"Hard-and-fast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nothing,' Albrechtsberger added, 'and will never do anything in decent style.' This was in allusion to Beethoven's wilfulness in persistently transgressing certain established rules of composition. The old teacher failed to see that Beethoven's refusal to be bound by hard-and-fast rules arose, not from mere caprice, but from the force of a genius which would not submit to be trammelled by any kind of artificial limitations. The wisdom of Beethoven is, however, shown by the fact that he wrote out his exercises with the most scrupulous care, and ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... told me; often one hears that remark, even from adults. As if a father could not be a fool like anybody else! That a child should have hard-and-fast opinions—it is engaging. Children are egocentric. A fellow of this size ought to ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... sold at auction for firewood and for such bits of their metal as weren't rusted to pieces. He read the catalog. Then he telegraphed to me to wire him a loan of one hundred dollars. For the catalog gave the date of one schooner's building as 1804. He knew it used to be a hard-and-fast custom of ship-builders to put a silver dollar under the mainmast of every vessel they built, a dollar of that particular year. He bought the schooner for $70. He spent ten dollars in hiring men to rip out her mast. Under it was an 1804 dollar. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... for my part," he remarks, "I owe him as much as I gave him, for his love lighted up the gold of affection that was in me and consumed the dross. It was from him that I first learned that there was no such thing as a hard-and-fast line between the physical and the spiritual in friendship." This relationship lasted for some years, when the young man married; its effects are described as very beneficial to both parties; all the sexual troubles vanished, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the occasion of my first appearance. San Francisco knew me then only as a reporter, and I was to make my bow to San Francisco as a lecturer. I knew that nothing short of compulsion would get me to the theatre. So I bound myself by a hard-and-fast contract so that I could not escape. I got to the theatre forty-five minutes before the hour set for the lecture. My knees were shaking so that I didn't know whether I could stand up. If there is an awful, horrible malady in the world, it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... only, are to be taught; great prominence is to be given to the minor arts; at first there will be no fees; above all and before all, the great College of ours is not to be made a Government department, to be tied and bound by the hard-and-fast rules and red tape which are the curse of every department, nor is it to be under the direction of any School Board, but, like most things in this country that are of any use, it is to be ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... darkly on this passage. Arthur was flighty; Arthur was volatile; Arthur was even fickle, when the mood took him. Some arrangement that partook more of the hard-and-fast was needed. But there was comfort—of a kind—in the ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... depends always on the movement of closed bodies of troops, and if the Cavalry Divisions are constantly drilled together under the same Leader in Peace, there is at least a very great risk that this certain degree of drill control, which we recognise as indispensable, will degenerate into hard-and-fast prescription, since the Leader has always the same number of units at his disposal, and will thus by degrees habituate himself to consider these as invariable quantities in the ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... up of the old hard-and-fast boundaries on the musical map is due to Chopin. A pioneer, he has been rewarded as such by a polite ignorement or bland condescension. He smashed the portals of the convention that forbade a man baring his soul to the multitude. The psychology of music ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... wind nor rain should prevent us. Exclusive, however, of these two days, any one in high spirits and disposed to have an extra meeting can either ask us to go over to her place, or you can all come to us; either will do well enough! But won't it be more pleasant if no hard-and-fast dates were laid down?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... dogmatically assert that talent and genius are exactly one and the same thing; but I do assert that genius is simply talent raised to a slightly higher power; it differs from it not in kind but merely in degree: it is talent at its best. There is no drawing a hard-and-fast line of demarcation between the two. You might just as well try to classify all mankind into tall men and short men, and then endeavour to prove that a real distinction existed in nature between your two artificial classes. As a matter of fact, men differ in height and in ability ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... fed. Food that is chosen for adults entirely would not be the same as that intended for both young persons and adults; neither would food that is to be fed to children or persons who are ill be the same as that which is to be served to robust adults who do a normal amount of work. No hard-and-fast rules can be laid down here for this phase of food selection, but as these lessons in cookery are taken up in turn, the necessary knowledge regarding ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... of angular impulse given to the cylinder, or, as it is termed, the "actual lift." This latitude governs to a great extent the angle A b g, which we gave as sixty-four degrees in our drawing. It is well to understand that the use of sixty-four degrees is based on no hard-and-fast rules, but varies back and forth, according as a greater or lesser angle of impulse or lift ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous
... visit (like those who for the past century have visited) South America come in three categories— although, of course, these categories are not divided by hard-and-fast lines. ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... their necessary food and cause them to "die back." Where the trees are tall and slim or on short and steep hillsides, it is also important to be conservative in marking in order that the stand may not be exposed to the dangers of windfall. No hard-and-fast rule can be laid down as to what would constitute a conservative percentage of trees to cut down. This depends entirely on the local conditions and on the exposure of the woodlot. But in general it is not well to remove ...
— Studies of Trees • Jacob Joshua Levison
... milk, or even of porridge and milk, so that the weaning comes on gradually. The time of nursing should not exceed nine months. If, however, a child afterwards be ill, there is no harm in going back for a time to the bottle, even at two years old. Common sense must guide, and not hard-and-fast rule. Easily assimilated food must ever be chosen; and as a food for children, oatmeal porridge, well boiled, holds the first place—far before bread sops. If porridge be not easily digested, try oatmeal jelly. Most of the infant foods so ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... a time and speak from behind their desks, trying to talk each other down. The Speaker stands patiently wrestling with the problem of procedure—and often failing since practice is still in process of being formed. Years must elapse before absolutely hard-and-fast rules are established. Still the progress already made since August, 1916, is remarkable, and something is being learned every day. The business of a Parliament is after all to debate—to give voice to the uppermost thoughts in the ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... to lay down a hard-and-fast rule as to the age at which a girl may be allowed to mount a pony or donkey, as it is to control the spirits and daring of a foxhound puppy. Those who possess the sporting instinct and the desire to emulate the example of their hunting parents ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... of the Company, as we have seen, depended upon a skillful manipulation of apparently hard-and-fast principles. The Declarations explained away the Constitutions; and an infinite number of minute exceptions and distinctions volatilized vows and obligations into ether. Transferring the same method to the sphere of ethics, they so wrought upon the precepts of the moral law, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... African neglected Being, still somewhat moral, (3) the relatively Supreme Being involved in human sacrifice, as in Polynesia, and (4) the Moral Being reinstated philosophically, as in Israel, do suggest steps in evolution, we desire to base no hard-and-fast system of ascending and descending degrees upon our present evidence. The real object is to show that facts may be regarded in this light, as well as in the light thrown by the anthropological theory, in the hands whether ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... education. They beat the world by counting in the head. That 's because they 've learnt the value of fractions. Napoleon knew it in war, when he looked to the boots and great-coats of his men; those were his fractions. Lord Ormont thinks he had too hard-and-fast a system ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of the Columbus church, was a sincere and ardent Christian, but his bigotry and hard-and-fast orthodoxy made him intolerant. He considered that the members of his flock were jeopardizing their eternal salvation if they danced, played cards, or went to theaters, and he did not hesitate to declare vociferously that hell was yawning for those who disobeyed his injunctions. ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser |
