to be the arbiter. A shallow view this, truly; for who can say what might have prevailed if man had ever been a reasoning and not a fighting animal? Like dead men, dead causes tell no tales, and the ideals that went under in the past, along with all the tribes ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... surely be best for the interests of Europe that we should name this to Charles Albert, and call upon him to rest satisfied with his conquest, and to conclude a peace with Austria, leaving her what he cannot take from her, and thus avoid calling in France as an arbiter. Why this has not been done long ago, or should not be done now, the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... to be the arbiter of Eastern commerce. Through her the gold, the spices, and the gems of India will yet be conveyed over the European world. For the Suez Canal, which will once more turn the tide of this mighty traffic through its ancient Mediterranean channel, will ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... armaments which thunderstrike the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake, And Monarchs tremble in their Capitals, The oak Leviathans,[547] whose huge ribs make[qg] Their clay creator the vain title take Of Lord of thee, and Arbiter of War— These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron

... to putting up his "dukes" to a tramp if necessary. {314b} At Ascot in 1872 he intervened when two or three hundred soldiers from Windsor were going to wreck a Gypsy camp for some affront. Amid the cursing and screaming and brandishing of belts and tent-rods appeared "an arbiter, a white-haired brown-eyed calm Colossus, speaking Romany fluently, and drinking deep draughts of ale—in a quarter of an hour Tommy Atkins and Anselo Stanley were sworn friends over a loving quart." {314c} But this is told ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... occasion of all their distresses. Yet the regard they had to the merit and reputation of Agesilaus, so far stilled this murmuring of the people, that notwithstanding it, they entrusted themselves to him in this distress, as the only man that was fit to heal the public malady, the arbiter of all their difficulties, whether relating to the affairs of war or peace. One great one was then before them, concerning the runaways (as their name is for them) that had fled out of the battle, who being many and powerful, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... the strength and genius of individuals and families were constantly called into activity, and both families and isolated individuals of foreign race were attracted to Rome. It was no small thing to hold the kings of the earth in spiritual subjection, to be the arbiter of the new Empire founded by Charlemagne, the director of the kingdoms built up in France and England, and, almost literally, the feudal lord over all other temporal powers. The force of a predominant idea gave Rome new life, vivifying new elements with the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... Religion, as the arbiter of this commonwealth in cases of conscience more peculiarly appertaining to religion, Christian charity, and a pious life, shall have the care of the national religion, and the protection of the liberty of conscience with the cognizance of all causes relating to either ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... King, the youngest of the Kings and the grandest!" exclaims Voltaire (in his Letters to Friedrich, at this time), and re-exclaims, till Friedrich has to interfere, and politely stop it: "A King who carries in the one hand an all-conquering sword, but in the other a blessed olive-branch, and is the Arbiter of Europe for Peace or War!" "Friedrich the THIRD [so Voltaire calls him, counting ill, or misled by ignorance of German nomenclature], Friedrich the Third, I mean Friedrich the Great (FREDERIC LE GRAND)," will do this, and do that;—probably ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... the problem is not so easily and superficially solved; because no one body of legislators and police has jurisdiction over all the parties concerned. As a result of this just now in Europe, wisdom is not the arbiter; on the contrary, prejudices, passions, indiscretions, and follies on the part of all the antagonists preserve ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... Dominion do not more depend on the ability and patriotism of statesmen in the legislative halls than on that principle of the constitution, which places the judiciary in an exalted position among all the other departments of government, and makes law as far as possible the arbiter of their constitutional conflicts. All political systems are very imperfect at the best; legislatures are constantly subject to currents of popular prejudice and passion; statesmanship is too often weak and fluctuating, incapable of appreciating the true tendency ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... by grinding one of the glass-faced tools alternately upon the lens and upon the fellow glass-faced tool. The spherometer is accepted at all stages of the process as the final arbiter as to curvature. Some hints on the form of strokes used in grinding will be given later on (see Sec. 61). It suffices to state here that the object throughout is to secure uniformity by allowing both the work and the tool to rotate, and exercising no pressure by the ...
— On Laboratory Arts • Richard Threlfall

... human probability these grandmotherly predictions would have come to nothing had it not been for a more potent arbiter of the fortunes of his family. King Leopold had once filled the very post which was now vacant, for which there were so many eager aspirants. None could know as he knew the manifold and difficult requirements for the office; none could care as he cared that it should be worthily filled. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler

... utter change in one's individual liberty. To be no longer the arbiter of your own time and movements, but to have it rubbed into you at every turn that you are a very small part of an immense machine, whose business is to march and fight; that your every movement is under the control of your superior officers; that, in fact, you have no will of ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock

... of self-sacrifice were carrying him away. He watched his enemy with glowing eyes as one who looks on the arbiter of ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy

... he was the chosen arbiter. His decisions were generally as conclusive as those of the Kazi himself. Laborious, active, and intelligent, and esteemed by all who knew him, Bebut was happy; and his happiness was still enhanced by love. Tamira, the beautiful ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various

... you a manuscript," began Katherine, smiling with all her might, with an abject desire to propitiate the arbiter ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander

... but for one moment, divest myself of the idea, that in writing for the young mother I am not writing for legislators and ministers! Would that I could banish from my mind the deep conviction that the mother is everywhere far more the law-giver to her infant—far more the arbiter of the present and eternal destiny of her child—than he who is more ...
— The Young Mother - Management of Children in Regard to Health • William A. Alcott

... world within ever quite frankly accepted as a substitute, as a truer reality? She is always on her guard against imagination as against the outer world, whose 'lies' she is resolved shall not 'beguile' her. She has accepted reason as the final arbiter, and desires only to see clearly, to see things as they are. She really ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... to observe, by those around, who seem to have urged him in a manner which was aggravating in the highest degree. While he asked for peace and for composition, and offered submission to a magistrate, or to a mutual arbiter, the prisoner was insulted by a whole company, who seem on this occasion to have forgotten the national maxim of 'fair play;' and while attempting to escape from the place in peace, he was intercepted, struck down, and beaten to the effusion ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott

... select the father of her own children is absolute. In such a society all children will be equally 'legitimate,' and the Seventh Commandment will become practically obsolete, because the economic circumstances in which it was formulated will have passed away. She will be the complete arbiter of her own destiny. Her unsullied conscience will be the foundation of a purer morality than is at present even conceivable."[940] The principles expressed in the foregoing recall to one's mind the decree of the French Convention, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... the result of a well-matched struggle between her cook and her corset-maker. She talked a great deal of what was appropriate in dress and conduct, and seemed to regard Mrs. Newell as a final arbiter on both points. To do or to wear anything inappropriate would have been extremely mortifying to Mrs. Hubbard, and she was evidently resolved, at the price of eternal vigilance, to prove her familiarity with what she frequently referred to as "the right ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton

... who can accept with ease the introduction of a stranger into their midst, even for a time, and there are fewer strangers who can with impunity be introduced. The sisters quarrelled among themselves as all sisters will, and sometimes quarrelled with Cynthia. But oftener they made her the arbiter of their disputes, and asked her advice on certain matters. Especially was this true of Susan, whom certain young gentlemen from Harvard College called upon more or less frequently, and Cynthia had all of Susan's love affairs—including ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... their policies and wars wherewith to drug each human appetite. But their consorts are denied these makeshifts; and love may rationally be defined as the pivot of each normal woman's life, and in consequence as the arbiter of that ensuing life which is eternal. Because—as anciently Propertius demanded, though not, to speak the ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... sick, the rich from the poor, would also separate the happy from the miserable. But we find joy and sorrow on both sides of that line. We are drawn to look deeper than this for our definition of good and evil. We have to make the soul the final arbiter amid these conflicting voices. Here we must find the true definition of evil. The first question we ask when we hear of a house having been burnt down is this: 'Was there any loss of life?' All else ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth

... be severe. True wisdom may some gallantry admit, And soften business with the charms of wit. 20 These peaceful triumphs with your cares you bought, And from the midst of fighting nations brought. You only hear it thunder from afar, And sit in peace the arbiter of war: Peace, the loathed manna, which hot brains despise. You knew its worth, and made it early prize: And in its happy leisure sit and see The promises of more felicity: Two glorious nymphs,[53] of your own godlike line, Whose morning rays like noontide strike and shine: 30 Whom ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... cantons to the latter. Their disputes at last swelled into civil war—and the party who preferred the old constitution, being headed by the gallant Aloys Reding, were generally successful. Napoleon, who had fomented their quarrel, now, unasked and unexpected, assumed to himself the character of arbiter between the contending parties. He addressed a letter to the eighteen cantons, in which these words occur:—"Your history shows that your intestine wars cannot be terminated, except through the intervention ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... most robust, striking, and many-sided characters of his time was John Forster, a rough, uncompromising personage, who, from small and obscure beginnings, shouldered his way to the front until he came to be looked on by all as guide, friend and arbiter. From a struggling newspaperman he emerged into handsome chambers in Lincoln's Inn Fields, from thence to a snug house in Montague Square, ending in a handsome stone mansion which he built for himself at Palace Gate, Kensington, with its beautiful library-room at the ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald

... his Tusculan villa. The real author was Charles Sigonius, of Modena. Sigonius actually did discover some Ciceronian fragments, and, if he was not the builder, at least he was the restorer of Tully's lofty theme. In 1693, Francois Nodot, conceiving the world had not already enough of Petronius Arbiter, published an edition, in which he added to the works of that lax though accomplished author. Nodot's story was that he had found a whole MS. of Petronius at Belgrade, and he published it with a translation of his own Latin into French. Still dissatisfied with the ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang

... most profound recesses of the mind. For he of whom I speak is a perfect guardian, a singular prefect, a domestic speculator, a proper curator, an intimate inspector, an assiduous observer, an inseparable arbiter, a reprobator of what is evil, an approver of what is good; and if he is legitimately attended to, sedulously known, and religiously worshipped, in the way in which he was reverenced by Sokrates with justice and innocence, will be a predicter of things uncertain, a premonitor ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... event of Purdy, the final arbiter, refusing to start up on half time," says Metz, who is now the leader of the Miner's Union, "we can go to Latimer and Harleigh, to-morrow. The mines will be closed; they are only working them six days a week now. We will appeal to the men to quit work unless ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... let my words sink deep into your bosom. Into your hands I commit the most precious jewel that was ever intrusted to the custody of a friend. You are the arbiter of my fate. More, much more than my life is in your disposal. If you should betray me, you will commit a crime, that laughs to scorn the frivolity of all former baseness. You will inflict upon me a torture, in comparison of which all the laborious punishments that tyrants have invented, are couches ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... "the savage potentate and civilised ruler are inevitably alike. The ultimate ground, the ultimate arbiter ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... effect of this determination. The Saint, for already this magic word had burst forth where he appeared,[21] the Saint had spoken. It was he who was about to bring peace to the city, acting as arbiter between the two factions ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier

... bed waiting for the inevitable striking of a small alarum clock placed in the very centre of his mantelpiece. Flanking that round and ruthless arbiter, which drove him day by day to stand up on feet whose time had come to rest, were the effigies of his past triumphs. On the one hand, in a papier-mache frame, slightly tinged with smuts, stood a portrait of the "Honorable Bateson," in the uniform of his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... shall concealment be longer affected. My father was the Captain of the flag-ship. Necessity compelled him to leave me more in the society of your young relative than he would have done, could he have foreseen the consequences. But I knew both his pride and his poverty too well, to dare to make him arbiter of my fate, after the alternative became, to my inexperienced imagination worse than even his anger. We were privately united by this gentleman, and neither of our parents knew of the ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... "I don't think a friendship is worth continuing after it has become commonplace. I think I 'd like to be arbiter of manners and customs long enough to make it quite the proper thing to march up to any one whose appearance you like and say, 'How do you do? Your face interests me and I 'd like to know ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly

... other transactions between the various branches of the economic world is the bank. Thus the banker, who provides the credit, and through whose private institution financial transactions take place, becomes the arbiter of economic destiny, rendering decisions upon which the well-being of the masses or producers depends, yet wholly irresponsible for the results that follow on these decisions. Using the people's money, possessed of vast authority over the jobs and the ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing

... various, so most of them were tales or stories of his own invention; which is also manifest from antiquity by those authors who are acknowledged to have written Varronian satires in imitation of his—of whom the chief is Petronius Arbiter, whose satire, they say, is now printing in Holland, wholly recovered, and made complete; when it is made public, it will easily be seen by any one sentence whether it be supposititious or genuine. Many of ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden

... professional manner as art arbiter, may I say that I can picture to myself easily the sad earnestness with which you now point the thick thumb of your editorial refinement in deprecation of my choicer "rowdyism"? And knowing your analytical ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler

... find this quaint old saying to be. Every youth should feel that his future happiness in life must necessarily depend upon himself; the exercise of his own energies, rather than the patronage of others. A man is in a great degree the arbiter of his own fortune. We are born with powers and faculties capable of almost anything, but it is the exercise of these powers and faculties that gives us ability and skill in anything. The greatest curse that can befall a young man ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... without, A treachery that foils it or defeats; And, lastly, if the means on human will, Frail human will, dependent should betray 180 Him who too boldly trusted them, I felt That 'mid the loud distractions of the world A sovereign voice subsists within the soul, Arbiter undisturbed of right and wrong, Of life and death, in majesty severe 185 Enjoining, as may best promote the aims Of truth and justice, either sacrifice, From whatsoever region of our cares Or our infirm affections Nature pleads, Earnest and blind, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... to side, smiling and peering—this little commonplace-looking Frenchman, who had in his hand at this period of the world's history an incalculably greater power than any living being on earth had ever before wielded—Father of Princes and Kings, Arbiter of the East, Father as well as Sovereign Lord of considerably more than a thousand million souls. He stood there, utterly alone with a single servant waiting out there, half a mile away, at the flying-stage, ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... exaggerated and tortured by an advocate's calumnious ingenuity. But again, I say justice, and not revenge! And with this I conclude, inclosing to you these lines, written in your own hand, and leaving you the arbiter ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... frequently acted on, and if matters connected with English and alterations of rhythm had been brought before a few of our more distinguished literary men. It may be so; though I much doubt whether in matters of English the Greek would not always have proved the dominant arbiter. In matters of rhythm it is equally doubtful whether much could have been effected by appealing to the ears of others. At any rate we preferred trusting to our own, and adopted, as I shall afterwards mention, a mode of testing rhythmical cadence that could ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott

... this time as so little contingent, that he felt a queerness of conscience in making her the report that he presently arrived at on what had passed for him with the real arbiter of their destiny. The way for that had been blocked a little by his news from Fleet Street; but in the crucible of their happy discussion this element soon melted into the other, and in the mixture that ensued the parts were not to be distinguished. The young man moreover, before taking ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James

... it. It is, I regret to say, a prevailing error in those circles wherein your rank will entitle you to mingle; an error that must ever endanger conjugal happiness. When a woman marries, the world, except as the arbiter of propriety, ought to be forgotten; all her endeavours to please, to soothe, to cheer, must still be exerted even more than before marriage, but exerted only for her husband; not one little pleasing art, not one accomplishment should be given up, but used as affection dictates, to enhance ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... where I saw the Abbe Riva, a learned and discreet man, to whom I had been commended by M. Querini, his relation. The abbe enjoyed such a reputation for wisdom amongst his fellow-countrymen that he was a kind of arbiter in all disputes, and thus the expenses of the law were saved. It was no wonder that the gentlemen of the long robe hated him most cordially. His nephew, Jean Baptiste Riva, was a friend of the Muses, of Bacchus, and of Venus; he was also a friend ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... goes on:—"Each of the sensational entries was announced by M. Andre de Fouquieres, the arbiter of ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock

... people, bitterly hostile, were demanding vengeance on the Governments and peoples of the Central Powers, particularly those of Germany. President Wilson, it is true, had endeavored with a measure of success to maintain the position of an unbiased arbiter in the discussions leading up to the armistice of November 11, and Germany undoubtedly looked to him as the one hope of checking the spirit of revenge which animated the Allied Powers in view of all that they had suffered at the hands of the Germans. It is probable too that the Allies recognized ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... thus in respect of a multitude of isolated words, which were excellent Anglo-Saxon, which were excellent early English, and which only are not excellent present English, because use, which is the supreme arbiter in these matters, has decided against their further employment. Several of these I enumerated just now. It is thus also with several grammatical forms and flexions. For instance, where we decline the plural of "I sing", "we sing", "ye sing", "they sing", ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... from imaginary rather than real dangers, and who was at first content with having exchanged the right of reigning for the right of living, no sooner found himself in safety than he changed, his mind. He wrote to the Emperor protesting against his abdication, and appealed. to him as the arbiter of his future fate. ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... arbiter of Northern Europe. In May 1724, he had Catherine crowned and anointed as empress. But he was suffering from a mental disease, and of this he died, in Catherine's arms, in the following January, without ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... condemned to death, in his absence, at the Assizes Court of La Drome, for having murdered five people, and was cast off by his own faction. For some time his wife, who was infirm and deformed, might be seen going from house to house asking alms for him, who had been for two months the arbiter of civil war and assassination. Then came a day when she ceased her quest, and was seen sitting, her head covered by a black rag: Pointu was dead, but it was never known where or how. In some corner, probably, in the crevice of a rock or in the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... failed there, he husbanded the strength of Austria for the day of struggle, which he knew would come; and when it came, his genius raised his country at once from a defeated dependency of France, into the arbiter of Europe. While this great man lives, he ought to be supreme in the affairs of his country. But in case of his death, General Fiquelmont, the late ambassador to Russia, has been regarded as his probable successor. He is a man of ability and experience, and his appointment ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... externally at least, among the petty Greek states. But the internal condition of the several communities also furnished employment to the Roman arbiter. The Boeotians openly displayed their Macedonian tendencies, even after the expulsion of the Macedonians from Greece; after Flamininus had at their request allowed their countrymen who were in the service of Philip to return home, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... desire and aversion, of sorrow and joy, and that the elections we make are regulated by impressions supplied to us by these passions. But we are fully penetrated with the notion, that mind is an arbiter, that it sits on its throne, and decides, as an absolute prince, this may or that; in short, that, while inanimate nature proceeds passively in an eternal chain of cause and effect, mind is endowed with an initiating ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... of remaining is more desperate," he interrupted, quickly. "Besides, we shall not fail. It is in the book of fate." His expression changed; became fierce, eager. "Are you, indeed, the arbiter of that fate; the ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham

... distraction she is about to take the wrong sauce—actually at the point of ruining herself for ever and committing suicide upon her fashionable existence, while the keen grey eyes of Sir Antinous Antibes, the arbiter of fashion, are fixed upon her. At this awful moment, which is for ever to terminate her fashionable existence, the Honourable Augustus Bouverie, who sits next to her, gently touches her seduisante sleeve—blandly ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... volume of gas within it, which, in a wonderfully short space of time, turns the flesh putrid and renders the blubber so rotten that it cannot be lifted, nor, if it could, would it be of any value. So it was no wonder that our haste was great, or that the august arbiter of our destinies himself condescended to take his place among the toilers. By nightfall the whole of our catch was on board, excepting such toll as the hungry hordes of sharks had levied upon it in transit. A goodly number of them ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... in matters of opinion controlled by reason, there is no such ready detection and recognition of error, even by the best educated classes. The realm of opinion is ever in chaos. Contradictory opinions are ever clashing; no supreme arbiter is known; no law of reason, like the laws of mathematics, comes in to ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... all! Not at all!" corrected Mr. Tutt. "The law makes no pretense of being an arbiter of morals. Even where justice is concerned it expects the mere sentiment of the community to be capable of dealing with trifling offenses. The laws of etiquette and manners, devised for 'the purpose of ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... by what they do not know—or, for that matter, by what they do know. He who writes such a book as THE CORDS OF VANITY is committing himself to the supremely irrational faith that this dullness is somehow not the ultimate arbiter; and for him the pronouncements of this dullness simply do not figure among either his rewards or his penalties. So, it is not exactly to these tributes of the press that one reverts in noting that THE CORDS OF VANITY, ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... than the surface brain, penetrates to the inner sanctuary of true values, photographs something typical of war's many aspects, places the negative in the dark room of memory, and fades into inertia until again called upon to act as arbiter of significance for everyday instinct. Not till long later, when released from the tension of danger and abnormal endeavour, is one's mind free to develop the negative and produce a clear photograph. The sensitive freshness ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott

... gleaming bright with orange hue," One of them answer'd, "are so leaden gross, That with their weight they make the balances To crack beneath them. Joyous friars we were, Bologna's natives, Catalano I, He Loderingo nam'd, and by thy land Together taken, as men used to take A single and indifferent arbiter, To reconcile their strifes. How there we sped, Gardingo's vicinage can best declare." "O friars!" I began, "your miseries—" But there brake off, for one had caught my eye, Fix'd to a cross with three stakes on the ground: He, when he saw me, writh'd himself, throughout Distorted, ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... statesman's bow of dismissal, and withdrew under the patronage of a splendid footman. As the door closed, Mr. Belford, with a long sigh of relief, stepped to a bookcase and selected Petronius Arbiter's "Satyricon." ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer

... complete happiness for all her life,—I have sworn to be her friend;—and I must respectfully decline to be a party to any further deception in her case. Knowing what I know of her character, which is a pure and grand one, I think it would be far better to tell her the whole truth, and let her be the arbiter of her own destiny. She will decide well and truly, ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... highest typical human being should be. This "Ideal of Humanity," as it has been called, is more or less constantly and consciously pursued, and becomes a spur to national action and to a considerable degree an arbiter of national destiny. If the ideal is low and bestial, the course of that nation is downward, self-destroying; if it is lofty and pure, the energies of the people are directed toward the maintenance of those principles which are elevating and preservative. These are not mechanical ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton

... nature. He is, withal, in a very high degree susceptible of habits; and can, by forbearance or exercise, so far weaken, confirm, or even diversify his talents, and his dispositions, as to appear, in a great measure, the arbiter of his own rank in nature, and the author of all the varieties which are exhibited in the actual history of his species. The universal characteristics, in the mean time, to which we have now referred, must, when we would treat of any part of this history, constitute ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... are always on the side of what is right, noble, and honorable. He believed in a divine ordering of the world, and saw obscurely through the mists and shadows of heathenism the indications of the wisdom and rectitude of an overruling Providence. To him man did not appear as the sole arbiter of his own destiny, but rather as an unconscious agent in working out the designs of a Higher Power; and yet, as these designs were only dimly and imperfectly to be recognized, the noblest man was he who was truest to the eternal principles ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various

... eyes and his voice trembled." The Duke of Rovigo asserted that pardon would be granted; the Emperor's heart had already pronounced it, but he was very angry with the minister of police, who after having made a great fuss over this affair and got all the credit, left him supreme arbiter without having given him any information ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre

... development, the tendencies of the day, both good and bad, will make themselves felt. If, on the one hand, there is solid ground for rejoicing in the growing inclination to resort first to an impartial arbiter, if such can be found, when occasion for collision arises, there is, on the other hand, cause for serious reflection when this most humane impulse is seen to favor methods, which by compulsion shall vitally impair the moral freedom, and the consequent moral ...
— Lessons of the war with Spain and other articles • Alfred T. Mahan

... penance; conditions with which the priest would in times of ignorance and corruption, easily comply, as they increased his influence, by adding the knowledge of secret sins to that of notorious offences, and enlarged his authority, by making him the sole arbiter of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... The power descending, and the heavens on fire! "The gods (they cried), the gods this signal sent, And fate now labours with some vast event: Jove seals the league, or bloodier scenes prepares; Jove, the great arbiter ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... by the bedside. Prudencia's sobs ceased gradually, and she fell asleep. An hour later the door opened softly, and Reinaldo entered. In spite of the mescal in him, his knees shook as he saw the indulgent but stern arbiter of the Iturbi y Moncada destinies sitting in judgment at the bedside of ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... the friend of all young authors, and has marked and nurtured all the rising talent of the country. It is loved by everybody. There, again, is BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE—conspicuous for modest elegance and amiable satire; that review never passes the bounds of politeness in a joke. It is the arbiter of manners; and, while gently exposing the foibles of Londoners (for whom the BEAUX ESPRITS of Edinburgh entertain a justifiable contempt), it is never coarse in its fun. The fiery enthusiasm of the ATHENAEUM is well known: and ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... sort I should finish my life. But when I saw that fortune should minister unto mee no other instrument than that which my bed profered me, I said, O bed, O bed, most dear to me at this present, which hast abode and suffered with me so many miseries, judge and arbiter of such things as were done here this night, whome onely I may call to witnesse for my innocency, render (I say) unto me some wholesome weapon to end my life, that am most willing to dye. And therewithal I pulled out a piece of the rope wherewith ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... of it does not stand forth clearly; The public conscience fidgets, and feels queerly. Yes, to be arbiter, by law's compulsion, In such a case, with issues so immense, Is hard, no doubt; the public common sense Against the arrangement turns with strong revulsion; And the right remedy, as all must feel, Is in a Court of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various

... Myron)—Ver. 7. Myron was a famous sculptor, statuary, and engraver, of Greece. He was a native of Eleutherae, in Boeotia, and according to Petronius Arbiter, died in ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus

... first Horace containing both text and notes, which were those of Acro and Porphyrio, and in 1482 appeared Landinus's notes, the first printed commentary on Horace by a modern humanist. Landinus was prefaced by a Latin poem of Politian's, who, with Lorenzo dei Medici, was a sort of arbiter in taste, and who produced in 1500 a Horace of his own. Mancinelli, who, like many other scholars of the time, gave public readings and interpretations of Horace and other classics, in 1492 dedicated to the ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman

... arms. Prowess in war is the readiest appraiser of men's spirits. Therefore let warriors have no fearfulness and the brave no fickleness: let pleasure quit their soul and yield place to arms. Glory is now appointed for wages; each can be the arbiter of his own renown, and shine by his own right hand. Let nought here be tricked out with wantonness: let all be full of sternness, and learn how to rid them of this calamity. He who covets the honours or prizes of glory must not be faint with craven ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")

... were anxious to treasure up Scripture in the memory, for in all matters of faith and practice the Written Word was regarded as the standard of ultimate appeal. No human authority whatever was deemed equal to the award of this divine arbiter. "They who are labouring after excellency," says a father of this period, "will not stop in their search after truth, until they have obtained proof of that which they believe from the Scriptures themselves." ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... and the allied craftsmen were within the University's jurisdiction or not. In 1276 it was desired to settle their position as between the regents and scholars of the University and the Archdeacon of Ely. Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely, when called in as arbiter, decided that writers, illuminators, and stationers, who exercise offices peculiarly for the behoof of the scholars, were answerable to the Chancellor; but their wives to the Archdeacon. Nearly a century later, in 1353-54, we find Edward III issuing a writ commanding justices of the ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage

... amateurs, and his White Eagle of Poland appears upon no volume that is not among the best of its kind. He sat at one time at the feet of the Abbe de Rothelin; but he soon became his master's equal in matters of taste, and was accepted until his exile at Nancy as the arbiter of elegance among the Parisians. M. Guigard quotes from the dedication of a 'treasury' of French poetry a passage that indicates his high position: 'To the poets in this assemblage, whoever they be, it is a glory, Monseigneur, to enter ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton

... populous City, a young maiden Has baffled Havoc of the prey which he Marks as his own, whene'er with chains o'erladen Men make them arms to hurl down tyranny,— 1615 False arbiter between the bound and free; And o'er the land, in hamlets and in towns The multitudes collect tumultuously, And throng in arms; but tyranny disowns Their claim, and gathers strength around its ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... lesser points of life. In the world of politics things wear a different aspect; the rules which are to guide your individual steps give way before the national interests. If you reach that sphere where great men revolve you will be, like God himself, the sole arbiter of your determinations. You will no longer be a man, but law, the living law; no longer an individual, you are then the Nation incarnate. But remember this, though you judge, you will yourself be judged; hereafter you will be summoned ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac

... care of your clothes, too," proceeded the arbiter elegantiarum. "Fold your trousers when you take them off, and have them pressed. Get your hair cut once a week—have a regular day for it. Trim your nails twice a week. I've got you a safety razor. Shave at least once a day—first thing after you get out of bed is the best time. And change your linen ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... adapter adviser affirmer aider almoner annoyer arbiter assenter asserter bailer caster censer (vessel) concocter condenser conferrer conjurer consulter continuer contradicter contriver convener conveyer corrupter covenanter debater defender deliberater ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton

... dominions, or rather out of theirs, to receive in their stead a stranger God, who usurps to himself divine honours, and will neither admit of a superior nor an equal. They added haughtily, that it is true he was a king; but what a kind of king was a profane man? Was it for him to be the arbiter of religion, and to judge the gods? What probability was there too, that all the religions of Japan should err, and the most prudent of the nation be deceived after the run of so many ages? What would posterity say, when they should ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden

... furiously. "Speak! since we are nothing and nobody here, and you are everything. Since you are sole arbiter in this ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... each plant side by side a twig or sprout of some tree or herb, and he to whose plant God gave growth should be the owner of the farm. This advice was accepted; for God, both thought, was a safer arbiter than man. One of the brothers, Arne, chose a fern (Ormgrass), and the other, Ulf, a sweet-brier. A week later, they went with the wise man and two other neighbors to the remote pasture at the edge of the glacier where, by common consent, they had made their appeal to ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... dreadful battle-din will take place again, or Jove is establishing friendship between both sides, he who has been ordained the arbiter of war ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... professions to flock to the banquet. The masters ask each one of them what good deed he has performed between the rising of the sun and the present hour. Thereupon one tells how he has been chosen as arbiter between two of his fellows, has healed their quarrel, reconciled their strife, dispelled their suspicions and made them friends instead of foes. Another tells how he has obeyed some command of his parents, another relates some discovery ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius

... thousand dollars. She saw herself in a score of pathetic situations in which she assumed a tremulous voice and suffering manner. Her mind delighted itself with scenes of luxury and refinement, situations in which she was the cynosure of all eyes, the arbiter of all fates. As she rocked to and fro she felt the tensity of woe in abandonment, the magnificence of wrath after deception, the languour of sorrow after defeat. Thoughts of all the charming women ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... at the expense of the other. The strictest impartiality could alone give a dignity to her measures, or crown them with success. She further wished to be the means of re-establishing peace, and was perhaps influenced by the laudable ambition of being at the same time the great legislator and arbiter of Europe. At this critical moment it could hardly be expected, that she would publicly entertain a Minister from the United States. For though the powers at war have many collateral objects, yet it is well known, that American independence is the great question ...
— The Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution, Vol. VIII • Various

... sacrifice of blood and treasure will have been in vain. If we forget the watchword which called our boys to the colours, our victory will be fruitless. We have fought in this twentieth century against the pagan German doctrine of war as the supreme arbiter between the tribes of mankind. They that took the sword must perish by the sword. But in the hour of victory we must uphold the end for which we have fought and suffered,—the advance of the world towards a peaceful life founded ...
— What Peace Means • Henry van Dyke

... English-writing novelist. Whether he will so far control this following as to decide the nature of the novel with us remains to be seen. Will the reader be content to accept a novel which is an analytic study rather than a story, which is apt to leave him arbiter of the destiny of the author's creations? Will he find his account in the unflagging interest of their development? Mr. James's growing popularity seems to suggest that this may be the case; but the work of Mr. James's imitators will have much to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... pupils: let him show that the heart was not made for such feelings; that, if they are nurtured there, no room will be found for noble and generous sentiments. Quarrels will occur in which blows will be dealt lustily: a few simple illustrations will prove that force is a dangerous and imperfect arbiter of justice. If unhappily falsehood prevails, let him make haste to supplant a habit, so fearful and pernicious, though every thing else be laid aside. Let him show the great inconvenience a man must experience in whose word no confidence ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews

... the walls Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake And monarchs tremble in their capitals, The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make Their clay creator the vain title take Of lord of thee and arbiter of war,— These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, They melt into thy yeast of waves, which mar Alike the Armada's pride or spoils ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various

... that temple, where Heydegger, the great Arbiter Deliciarum, the great high-priest of pleasure, presides; and, like other heathen priests, imposes on his votaries by the pretended presence of the deity, when in reality no such deity ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... The ancients hardly ever drank wine neat. Hence the allusion. The symposiarch, or arbiter bibendi, settled the proportions ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... man had hoped to form an integral part of the new household, to be the organizer of festivities, the 'arbiter elegantiarum'. Instead of which, Sidonie received him very coldly, and Risler no longer even took him to the brewery. However, the actor did not complain too loud, and whenever he met his friend ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... escapade, certainly, and it was a very pretty boy that contrived it. What do you think would be suitable punishment for such a crime? You shall be the arbiter of his fate." ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon

... printed another imitation of Petronius Arbiter, the "Larissa" story of Theophile Viand. His cousin, the Sevigne, highly approved of it. See Bayle's objections to Rabutin's delicacy and excuses for Petronius' grossness in his "Eclaircissement sur les obscenites" (Appendice ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... He was the owner of a small farm, which he managed so well that he became one of the richest of the peasant proprietors at Rognes. He was a man of calm, upright nature, and was frequently selected as arbiter in petty disputes. In his own affairs, however, he allowed himself to be much influenced by his wife. He was a municipal councillor, and ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... seek her friendship and good will. For instance, if things went well in Baden, one could confidently foretell that at the end of the summer season Natasha would be found in Nice or Geneva, queen of the winter season, the lioness of the day, and the arbiter of fashion. She and Bodlevski always behaved with such propriety and watchful care that not a shadow ever fell on Natasha's fame. It is true that Bodlevski had to change his name once or twice and to seek a new ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... would absorb man in the greatness of the Deity. These two schools have advocated doctrines which, logically carried out to their ultimate sequences, would produce a Grecian humanitarianism on the one hand, and a sort of Bramanism on the other,—the one making man the arbiter of his own destiny, independently of divine agency, and the other making the Deity the only power of the universe. With one school, God as the only controlling agency is a fiction, and man himself is infinite in faculties; the other holds that God is everything ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... lives outside the actual world, and, moreover in this ever-agitated democracy he is the eternal informer and instigator of every riot and murder that takes place; he it is who under the name of "the people's friend" becomes the arbiter of lives and the veritable sovereign.—That a people borne down with taxes, wretched and starving, indoctrinated by public speakers and sophists, should have welcomed this theory and acted under it is again comprehensible; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... and window ledges of which are lined with an expectant crowd of Sidis of varying age, from the small boy of eight years to the elderly headman or patel, who is responsible for the good behaviour of the community and is the general arbiter of their internal disputes. This is the Sidi Jamatkhana or caste-hall: and long before you reach the door threading your way through a crowd of squatting hawkers, your ears are assailed by the most deafening noise, reminding you forcibly of the coppersmith's bazaar with an accompaniment of rythmic ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.

... you found me, or rather I found you—you, the critic, the arbiter of the greenroom, the highly-organised do-nothings—teaching others how to do nothing most gracefully; the would-be Goethe who must, for the sake of his own self-development, try experiments on every weak woman ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... who he was.[1] And that flying about brought a vast crowd together to look on this astonishing instance of the uncertainty of all worldly greatness, when he who had ruled three kingdoms and might have been the arbiter of all Europe was now in such mean hands, and so low an equipage. The people of the town were extremely disordered with this unlooked-for accident; and, though for a while they kept him as a prisoner, yet they quickly changed that into as much respect as they could ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... method so absolute that Virginius, while made an actual man to every human heart, was kept a hero to the universal imagination, whether of scholar or peasant, and a white ideal of manly purity and grace to that great faculty of taste which is the umpire and arbiter ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter

... devotion for the England she had never known, had spent itself upon the Englands she found beyond the seas; upon the hard-worked soldiers and civilians in lonely Indian stations, upon the captains of English ships, upon the pioneers of Canadian fields and railways; upon England, in fact, as the arbiter of oriental faiths—the wrestler with the desert—the mother and maker of new states. A passion for the work of her race beyond these narrow seas—a passion of sympathy, which was also a passion of antagonism, since every phase of that work, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... time silent. She revolved in her mind all the particulars of her situation. She had at first considered her ravisher in no other light than as hateful and despicable, but she was now compelled to regard this venomous little animal, as the arbiter of her fate, and the master of her fortunes. She reflected with horror, how much she was in his power, what ill usage he might inflict, and to what extremities he might reduce her. She now seriously thought of exerting herself ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin

... our nation is to be far too vivacious amidst prosperity. If we take for the basis of all our operations true policy, which is nothing else than the calculation of combinations and chances, we shall long be la grande nation and the arbiter of Europe. I say more: we hold the balance of Europe: we will make that balance incline as we wish; and, if such is the order of fate, I think it by no means impossible that we may in a few years attain those grand results of which ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... mass with the State that is conquered. Only the conqueror is to take special care that they grow not too strong, nor be entrusted with too much authority, and then he can easily with his own forces and their assistance keep down the greatness of his neighbours, and make himself absolute arbiter in that province." Here is the old maxim, "Divide and conquer." To gain an entry some pretence is advisable. Machiavelli speaks with approval of a certain potentate who always made religion a pretence. Having entered a vigorous policy must be pursued. ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney



Words linked to "Arbiter" :   supreme authority, fashion arbiter, expert, judge, third party, Petronius Arbiter, arbitrator, evaluator, arbitrate



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