"Arbitrary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the rovers of high life and the character of perennity impressed everywhere in the great city of the Caesars and of the Popes which has caused me to choose the spot where even the corners speak of a secular past, there to evoke some representatives of the most modern, as well as the most arbitrary and the most momentary, life. You, who know better than any one the motley world of cosmopolites, understand why I have confined myself to painting here only a fragment of it. That world, indeed, does not exist, it can have neither defined customs nor a general character. It is composed ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... reflections of this sort. The destitution of the Campagna of Rome demonstrates triumphantly what an aversion mankind has to arbitrary government, while the well-populated mountain of St Marino shows what a natural love they have for liberty. Whigs abroad were well caricatured by Smollett in Peregrine Pickle in the figures of the ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... sense. The man, in whose favour no laws of property exist, probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favour of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience. And it is a problem which I give the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property, were not formed for him, ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest
... succeeded in getting any answer beyond "I dunno, gin (or lubra) no more see 'em; gin see 'em, she tumble down quick fella." There must be some very queer superstition connected with them, since the ladies die on seeing them. Indeed, the black fellow has a somewhat arbitrary method of dealing with his gins, and should they be ill-advised enough to attempt to argue with him, does not wait to produce a flat stick, but ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... on the conduct of the Portuguese kings, ministers, governors, and commanders, as well as for his remarks on many other occasions. These are always just, and have often an air of freedom that might not have been expected under an arbitrary government: But in matters regarding religion, he often discovers a surprising reverse of character, full of weak and puerile credulity, the never-failing consequence of education and publication under the influence of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... destroyed every noble principle of science and virtue, was unable to resist the vigorous efforts of a free people; and Europe, as from a new epoch, rekindled her ancient spirit, and shook off the base servitude to arbitrary will and authority under which she had so long laboured. The free constitutions then established, however impaired by the encroachments of succeeding princes, still preserve an air of independence and legal administration, which distinguish the European nations; and if ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... have no constitution or bylaws; ignore the idea of man's total depravity; and believe that all who are actuated by a love of truth and a desire to progress (and we will knowingly accept no others), can be better governed by love and moral suasion than by any arbitrary laws. Our government consists in free criticism. We have a ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... to call the new thousand years of Chinese history "Modern Times" in order to indicate that from c. 860 on changes in China's social structure came about which set this epoch off from the earlier thousand years which we called "The Middle Ages". Any division into periods is arbitrary as changes do not happen from one year to the next. The first beginnings of the changes which lead to the "Modern Times" actually can be seen from the end of An Lu-shan's rebellion on, from c. A.D. 780 on, and the transformation ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... theory of marriage and the relations between men and women. I think it is not only fallacious, but a strangely superficial way of regarding a question which is made only the more serious by the fact that a great deal of suffering and much injustice result, not from arbitrary and removable causes, but from nature herself, and those fundamental laws which ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... things we produce by submitting to this, bad enough even at first, becomes intolerable when the mediocre or foolish descendants of the clever fellows claim to have inherited their privileges. Now, no men are greater sticklers for the arbitrary dominion of genius and talent than your artists. The great painter is not satisfied with being sought after and admired because his hands can do more than ordinary hands, which they truly can, but he wants to ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... original but, considered by itself, it is good poetry. The disillusionment comes only with comparison. On the whole, this second attempt to put Shakespeare into Landsmaal was distinctly less successful than the first. As poetry it does not measure up to Aasen; as translation it is periphrastic, arbitrary, not ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... parents would have continued longer, that they might have gone to school. Two women, mother and daughter, in one family, are much interested in the worship of God, and already begin to feel the value of their souls; and both regret that they are under the necessity of submitting to the arbitrary will of the father. One of them declared that she could never more act as a Gipsy, and with weeping eyes she said, that, she feared she never should be pardoned, or saved. When directed to go to Jesus, she ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... in Utah. He explained and justified the appointments he had made there—appointments that had been recommended by Southern senators and representatives who, because they were Southerners, were opposed to the undue extension and arbitrary use of Federal power. He had made Caleb W. West of Kentucky governor of Utah on the recommendation of Senator Blackburn of Kentucky, my father's friend. He had made Frank H. Dyer, originally of Mississippi, United States Marshal. He had ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... 20th, but with a break of 1 h. 40 m. on the morning of the 19th, as, owing to the glass filament pointing too much to one side, the pot had to be slightly moved; therefore the relative position of the two tracings is somewhat arbitrary. The figure here given is reduced to one-fifth of the original scale. Apex of leaf 9 inches from the glass in the line of its inclination, and 4 3/4 in a horizontal line. coming only from above. It zigzagged between 6 P.M. and 10.35 P.M., and ascended a little during the night. It ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... tried. The landlord was supposed to be a model landlord, and his estates were held up at the very time as models; yet evictions had been fearfully and constantly carried out on them. Mr. Butt has well observed: "The rules of the estate are often the most arbitrary and the most sternly enforced upon great estates, the property of men of the highest station, upon which rents are moderate, and no harshness practised to the tenantry, who implicitly submit." Such landlords generally consider emigration the great remedy for ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... this way folkways arise. The young learn them by tradition, imitation, and authority. The folkways, at a time, provide for all the needs of life then and there. They are uniform, universal in the group, imperative, and invariable. As time goes on, the folkways become more and more arbitrary, positive, and imperative. If asked why they act in a certain way in certain cases, primitive people always answer that it is because they and their ancestors always have done so. A sanction also arises from ghost fear. The ghosts of ancestors would be angry if the living should change ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... that the ship came out of dock we joined her. Our labours were now unremitted, to get her in readiness for sea. Amidst all our exertions it was impossible to give any satisfaction; our chief mate was very arbitrary, and vented his spleen upon the defenceless midshipmen, besides making the backs of the poor seamen sore with starting. Starting is a term used for rope's-ending a man, or otherwise laying a Point severely ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to India; of a Shipwreck on board the Lady Castlereagh; and a Description of New South Wales • W. B. Cramp
... with his sisters "whiles," she acknowledged in secret; he was arbitrary with his little brothers when they neglected tasks of his giving; and tried his mother and his grandmother, now and then, as young lads always have, and always will try their mothers and grandmothers, until old heads can ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... interest of patriotism, that any pretended private revelation must necessarily have become a farce. No one, especially, would have held any such secret for months, and then divulged it in the ambiguous mode of a romance, while arbitrary arrests and unexplained imprisonments were making the once free States of the Old Union a second Venice. Suspicious circumstances have been observed, and suspicious persons put under watch; but if anything more than mere suspicion has been reached, the disloyal persons themselves, and the ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... of my journey I reached Ganhard, which was formerly one of the most prosperous towns in Central India, but is now much decayed and governed by a wealthy, arbitrary, violent, generous, and cruel prince. His name is Rajah Maddan, a true Oriental potentate, delicate and barbarous, affable and sanguinary, combining ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... with me provided that Varvilliers were there to—shall I say to take the edge off me?—but cared not a jot to meet me in his absence. The latter circumstance is simply and conventionally explained (and, after all, these conventional expressions are no more arbitrary than the alphabet, which is admitted to be a useful means of communicating our ideas) by saying that Elsa was falling in love with Varvilliers; my own state of mind would deserve analysis, but for a haunting notion that no states of mind ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... his employees, who had been discharged by him on what they deemed insufficient grounds, helped to deepen the impression that he was an unjust and arbitrary man, merciless to all offenders, and intolerant of the slightest infringement of his ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... localities, or induced by horticulture, may be named as they please by the people living near the spot, or by the gardener who grows them; but will not be acknowledged by Proserpina. Nevertheless, the arbitrary reduction under Ordines, Gentes, and Familiae, {190} is always to be remembered as one of massive practical convenience only; and the more subtle arborescence of the infinitely varying structures may be followed, like a human genealogy, as far as we please, afterwards; ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... periods—"Antiquity", "The Middle Ages", and "Modern Times". This does not mean that we compare these periods with periods of the same name in Western history although, naturally, we find some similarities with the development of society and culture in the West. Every attempt towards periodization is to some degree arbitrary: the beginning and end of the Middle Ages, for instance, cannot be fixed to a year, because development is a continuous process. To some degree any periodization is a matter of convenience, and it should ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... for some time, re-reading chosen passages as he walked about the room, and considering he scarce knew what. There are ideas language is too gross for, and shape too arbitrary, which come to us and have a definite influence upon us, and yet we cannot fasten on the filmy things and make them visible and distinct to ourselves, much less to others. Why did he twice throw a look into the glass in the act of passing it? He stood for a moment with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... gold and silver can be used together as standard money only under the real intrinsic values as recognized by all the world; that any attempt to force either gold or silver into unlimited circulation, under any arbitrary ratio different from their real ratio, is not honest; and that dishonesty is the worst of all financial policies, as well as the most unworthy ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... ecclesiastically, however loudly Bodmin may claim to be the assize town. Partly by reason of its shape, partly perhaps from other causes, there has been little centralisation in Cornwall, and the very selection of Truro to be the cathedral city was in some sort an artificial and arbitrary arrangement. No doubt it was the best that could have been made; but old Cornwall had no such centre, and there were rival claims to be considered. It may not be incorrect to say that Cornwall of to-day has several capitals: Penzance is ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... attempting to vindicate him in all his violent reproaches of those whom he politically disliked. We would, however, wish to deprecate unmitigated condemnation, and also to ask, whether the conduct of those whom he denounced, was not, in its turn, so harsh and arbitrary, as almost to justify the utmost severity of censure. Were they not men who would "scarcely believe in the substance of their liberty, if they did not see it cast a shadow of ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... all of the progressive notes that are being sounded in American Elementary Education; yet it is possible, after some arbitrary picking and choosing, to describe a number of the most typical and most successful educational innovations. At the bottom of most up-to-date elementary school systems is the kindergarten. Not so often as it might ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... restrictions. Among these were a number of French Huguenots, good men, driven from their homes by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1690. Then Flemings, Germans, Poles, and others constantly swelled the ranks. All these Europeans were forced to submit to the arbitrary rules of the Netherlands Company's agents, scarcely at all restrained from Amsterdam. Unofficial residents, known as Burghers, came to be admitted to share in the management of affairs. It was for their benefit ...
— Native Races and the War • Josephine Elizabeth Butler
... he pillage me and my family, thus frustrate all my plans of usefulness. Yet this was the man I was bound to respect and esteem: as if respect and esteem depended on an arbitrary will of our own! But a wife being as much a man's property as his horse, or his ass, she has nothing she can call her own. He may use any means to get at what the law considers as his, the moment his wife is in possession ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... lucrative employments. The principal aim of the Revolution was to abolish those privileges." He then declared the advantages of the Revolution. "It had established the right of every citizen, according to his merit, to attain to every employment; it had broken down the arbitrary divisions of the provinces, and out of many little nations formed a great one. It made the civil and criminal laws the same every where—the regulations and taxes the same every where. The half of the country ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... arbitrary creature. You never can tell what pebble she will pick up from the shore of life to keep among her treasures, or what inconspicuous flower of the field she will ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... unpardonable. Further, their powers had been enlarged by Camden's order of May 1797, allowing them to use armed force without the requisition of magistrates, a step deemed necessary to screen the civil authorities from outrage or murder. Seeing that officers often put these powers to a brutal and arbitrary use, exasperating to the peasants and demoralizing to the soldiery, Abercromby determined publicly to rescind the viceregal mandate. The language in which he announced his decision was no less remarkable than the decision itself. On 26th February 1798 he stated in a general order: ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... simple and so familiar have acquired an astonishingly wide range and be generally regarded as symbolic of life? Much has to be learnt before the problem is solved. One thing seems fairly certain—the choice has not been wholly arbitrary; there has been at work an intuitional, subconscious factor. Is it possible that the negativing of a line in one direction by a line in another direction raises subliminally a sense of strain, then of effort, then of purposeful will, and so, lastly, of life? Probably ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... European writing is said to be found in the statement of an Arabian traveller, that after the year 879 the main sources of revenue in Canton were the duties on salt and tea. Marco Polo records the deposition of a Chinese minister of finance in 1285 for his arbitrary augmentation of the tea-taxes. It was at the period of the great discoveries that the European people began to know more about the extreme Orient. At the end of the sixteenth century the Hollanders brought the news that a pleasant drink was ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... ambition. The same demi-philosophy which influenced thee in private life exercised a far benigner and happier power over thee in public. Thou wert not idly vexatious in vestries, nor ordinarily tyrannic in thy parish; if thou wert ever arbitrary it was only when thy pleasure was checked, or thy vanity wounded. At other times thou didst leave events to their legitimate course, so that in thy latter years thou wert justly popular in thy parish; and in the grave thy great good fortune will outshine thy few bad qualities, and men will say of ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... world he blindly leads away, And personally rules with arbitrary sway: The mask thrown off, plain devil, his title stands; And what elsewhere he tempts, he there commands; There, with full gust, th' ambition of his mind, Governs, as he of old in heaven design'd: Worshipp'd as God, his Paynim ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... tell you off-hand that this is a father-complex dream. Certain symbols seem to be put into complex catalogues. But it is all too arbitrary. ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... miracles, which he regards as effects produced by second causes of which we are ignorant, that is, by some higher law of nature. The Scriptures, however, teach that God is not thus bound; that He operates through second causes, with them, or without them, as He sees fit. It is a purely arbitrary assumption, that when Christ raised the dead, healed the lepers, or gave sight to the blind, any second cause intervened between the effect and the efficiency of his will. What physical law, or uniformly acting force, operated to make the axe float at the command ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... would tell them that a truly benevolent being would not believe he had the right to abstain from doing good; we would tell them that a truly generous being does not take back what he has given, and any man who does it, forfeits gratitude, and has no right to complain of ingratitude. How can the arbitrary and whimsical conduct which theologians ascribe to God, be reconciled with the religion which supposes a compact or mutual agreement between this God and men? If God owes nothing to His creatures, they, on their part, can not owe anything ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... shades and "fades" but the grey would appear to be undoubtedly a true color variety and one that should be recognised as a provisional, if wholly unintentional, color change. Scott, in fact, lists it as a separate issue under the date 1875-77, but this is an arbitrary classification which has, apparently, no foundation in fact, and the best plan is to include the variety in its logical place with the ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... wall there is a deep well which now contains no water. One of the rooms in the keep is pointed out as that in which Prince Arthur was kept in confinement, but although it is known that the unfortunate youth was imprisoned in this castle, the selection of the room seems to be somewhat arbitrary. ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... will be looked on as a confirmation of that independent spirit with which we are daily reproached." Jefferson said that if his advice were followed, all the use the Virginians should make of their charter would be "to prevent any arbitrary or oppressive government to be established within the boundaries of it"; and that it was his wish "to see a free government established at the back of theirs [Virginia's] properly united with them." He would not consent, however, that Congress should acknowledge ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... be accounted for is the fact clearly focussed, with its less clearly defined fringe: Bergson's sweeping assumption of the existence of a further vast field of virtual knowledge in order to account for it, does, at first sight, seem arbitrary and unwarranted and in. need of considerable justification before it can be accepted. For him the problem then becomes, not to account for our knowing as much as we do, but to see why it is that we do not know a great deal more: why our actual knowledge does not cover the whole field ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... rather, a man free to do anything he chose, it had been used by the Tartar hordes to designate the lower class of their horsemen. From the princes of the House of Rurik these southerly districts passed into the possession of Lithuania, and, later, into those of Poland. Little Russia was another arbitrary name anciently given to a great part of what has been also known as the Ukraine. No fixed geographical limits can be assigned to either of these designations, and especially to the Ukraine of the Poles or the Muscovites; ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... regular gradation within the limits of their class, since comparative perfection implies comparative rank, and a correct estimate of these degrees of complication requires an intimate and extensive knowledge of structure throughout the class. There would seem to be an arbitrary element here,—that of our individual appreciation of structural character. If one man holds a certain kind of structural characters superior to another, he will establish the rank of the order upon that feature, while some other naturalist, appreciating a different point ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... long list, covering nearly a century, exhibited gifts fitting him for the government of a spirited and intelligent people, or made the slightest impression for good either for the Crown or the Colony. Their disposition was to be despotic, and to prevent a repetition of such arbitrary conduct, Jay sought to restrict the governor's power in making ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... habitable globe for materials and products which they can procure to the best advantage from outside their own special field so long as they are allowed access to these outlying sources of supply; and any arbitrary limitation on this freedom of traffic makes the conditions of life that much harder, and lowers the aggregate efficiency of the community by that much. National self-sufficiency is to be achieved only by a degree of economic isolation; ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... in Ireland in 1685, had recommended himself to his bigoted master, James II, by his arbitrary treatment of the Protestants in that country, and in the following year he was created Earl of Tyrconnel, and, being a furious Papist, was nominated by the King to the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland. In 1688 he was going to Ireland on a second expedition at the time that the advanced guard ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... opinion—a mere prejudice originating in rivalry. For, though we have ample choice of terms, and may frequently assign to particular words a meaning and an explanation which are in some degree arbitrary; yet whenever we attempt to define things under the name which custom has positively fixed upon them, we are no longer left to arbitrary explications; but are bound to think and to say that only which shall commend itself to the understanding of others, as being altogether true ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... currency exchange rates and expanded the state's right to intervene in the management of private enterprises. Since 2005, the government has re-nationalized a number of private companies. In addition, businesses have been subject to pressure by central and local governments, e.g., arbitrary changes in regulations, numerous rigorous inspections, retroactive application of new business regulations, and arrests of "disruptive" businessmen and factory owners. A wide range of redistributive policies has helped those at the bottom of the ladder; the Gini coefficient is among the lowest ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... profession, passed away, leaving a void in base-ball circles that was indeed hard to fill. It has often been a matter of sincere regret, both to myself and others, that he could not have lived to witness the fruition of all his hopes. Arbitrary and severe though he may have been at times, yet the fact remains that he was the best friend that the ball players had ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... greatest wisdom cannot avoid all evils; it can only choose the least. Sound statesmanship regards any stretch of power better than the overthrow of the nation. Probably there never was a more able and wise body of men assembled, or more jealous of any exercise of arbitrary power, than the First Congress of the United States; and yet, almost in the commencement of our struggle for independence, when events wore such a gloomy aspect that failure seemed inevitable, rising above its fears of despotic measures, in its greater ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... audience; that this was the use of orators from Demosthenes and Cicero up and down. He studied every word and syllable, and memorized them by a system of mnemonics peculiar to himself, consisting of an arbitrary arrangement of things on a table—knives, forks, salt-cellars; inkstands, pens, boxes, or whatever was at hand—which stood for points and clauses and climaxes, and were at once indelible diction and constant suggestion. He studied every tone and every gesture, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a coup d'etat, very similar to the one which has recently been perpetrated by the Prince of Bulgaria, in all probability under the same tutelage. In his case, however, the nation refused to submit to such an arbitrary proceeding, and although it succeeded for a time, that, coupled with his avarice, gross immorality, and general misgovernment, led to his ultimate downfall. In 1864 the monasteries were secularised, that is to say, they were claimed as State property, a proceeding which was sanctioned ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... excite surprise that what appears to be so small a difference as that which exists between a beam, a round arch, or a pointed arch, should be employed in order to distinguish three of the four great divisions. But in reality this is no pedantic or arbitrary grouping. The mode in which spaces or openings are covered lies at the root of most of the essential differences between styles of architecture, and the distinction thus drawn is one of a real, ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... territory, a title without meaning—that you wish to distribute his subjects and provinces, and form of them new nations. But your majesty knows well that we cannot with impunity rob a people of their inalienable and noblest rights—of their nationality—give them arbitrary frontiers, and transform them into new states. Nationality is a sentiment inherent in the human heart, and our Prussians have proud hearts. They love ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... rigid application of the law, sentence Solomon unto damnation, condemn not only him, but themselves, and the whole world; for by the letter and written word of God, we are with- out exception in the state of death: but there is a pre- rogative of God, and an arbitrary pleasure above the letter of his own law, by which alone we can pretend unto salvation, and through which Solomon might be as easily saved as those who ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... divided into three military districts, governed by Bermdez, Mario and Pez. These three men had been at times hostile to Bolvar, and, in order to satisfy their ambitions, he had placed them in high commands. Pez was stationed in Caracas, where his arbitrary rule was resented by the people. He intrigued against the vice-president, Santander, executing his commands in such a way as to produce ill-will, especially an order providing for the recruiting of soldiers in Venezuela, which because ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... decipher no principles but those that are writ in blood, and the evils of legality will always be pacific; it flattens a nation down, that is all. Jacquet, a man of modern liberty, returned home reflecting on the benefits of arbitrary power. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... be with you I cannot foretell. But you may be sure that He never works in an arbitrary way. He has a reason for everything He does. You may not understand why He leads you now in this way and now in that, but you may, nay, you must believe that perfection is stamped on ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... than had passed upon their owners. They had altered—that is, their descendants had altered—into such creatures as I have not attempted to describe except in the vaguest manner—the various parts of their bodies assuming, in an apparently arbitrary and self-willed manner, the most abnormal developments. Indeed, so little did any distinct type predominate in some of the bewildering results, that you could only have guessed at any known animal as the original, and even then, what likeness remained ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... the eyes of others less contained, less conscious, whose sense of humor might be more slender perhaps. Her own nature was practical and managing in its ordinary aspect, and she had a degree of tact that was always interfering with her love of honesty. Having established a friendship by the arbitrary law of sympathy, it must be admitted that she had an instinctive way of trying to strengthen it by voluntary benefits, for affection was a great need ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... only of strong ambition but of arbitrary temperament. He could not tolerate the idea of a newcomer pre-empting what he had considered his premises. If he could not rule he was ready to ruin. That disposition accorded with both his mental and physical make-up. Bodily he was a bundle of bones and nerves without a particle of ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... liberation, and summoned him to their court at Grenada, forwarding money to enable him to proceed there in a style befitting his rank. They then received him with all possible signs of distinction; repudiated Bobadilla's arbitrary proceedings; and promised the admiral compensation and satisfaction. As a mark of their disapprobation of the way in which Bobadilla had acted under their commission, they pointedly refused to enquire ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... no," he interrupted, smiling. "The men were discontented, despatched a deputation, and were fired on by the Prince. English juries don't like these arbitrary German military ways." ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... necessary to remember that the pretension existed with regard to all the rest, in their earliest stage, and to anticipate therefore that social science will, in its turn, be emancipated from the delusion.... It [the existing social science] represents the social action of Man to be indefinite and arbitrary, as was once thought in regard to biological, chemical, physical, and even astronomical phenomena, in the earlier stages of their respective sciences.... The human race finds itself delivered over, without logical protection, to the ill-regulated experimentation of ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... formed a select society of twelve gods and goddesses, but their choice was arbitrary, and all did not agree on the same series. The Greeks of different countries and of different epochs often represented the same god under different forms. Further, the majority of the gods seem to us to have vague and undetermined attributes; this is because they ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... His arbitrary and contradictory character weighed upon the inhabitants of his lands with both cruel and good-natured tyranny. No vagabond ever passed by the ranch without being rudely assailed by ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... namesake alone, of those who in school-phraseology constituted "our set," presumed to compete with me in the studies of the class—in the sports and broils of the play-ground—to refuse implicit belief in my assertions, and submission to my will—indeed, to interfere with my arbitrary dictation in any respect whatsoever. If there is on earth a supreme and unqualified despotism, it is the despotism of a master-mind in boyhood over the less energetic ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... order of Rhizanths, as well as that of Gymnosperms, I consider as a retrograde step in Botanical science. It is totally opposed to all sound principles of classification, and is a proof that, in the nineteenth century, arbitrary characters are still sought for, and when found ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... I gave, and notwithstanding Colonel Littlefield's good intentions, I blush to tell you that the party returned loaded with plunder. Sir, till now, I never wished for arbitrary power. I could gibbet half a dozen good whigs, with all the venom of an inveterate tory. The party had not been returned an hour, before I had six or seven persons from New-Rochelle and Frog's Neck, with piteous applications for ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... most consummate vanity." The following is a specimen of his acuteness in criticising the absurd style of his adversary:—"You leave it rather dubious whether you were most pleased with the glorious opposition to Charles I. or the dangerous designs of that monarch, which you emphatically call 'the arbitrary projects of a Stuart's nature.' What do you mean by the projects of a man's nature? A man's natural disposition may urge him to the commission of some actions;—Nature may instigate and encourage, but I believe you are the first that ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... but in ample measure: and fortunately it has for full half a century been accessible to the student. When M. Paul Meyer says that this edition "ne saurait fournir une base suffisante a une etude critique sur le roman d'Alixandre," he is of course using the word critique with the somewhat arbitrary limitations of the philological specialist. The reader who cares for literature first of all—for the book as a book to read—will find it now complete for his criticism in the Stuttgart version of the Alixandre, though he cannot be too grateful ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... more or less practicable, more or less liberal, and more or less dependent on the parent state. But the spirit of adventure, the disaffection, and the disappointed ambition which had so rapidly recruited their population, gave a general bias to their political feelings which no arbitrary authority could restrain, and no institutions counteract. They were less intolerant and morose, but at the same time, also, less industrious and moral than their Puritan neighbors. Like them, however, they resented all interference from England as far as they ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... It depends upon no subtleties and refinements of tints for its effectiveness. It is significant that the absorbed and affected Rossetti did not like it; it is too frank and clear and open, and shows too little evidence of the morbid brooding and hysterical forcing of an arbitrary and esoteric note dear to the English pre-Raphaelites. It attests a delight in color, not a fondness for certain colors, hues, tints—a difference perfectly appreciable to either an unsophisticated or an ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... devised, all of which were distinguished by an absence not only of true policy, but of common-sense; it is therefore to be hoped, that if the Gitanos are abandoned to themselves, by which we mean no arbitrary laws are again enacted for their extinction, the sect will eventually cease to be, and its members become confounded with the residue of the population; for certainly no Christian nor merely philanthropic heart can desire the continuance ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... the time of the perfecting, when man, the more convinced his understanding feels itself of an ever better Future, will nevertheless not be necessitated to borrow motives of action from this Future; for he will do the Right because it is right, not because arbitrary rewards are annexed thereto, which formerly were intended simply to fix and strengthen his unsteady gaze in recognising the inner, better, rewards ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... effects of my indignation against a rascal who dared to come and insult me in my own house, but I do know that if I had given him security I should have impugned my own honour. The impertinent scoundrel threatened to have me arrested, but I know that a just Government rules here, and not arbitrary power." ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... derives its power of performing them solely from convention; but convention is quite sufficient to confer the power; since nothing more is needful to make a person accept anything as money, and even at any arbitrary value, than the persuasion that it will be taken from him on the same terms by others. The only question is, what determines the value of such a currency, since it can not be, as in the case of gold and silver (or ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... explanation of the origin of the nomenclature of the days of the week, an explanation given by ancient historians and generally received, Whewell should have stated that 'various accounts are given, all the methods proceeding upon certain arbitrary arithmetical processes connected in some way with astrological views.' Speaking of the arrangement of the planets in the order of their supposed distances, and of the order in which the planets appear ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... of this spur to personal pride, the standard lessened in a few years, but not until certain weavers had won a fame that thrills even at this distance. Unfortunately, a great client was considered as important as a weaver, and it was often his arbitrary sign that was woven. And sometimes a dealer, wishing glory through his dealings, ordered his sign in the galloon. And thus comes a long array of signs which are not identifiable always. In general, one or two initials were introduced into these symbols, which were ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... to suppose that its characteristics are a mere fashion or a pedantic regard for things obsolete, or a nice rhetorical grace, though Mr. Jones will have it to be mostly artificial, 'due to well-established, though perhaps somewhat arbitrary rules laid down by teachers of elocution'. The basis of it is the need of being heard and understood, together with the experience that style B will not answer that purpose. The main service, no doubt, of a teacher of elocution is to instruct in the management ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... very things the man of her dreams might have done under similar circumstances. Yet she shuddered as she daily foresaw the consequences that might ensue should she encourage him further. Flirting with a man whose high-handed, arbitrary methods dazed rather than ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... when not positively ignored, is suggested by means of sharp black lines, of varying thickness, placed more or less closely together upon white paper; while natural form depends primarily for its representation upon arbitrary boundary lines. There is, of course, no authority in Nature for a positive outline: we see objects only by the difference in color of the other objects behind and around them. The technical capacity of the pen and ink medium, however, does not provide a value corresponding ...
— Pen Drawing - An Illustrated Treatise • Charles Maginnis
... have him), or aha sist[)e] (siehst Du) (do you see)? or um Gottes willen (for God's sake), the accent in these cases being also imitated with precision. But in his independent use of words the accentuation varies in irregular fashion. Such an arbitrary variation is bitte and ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... Boston was closed, and the Massachusetts charter was revoked. Arbitrary power was placed in the hands of the governor. The colonies mourned in sympathy. The assembly of Virginia was dismissed by its governor, but merely reunited, and proceeded to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... different states of the Union, who could not even repeat the names of the senators who sat for them in Congress. Macaulay said, in 1852, "We now know, by the clearest of all proof, that universal suffrage, even united with secret voting, is no security, against the establishment of arbitrary power." To quote James Russell Lowell, writing a little later: "We have begun obscurely to recognize that . . . popular government is not in itself a panacea, is no better than any other form except as the virtue and wisdom of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the crowd as he passed along, was sufficient to satisfy him, that in his impatient passion he had placed himself in a predicament of considerable danger. He was no stranger to the severe and arbitrary proceedings of the Court of Star-Chamber, especially in cases of breach of privilege, which made it the terror of all men; and it was no farther back than the Queen's time that the punishment of mutilation had been actually awarded and executed, for some offence of the same ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... service,—a service insulting to a loyal people; and though this people had hailed the flag that waved over it with enthusiasm from the fields of Louisburg and Quebec, they now looked upon it with sorrowing eyes as the symbol of arbitrary power. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... these prophecies have had a spiritual accomplishment in the spread of the Gospel, when there is nothing in the phraseology in which the promises are expressed, that could possibly suggest any such ideas, nay, when the promise itself in the most definite language expresses the contrary, is so arbitrary a construction as nothing can warrant. By this mode of interpretation, any event may be said to be the ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... avenging his own glory, if he believe it violated by an indecorous worship. Would you, in the name of tolerance, again create an inquisition which would not have, like the other, the excuse of fanaticism? What, gentlemen, would you transform into arbitrary proscribers the founders of liberty? You will judge, you will exile, you will imprison, en masse, men amongst whom, if there are some guilty, there are still more innocent! Crimes are no longer individual, and guilt would be decreed by category; but were they all ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... negative terms reach at last, and merge and become nothing. Whatever positive class you make, whatever boundary you draw, straight away from that boundary begins the corresponding negative class and passes into the illimitable horizon of nothingness. You talk of pink things, you ignore, as the arbitrary postulates of Logic direct, the more elusive shades of pink, and draw your line. Beyond is the not-pink, known and knowable, and still in the not-pink region one comes to the Outer Darkness. Not blue, not happy, not iron, all the NOT classes meet ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... quarrelled—that's the reason,' she said, with some levity, tossing her head and compressing her lips, with a kind of defiance. I was shocked—so much so, that I could not speak. 'The fact is,' she resumed, before I could reply, 'all men are arbitrary and unreasonable. They think women inferior to them, and their wives as a higher order of slaves. But I am not one to be put under any man's feet. William has tried that trick with me, and failed. Of course, to be foiled ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... and have even gone to the length of affirming that the whole Theosophic movement was but a masked Buddhistic propaganda. We were taunted by ignorant Brahmins and learned Europeans that our septenary divisions of Nature and everything in it, including man, are arbitrary and not endorsed by the oldest religious systems of the East. It is now proposed to throw a cursory glance at the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Law-Books of Manu, and especially the Vedanta, and show that they too ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... attempt to confine him within the rigid lines of any literary circle; nor shall I press him into the narrow frame of school or party; nor stamp upon him the distinctive label of any particular ism. He would break such fetters; his free spirit, his great individuality would overflow the arbitrary confines of "the sole Truth," "the only true principle." The waves of his soul would break down all artificial barriers and rush out to join the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... the religion of Christ from the abuses and errors of centuries, and thus restoring it to its original purity, so the political movement of the latter half of the eighteenth century had for object the destruction of arbitrary laws and the re-establishment of government on primary principles. The French Revolution and the American Rebellion were but means to the greater end. Philosophers, who systematized the dissatisfaction which the people felt without ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... Abrupt, arbitrary, disconnected creative acts may serve to illustrate the Divine power; but that continuous unbroken chain of organisms which extends from palaeozoic formations to the formations of recent times, a chain in which each link hangs on ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... have the art of arranging a special code of signals, whose arbitrary import it is difficult to understand. At a ball, a flower placed in some odd way in the hair; at the theatre, a pocket handkerchief unfolded on the front of the box; rubbing the nose, wearing a belt of a particular color, putting the hat on one side, wearing one dress oftener than ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... I know now, as I knew then, that it was wrong. But how to avoid the wrong? If I gave away the whole of my income, it would merely be an arbitrary dispensation of charity. The money would still be mine to give, and those that received it would probably only be weakened instead of strengthened. And then my wife was accustomed to a certain way of living, a certain establishment. Had I any right to sacrifice ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... of the power exercised by President Lincoln in time of war, said, "It is an interesting fact, that the ruler of a republic which sprang from a resistance to the English king and Parliament should exercise more arbitrary power than any Englishman since Oliver Cromwell, and that many of his acts should be worthy of ...
— Our Government: Local, State, and National: Idaho Edition • J.A. James
... the matter of Vivisection, asserts the principle of interference, the Law has barred its right to place arbitrary limits on its own action. If it protects any living creatures, it is bound, in reason and in ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... page 216. Almost immediately, however, Mr. King adds, that traditions exist which represent the mythic heroes bearing "engraved on their signets the same devices that decorated their shields." It would seem that the argument from such traditions would rather indicate the signet-devices to have been arbitrary, than the shield-devices to have been unalterable. While I readily admit the very interesting devices of antiquity to possess decided heraldic attributes, Icannot consider Mr. King to have shown that, as a general rule, they were held by the ancients themselves to have been either "unalterable" ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... states," says Plutarch, "veered to democracy— sometimes to arbitrary power;" that is, at one time the nobles invoked the people against the king; but if the people presumed too far, they supported the king against the people. If we imagine a confederacy of Highland chiefs even a century or two ago—give them a nominal king— consider ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... wages; there is no thought that tempts me so much as the possibility of being able to continue the great race forever; but I don't see how we have the least right to demand it, or that the facts give us the least reason to suppose that we will get it. It seems to me simply a fantastic and arbitrary fancy; the re-creating of a worn-out life in that way. I do not think, dearest, that I am in the least justified in claiming an eternity of vision because God gives me an hour; and when I ask Him the question in my own heart I learn simply that I am a wretched, sodden creature that ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... large and extensive dominion, our free constitution has interposed such seasonable checks and restrictions, as may curb it from trampling on those liberties, which it was meant to secure and establish. The enormous weight of prerogative (if left to itself, as in arbitrary government it is) spreads havoc and destruction among all the inferior movements: but, when balanced and bridled (as with us) by it's proper counterpoise, timely and judiciously applied, it's operations are then equable and regular, it invigorates the whole machine, ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... was of airy high spirit; graceful, clever, good too, they said; perhaps a thought too proud:—but as for her Reigning Duke, there was seldom seen so lurid a Serenity; and it was difficult to live beside him. A most arbitrary Herr, with glooms and whims; dim-eyed, ambitious, voracious, and the temper of an angry mule,—very fit to have been haltered, in a judicious manner, instead of being set to halter others! Enough, in six or seven years time, the bright Pair found ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... his windows or doors upon it with no regard whatever to the lines in which they cut the pattern: and, in illuminations of manuscripts, the chequer itself is constantly changed in the most subtle and arbitrary way, wherever there is the least chance of its regularity attracting the eye, and making it of importance. So intentional is this, that a diaper pattern is often set obliquely to the vertical lines of the designs, for fear it should appear in ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... to his neighbour they were pointed by dramatic turn in lively speech. Among charges of inaccuracy specially cited was LLOYD GEORGE'S description of the Highland clearances, whereby, he asserted, "thousands of people were driven from their holdings by the exercise of the arbitrary power of the landlord." "I will give you an authority for that," he said, and proceeded to read a passage of burning eloquence, in which multitudes of hardworking, God-fearing people were depicted as driven from the land that had ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... soon caught. Sinfulness stood before him not as the liability to penalty for transgressing an arbitrary rule, but as a taint to the entire being, mastering the will, perverting the senses, forging fetters out of habit, so as to be a loathsome horror paralysing and enchaining the whole being and making it into the likeness of him who brought sin and death into the world. The horror ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... but committed all matters relating to trade to William de Caen, a merchant of high standing, and to Emeric de Caen the nephew of the former, a good naval captain. This new and hasty reorganization, arbitrary if not illegal, however important it might seem to the prosperity and success of the colony, laid upon Champlain new responsibilities and duties at once delicate and difficult to discharge. Though in form suppressed, ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... trees," said the other, approaching the window, and directing the attention of his companion to the Cove: "'Tis the bark that has so often foiled the efforts of all thy cruisers, and which transports me and my wealth whither I will, without the fetters of arbitrary laws, and the meddling inquiries of venal hirelings. The scud, which floats above the sea, is not freer than that vessel, and scarcely more swift. Well is she named the Water-Witch! for her performances on the wide ocean have been such as seem to exceed all natural means. The froth of the sea ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... almost certain to meet with some electric shock of paradox designed to arouse the attention of the torpid. In one number we find the writer, ever daring and alert, setting out with an eulogium on "the wonderful benefit of arbitrary power" in France. He runs on in this vein for some time, accumulating examples of the wonderful benefit, till the patience of his liberty-loving readers is sufficiently exasperated, and then he turns round with a grin ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... structure of his drama Hauptmann met and solved an even more difficult problem than in the character of his dialogue. The whole tradition of structural technique rests upon a more or less arbitrary rearrangement of life. Othello, the noblest of tragedies, no less than the most trivial French farce, depends for the continuity of its mere action on an improbable artifice. Desdemona's handkerchief ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... too often ready to foment, The editor of the Canadien was also punished by imprisonment for months, and the issue of the paper was stopped for a while on the order of Chief Justice Sewell, in the exciting times of that most arbitrary of military governors, Sir James Craig. The action of the authorities in this matter is now admitted to have been tyrannical and unconstitutional, and it is certainly an illustration of human frailty that this same M. Bedard, who suffered not a little from the injustice ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... visionary idea, or the untried theory of an enthusiast, this triumphant reliance upon moral and intellectual power for the reform of political abuses, for the overthrowing of tyranny and the pulling down of the strongholds of arbitrary power. The emancipation of the Catholic of Great Britain from the thrall of a century, in 1829, prepared the way for the bloodless triumph of English reform in 1832. The Catholic Association was the germ ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... But eventually their mutual jealousies, their 'quick sense of honor,' their contentious and intestine wars (and nothing else can reasonably be looked for) will bring them under an absolute monarchy, more or less arbitrary, or under the yoke of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... rush for wealth we have overlooked the natural state, but we see a healthy reaction setting in. With the improvements in steam and electricity, the revolutionizing of transportation, the cutting of the arbitrary telephone charges, it is becoming possible to live at a distance from our business. May we not expect in the near future to see one portion of our cities devoted entirely to business, with the homes of the people so separated as to give light, sunshine, and air to all, besides a piece of ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... Andrews, where he became professor of Oriental languages, and still later a political writer in London. He bears the reputation of having done more to promote the prosperity of North Carolina than all its other colonial governors combined. However, he was often arbitrary and unwise with his power, besides having the usual misfortune of colonial governors of being at variance with the legislature. He was very partial to the people of his native country, and sought to better their condition by inducing them to emigrate to North Carolina. ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... commune are not many and do not exceed 5 %. of the principal. by competent functionaries, employed and superintended, who at first through fear are compelled to be prudent, and then through habit and honor have become honest accountants; there is no waste, no underhand stealing, no arbitrary charges; no sum is turned aside between receipts and expenses to disappear and be lost on the road, or flow out of its channel in another direction. The sensitive taxpayer, large or small, no longer smarts ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... there is no better commentary on the works of an artist than his life, and no better life than one written by himself. The old style of criticism, which strove to separate an author's productions from his life, and even from the age in which he lived, to set up an arbitrary canon of taste, and to select one or two great painters or poets as ideals because they seemed to illustrate that canon, has passed away. We are beginning to feel that art is a part of history and of physiology. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... and a part of the reign of George II, or, in other words, all the time of Dutch influence. The more usual method is to leave out William and Mary, but at best the classification of furniture is more or less arbitrary, for in England, as well as other countries, the different styles overlap each other. Chippendale's early work was distinctly influenced by ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... the peace. On account of some arbitrary act of the Russian ambassador, he had seized and confined him in the Seven Towers. Russia had demanded his release, and satisfaction for the insult. The sultan had replied by demanding the restoration of the Crimea, and the withdrawal of the Russian ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... nomination of Cox at the proper juncture would have been wise as a peace-offering, but perhaps it would have let off the Senate too easily from the effect of their arbitrary act. Now the dislodging of Stanton and filling the office even temporarily without the consent of the Senate would raise a question as to the legality of the President's acts, and he would belong to the attacked ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... of Europe under the Roman emperors. The provinces of Asia, without excepting the transient conquests of Trajan, are all comprehended within the limits of the Turkish power. But, instead of following the arbitrary divisions of despotism and ignorance, it will be safer for us, as well as more agreeable, to observe the indelible characters of nature. The name of Asia Minor is attributed with some propriety to the peninsula, which, confined betwixt the Euxine and the Mediterranean, advances from ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... convincing in modern times. In the space of three minutes, Nora, who has been her husband's sensual toy, and has taken pleasure in being that, and only that, leaves her husband and her children, as has been said, for school-books. A more arbitrary piece of stage craft was never devised; but it was not the stage craft the critics were accustomed to, and the admirers of Ibsen did not dare to admit that he had devised Nora to cry aloud that a woman is more than a domestic animal. It would ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... documents to be handed to him at once, on receipt. He may, of course, call for them at any time. He naturally will not, however, permit any unnecessary delay to occur in the usual routine disposition of such items. The routine exists to assist him, and its arbitrary disruption, if he has properly defined the essential routine in the first instance, cannot but ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... serve to draw the boundary line of new epochs. Nevertheless, geological history is a continuous progress; its periods and epochs shade into one another by imperceptible gradations, and all our subdivisions must needs be vague and more or less arbitrary. ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... evasively diplomatic terms, so characteristic of him, Tseretelli spoke of "personal" movements in politics and of the necessity of curbing these personal movements. This task was to be accomplished by the Democratic Conference, which was called, according to arbitrary forms, from among representatives of Soviets, dumas, zemstvos, professional trade unions and co-operative societies. Still, the main task was to secure a sufficiently conservative composition of the Conference, to dissolve the Soviets once for all ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... kind. Landor played almost exactly the part of King Lear—though from a different reason—and got almost exactly King Lear's reward. Landor, it will be remembered, was originally a rich man. It will also be remembered that he was possessed of a very arbitrary and turbulent nature and quarrelled with many members of his family, and especially with his own children. However, they lived in a villa at Fiesole for some time, in a kind of turbulent domesticity. Landor, on leaving ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... sentence was acceded to, and with as little remorse by the whole assembly as if they had merely condemned a tree to the ax. Such is the carelessness with which the generality of arbitrary assemblies decide on the fate of a fellow mortal! Earl Percy, who gave his vote for the death of the minstrel more from this culpable inconsideration than that thirst of blood which stimulated the voices of Soulis and the Cummins, proposed—as he believed the queen innocent—that ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... but at once curses and banishes him. The fact that Lear's relations with his daughters are the same as those of Gloucester to his sons makes one feel yet more strongly that in both cases the relations are quite arbitrary, and do not flow from the characters nor the natural course of events. Equally unnatural, and obviously invented, is the fact that all through the tragedy Lear does not recognize his old courtier, Kent, and therefore the relations between Lear and Kent fail ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... 44 tracts, aggregating 2,520 acres, and averaging nearly 60 acres each, the most distant being less than a mile from the village green. This division is arbitrary; in practice, the more industrious members of the community would buy land from their less industrious neighbors, and the size and arrangement of the farms would vary. Often, too, the division would be into farms averaging more than sixty ...
— Village Improvements and Farm Villages • George E. Waring
... having the musicians ordered into our presence to play that Sweet Bye and Bye again, which they did. Then I saw that she was right, and gave her permission to hang the whole band. This little relaxation of sternness had a good effect upon the queen. A statesman gains little by the arbitrary exercise of iron-clad authority upon all occasions that offer, for this wounds the just pride of his subordinates, and thus tends to undermine his strength. A little concession, now and then, where it can do no harm, is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... been languishing there for several months, when Madame Augereau, his wife, a woman of courage, saw come into the harbour a ship flying the tricolour. She went on board to give the captain a letter, informing the French government of the arbitrary arrest of her husband. The captain, although not a naval officer, went boldly to the Portuguese ministry and demanded the release of his compatriot; failing which, he said that he would declare war in the name of France. Whether the Portuguese believed ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... Plaintiff. The newer Colonies have institutions based on Acts of Parliament for New Georgia, New Scotland, &c., but the older Colonies have Charters from the King, and not from Parliament. These Colonies claim to be subject to the King, but not to Parliament, at least not to its arbitrary power, like the newer Colonies, which owe their existence to Parliament. The latter are called Plantations within his Majesty's Dominions, the ...
— Achenwall's Observations on North America • Gottfried Achenwall
... for ever." For reason demands that all the eye sees shall be beautiful, and give such pleasure as best consists with the universe becoming what reason demands that it shall become. This demand of reason is perfectly arbitrary? Yes, but it is also inevitable, necessitated by the nature of the human character. It is equally arbitrary and equally inevitable that man must, where science is called for, in the long run prefer a true statement ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... "Son of Heaven," and holds the supreme spiritual and temporal power in his hands. On his accession he gives an arbitrary name to his reign, which also becomes his own. He chooses his successor himself from among his sons. If he is childless he chooses one of his nearest relations, but then he adopts his future successor that the latter ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... by some of the external powers of the church—Bishop Laud in particular. Had all, however, who delight in symbols, a power, like George Herbert's, of setting even within the horn-lanterns of the more arbitrary of them, such a light of poetry and devotion that their dull sides vanish in its piercing shine, and we forget the symbol utterly in the truth which it cannot obscure, then indeed our part would be to take and ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... which you had authorized every tide-waiter to shoot any person suspected of having contraband goods in his possession, would it have been a good "reason" for such an atrocity, that the collection of duties was "a constitutional obligation"? You are condemned for voting for an arbitrary, detestable, diabolical law,—one that tramples upon the rights of conscience, outrages the feelings of humanity, discards the rules of evidence, levels all the barriers erected by the common law for the protection of personal liberty, and, in defiance of the Constitution, and against ...
— A Letter to the Hon. Samuel Eliot, Representative in Congress From the City of Boston, In Reply to His Apology For Voting For the Fugitive Slave Bill. • Hancock
... minds, an edict of the senate, condemning to perpetual exile 130 of the most notorious leaders of the Terrorists, was received with applause. But Napoleon himself despised utterly the relics of that odious party; and the arbitrary decree in question was never put ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart
... the young man, indulging in a final, a fairly sinister, study of such a dealer in the arbitrary, made sure of the extent, whatever it was, of his own wrong. "Not ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... it to answer after the manner of the dictionaries, and say, "Music is (1) a number of sounds following each other in a natural, pleasing manner; (2) the science of harmonious sounds; and (3) the art of so combining them as to please the ear." These are, however, only brief, cold, and arbitrary definitions: music is far more than as thus defined. Indeed, to go no farther in the description of this really sublime manifestation of the beautiful would be to very inadequately express its manifold meanings, its helpful, delightful uses. And yet the impressions ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... most likely worshipped on the island. This deity was probably the god of the Shannon river: and the name of the saint is clearly reminiscent of the name of the river. In their present form the two names are not philologically compatible: the name of the saint may be explained as an arbitrary modification, designed to differentiate the Christian saint from the pagan river-god. That pagan names should survive (modified or otherwise) in ancient holy places re-consecrated ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... upon Lucretia for laying violent hands upon herself, and Virginius for killing his own daughter. These actions seem to derive all their glory from the revolutions to which they gave rise, as the former occasioned the abolition of monarchy amongst the Romans, and the latter put an end to the arbitrary power of the decemviri. But if we lay aside our prepossessions for antiquity, and examine these actions without prejudice, we cannot but acknowledge, that they are rather the effects of human weakness and obstinacy than of resolution and magnanimity. ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... considerably. Their independence of character, their dislike of authority, and their strong powers of thought, predisposed them to rebellion against the religious dictation of such men as Laud, and the arbitrary rule of the Stuarts; and the injury done by James and Charles to the trade by which they gained their bread, made the great majority of them Commonwealth men. I shall have occasion afterwards to give one or two instances of the warm feelings and extensive knowledge on subjects of both home and ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... attachment between the conqueror and conquered must follow this system we leave the reader to contemplate. The honorable Mr. John, notwithstanding, had a very circuitous way of confessing the fact of having taken into his family, by this arbitrary system of wedlock, no end of people; still he accused Jonathan of using his soft-sawder for ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... kingly government, and the cities to the kings, that both rulers and subjects should govern and be governed according to the laws which were common to all of them: the rulers promised that as time and the race went forward they would not make their rule more arbitrary; and the subjects said that, if the rulers observed these conditions, they would never subvert or permit others to subvert those kingdoms; the kings were to assist kings and peoples when injured, and the peoples were to assist peoples and ...
— Laws • Plato
... predicating an attribute (in quid or in quale) is a perfectly intelligible one, corresponding as it does to the grammatical distinction between the predicate being a noun substantive or a noun adjective. Nevertheless it is a somewhat arbitrary one, since, even when the predicate is a class-name, what we are concerned to convey to the mind, is the fact that the subject possesses the attributes which are connoted by that class-name. We have not here the difference between extensive and intensive predication, ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... France or Maximilian Mexico? Gentlemen ask, What right have they to hold an election and express their sentiments? What right have they to hold such an election? Surely they ought to have the right to petition, for their rulers are generally arbitrary enough. ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... such marvellous precision. Though, in these cases, the direction taken by any one whale be straight as a surveyor's parallel, and though the line of advance be strictly confined to its own unavoidable, straight wake, yet the arbitrary VEIN in which at these times he is said to swim, generally embraces some few miles in width (more or less, as the vein is presumed to expand or contract); but never exceeds the visual sweep from the whale-ship's mast-heads, when circumspectly gliding along this magic zone. The sum is, that ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... for Sex-hygiene, by Morrow and others, the life of the child was divided into four periods, namely,—under six years, from six to twelve, twelve to sixteen, sixteen to maturity. This division now seems to me to be too arbitrary, and I have come to believe that it is more helpful to consider sex-instruction for three periods as follows: pre-adolescence (ending at eleven to fourteen years); early adolescence (twelve to sixteen years for girls, thirteen to seventeen for boys); later adolescence ...
— Sex-education - A series of lectures concerning knowledge of sex in its - relation to human life • Maurice Alpheus Bigelow
... touch—so thrillingly delicate, and to the belly—so imperious when starved. It combines and employs in its manifestation the method and material, not of one art only, but of all the arts. Music is but an arbitrary trifling with a few of life's majestic chords; painting is but a shadow of its pageantry of light and colour; literature does but drily indicate that wealth of incident, of moral obligation, of virtue, vice, action, rapture and agony, with ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but the latter half had been always used in the family, and there was something in the kitten grace that suited the arbitrary contractions well. In fact, Jane Mohun had been rather startled to find that she had the charge of such a little beauty, when she saw how people turned around at the station to look, certainly not at Valetta, who was a dark bright damsel of no ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... societies in England, or by their diocesan committee in New South Wales; although, in both instances, the money was raised entirely by private subscription. The inconvenience, delay, and disappointment which this one arbitrary rule occasioned were astonishing; and to those who took delight in balking the efforts and thwarting the good works of our Church, it must have been very gratifying. So, too, must the refusal, in 1841, of a piece of land ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... peculiarities of our Scottish LANGUAGE, whether contained in words or in expressions. I am quite aware that the difference between the anecdotes belonging to this division and to the last division termed "Wit and Humour" is very indistinct, and must, in fact, in many cases, be quite arbitrary. Much of what we enjoy most in Scottish stories is not on account of wit properly so called, in the speaker, but I should say rather from the odd and unexpected view which is taken of some matter, or from the quaint and original turn of the expression made use of, or from the simple ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... still half bewildered with the suddenness of the transaction. What had he been seized for? Who were the men who had got hold of him? and why were they gripping his wrists so tightly? He had heard of arbitrary treatment in the Russian army, but that a colonel should have a captain seized in this extraordinary way merely because he was absent from his post without leave was beyond ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... integrity: 'tis a glorious thing to be able to challenge the inquiry—when, for centuries, have other than men of rigid integrity sat upon the English Bench? Lord Widdrington, however, in temper was stern, arbitrary, and overbearing, and his manners were disfigured not a little by coarseness; while his companion was a man of exemplary amiability, affability, and forbearance. Lord Widdrington presided at the Civil Court, (in which, of course, ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren |
