"Public utility" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of rendering their names immortal; and who did not scruple to destroy thousands of their subjects to satisfy their vain glory! They differed very much from the Romans, who sought to immortalize themselves by works of a magnificent kind, but, at the same time, of public utility. ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... Thursday. A newsbrief in the Times financial section which told of a public utility wanting Island property gave him an idea for one thing. He spent all morning bringing the idea to a head, after he had verified the truth of the item. Then, after a late lunch, he went to the Treasury Department's headquarters and spent a couple ...
— Lease to Doomsday • Lee Archer
... "Works of public utility shall receive a suitable endowment, part of which shall be raised from private and special taxes, levied in the provinces which shall have the benefit of the advantages arising from the establishment of ways of ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson
... charities of life were gathered round Washington in the last days at Mount Vernon. The love and veneration of a whole people for his illustrious services, his generous and untiring labors in the cause of public utility; his kindly demeanor to his family circle, his friends, and numerous dependents; his courteous and cordial hospitality to his guests, many of them strangers from far distant lands; these charities, all of which sprang from the heart, were the ornament of his declining years, and granted the most ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... adequate. It seemed to the farmers, therefore, that the only way to avoid monopolistic abuses was for the provincial governments to own and operate a system of internal storage elevators and for the Dominion authorities to own and operate the terminals. The elevators, declared the farmers, should be a public utility and ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... have a little wisdom remaining, for I would poison you, and believe I was performing an act of public utility." ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... its being now perfectly impassable for a carriage. Two considerable military roads are, however, now in progress, one from Athens to Thebes, and another from Argos to Tripolitza. But these roads have been made without any reference to public utility, merely to serve for marching troops and moving artillery, and consequently the old roads over the mountains, as they require less time, are alone ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... bricks are laid, and from their variation in size, he concludes that the structure was not all erected at one time, but that the mound is the accumulation of successive periods of labor. From this it follows that it was built to serve some purpose of public utility, and not as a token of respect for some individual. Wherever found, these great works show the same evidence of not being all completed at once. This was true of the North; we shall also find it true of the South. Charney noticed the same thing in the house at Tulla. Nothing ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... Consul contemplated the building of the Pont des Arts we had a long conversation on the subject. I observed that it would be much better to build the bridge of stone. "The first object of monuments of this kind," said I, "is public utility. They require solidity of appearance, and their principal merit is duration. I cannot conceive, General, why, in a country where there is abundance of fine stone of every quality, the use of iron should be preferred."—"Write," said Bonaparte, "to Fontaine and Percier, the architects, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... return from Holland, he accordingly set on foot various schemes of public utility. He stirred up a movement for the encouragement of the British fisheries. He made several journeys into Ireland for the purpose of planting new manufactures there. He surveyed the River Slade with the object of rendering it navigable, and proposed a plan for improving ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... of things I have bethought myself of throwing, in the words of Goethe, 'my corn into the great seed-field of time,' in the hope that it may blossom to purposes of great public utility. The aid of poetry has hitherto been but partially employed in the spread of a taste for Conveyancing, especially in its higher branches. Or where the Muse has shown herself, it has been but in the evanescent glimpses of a song. She has plumed ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... nothing. Fifty years of witness for God and His Truth, I hope, has not been in vain.' But the same thoughts recurred. 'In reading Macaulay's life I had a haunting feeling that his had been a life of public utility and mine a vita umbratilis, a life in the shade.' Ah! it was God's will. 'Mine has been a life of fifty years out of the world as Gladstone's has been in it. The work of his life in this world is manifest. I hope mine may be in the next. I suppose ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... occasion to remark this distinction, and who, in general, adhered to the principles of the ancients, is not, himself, entirely free from the same confusion.... In all determinations of morality, the circumstance of public utility, is ever principally in view; and wherever disputes arise, either in philosophy or common life, concerning the bounds of duty, the question cannot, by any means, be decided with greater certainty, than by ascertaining, on any side, the true interests ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... had been but the amusement of youth, as he advanced in life, he turned to public utility: for instance, the mode of conveying secret and swift intelligence, which he had suggested at first only to decide a trifling wager between him and some young nobleman, he afterwards improved into a national telegraph, and ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... in the Reports—such as blacksmiths, masons, carpenters, tailors, bricklayers, &c., labour at their respective trades; and the labourers, par excellence, toil at road-making and various other works of public utility. The 'daily routine' is as follows:—The first bell is rung at 5 A.M., and the prisoners rise, and neatly fold up their bedding—they sleep in hammocks, we believe, as the documents speak of the beds being 'hung' at night. The second bell rings at 5.15; and they are then mustered ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... rivalry of their authorship is no subject of concern; but it is enough for any ingenuous man to have toiled for years in solitude to complete a work of public utility, without entering a warfare for life to defend and preserve it. Accidental coincidences in books are unfrequent, and not often such as to excite the suspicion of the most sensitive. But, though the criteria ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... the increase of military pay promised on the King's departure, a circumstance that occasioned much disquiet in several provinces. The funds for carrying on several branches of industry, and several works of public utility were destroyed by this great and sudden drain; and thereby much that had been begun after the arrival of the court, and which it was hoped would have been of the greatest benefit to the country, was stopped. Colonies that had been invited to settle with the ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... convenience also must be paid for: and it is thus, in reality, that the indemnity is estimated. If the Roman legists had seen this analogy, they undoubtedly would have hesitated less over the question of expropriation for the sake of public utility. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... sane a man, so earnest, active, and just a ruler. His reign was signalised by a better police, a more even administration of justice, a greater efficiency, judgment, and energy in the execution of great works of public utility, than his realm had known for a thousand years; and his duty was done as diligently and conscientiously as if he had known that conscience was the voice of a supreme Sovereign, and duty the law of an unerring and unescapable Lawgiver. Alone among a race of utterly egotistical ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... Bryan was before the public for many years. Mr. Bryan was an enterprising settler, and owned 11,000 acres and extensive herds, and was engaged in many speculations of public utility. He erected a valuable mill, and under his auspices a company was formed, which purchased a steam vessel. She was brought to the colony by Captain Alexander Wales: when, however, he arrived, the project was defeated by the altered position of Mr. ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... impossibilities." On the contrary, the zeal which could begin so onerous a work, and prosecute it thus far, could not now remit without convicting its past ardor of cowardice lurking under its temporary semblance of bravery. Is it for the projectors of a noble edifice of public utility, to abandon the undertaking when it has risen from its foundation to be seen above the ground; or is just come to be level with the surface of the waters, in defiance of which it has been commenced, and the violence of which it was designed to control, or the unfordable depths ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... activity, but it was not an aggressive speculation, or an investment of national profits deliberately calculated to bring in one day a larger return. It was a necessity of life, and its efficiency was barely maintained out of the national poverty. In fact, it was almost the only public utility with which the nation could afford to provide itself, and the traveller from Great Britain would have been amazed again at the miserable state of all reproductive public works. The railways were few and far between, their routes roundabout, and their rolling-stock ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... value of projects is a greater section of the mining engineer's occupation than of the other engineering branches. Mines are operated only to earn immediate profits. No question of public utility enters, so that all mining projects have by this necessity to be from the first weighed from a profit point of view alone. The determination of this question is one which demands such an amount of technical knowledge and experience that those who are not experts cannot enter the field,—therefore ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... the practice of depositing them in the cabinets of the curious. Perhaps one improvement might be made. The sage and venerable Dr. Franklin, whose patriotic genius is active in old age, and ever prolific in projects of public utility, once suggested,[19] in conversation with me, as an expedient for propagating still more extensively the knowledge of facts designed to be perpetuated in medals, that their devices should be impressed on the current coin of ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... defenceless condition of a competitor once formidable and always odious; and gradually, but not easily, not without reluctance and shame and secret pangs of compunction, she would suffer the temptation,—one, it must be confessed, of no common force and aided by pleas of public utility not a little plausible,—to become victorious over her first thoughts, her better feelings, her more virtuous resolves. For the honor of human nature, it may be believed that the latter state of feeling must have been that experienced by a princess whose life had been as yet unsullied ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... to his account: which we are very glad of this opportunity to inform them of, that they may see how much society owes to those persons who take care to study nature, in order to promote industry and public utility. ...
— History of Louisisana • Le Page Du Pratz
... the world, we're safe. From our office in Wall Street you and I can play the keys of the world-machine as an organist would finger his instrument. But there must be no leak; no publicity; no suspicion aroused. We'll play our music pianissimo, Wally, with rare accompaniments to the tune of 'great public utility, benefit to the public health,' and all that—the same old game, only on a ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... of accumulated money may reasonably go to friend or kin. It is a question of public utility; Socialism has done with absolute propositions in all such things, and views these problems now as questions of detail, matters for fine discriminations. We want to be quit of pedantry. All that property which is an enlargement of personality, the modern Socialist seeks to preserve; it is ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... mortified, he turned round with a view of entering the National Gallery and soothing his spirit with art, when he was arrested by the placard which covered it announcing which town had taken which sum of bonds. This lighted up such a new vista of public utility that his brain would certainly have caught fire again if one of the policemen who had conducted him across the Square had not touched him on the arm, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... trained to the sword, with those who are totally unskilful in the use of it; and throws down all the splendid distinctions of mankind. These very reasons ought to have been urged to shew that the discovery of gunpowder has been of public utility by weakening the tyranny of ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... a greater claim to personal merit than benevolence and justice; but if we inquire why benevolence deserves so much praise, the answer will certainly contain a large reference to the utility of that virtue to society; and as for justice, the very existence of the virtue implies that of society; public utility is its sole origin; and the measure of its usefulness is also the standard of its merit. If every man possessed everything he wanted, and no one had the power to interfere with such possession; or if no man desired that which could damage his fellow-man, justice would have no part ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... curer, who was vexed at having to wait until the next Saturday, and he hoped for something to turn up, he did not know what; but he was exasperated at the police for thus allowing an establishment of such public utility, which they had under their control, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... when used to exalt and refine the national taste, they confer an immortality upon the possessor, and render him a benefactor to his species; when used, also, as accessories to the cultivation of kindly sympathies and the promotion of social enjoyment, they are objects of public utility. The revival of old-fashioned English cordiality, especially at Christmas, had been always a favourite idea with the owners of the Pryor's Bank, and in 1839 they gave an entertainment ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... 'Landed Gentry' of Mr. Burke are two works of public utility—constantly referred to by all classes of society, and rarely opened without being found to supply the information sought. They are accessions of value to our books of reference, and few who write or talk much about English Peers and English Landed Gentry, can well be looked ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... the Reguladora, but, as I said, it is in a deadlock with the powers who control its market. We still have government-owned railroads in Yucatan, but government ownership merely takes the public utility out of the hands of private capital and places it under the control of a political organization. And private capital already has secured control of that political organization, and graft and robbery are running riot. Government ownership of railroads has increased ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... of life were gathered round Washington in the last days at Mount Vernon. The love and veneration of a whole people for his illustrious services, his generous and untiring labours in the cause of public utility; his kindly demeanour to his family circle, his friends, and numerous dependents; his courteous and cordial hospitality to his guests, many of them strangers from far distant lands; these charities, all of which sprang from the heart, were the ornament of his declining years and granted ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... days ago presented in the Senate petitions from Edward Everett, Jared Sparks, and others, and from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, at Boston, to the effect that it would be of great public utility to attach to the boundary commission to run the line between the United States and Mexico, a small corps of persons well qualified to make researches in ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... be emptied of its deeper meaning, by refusing it the further significance of "exercise," was too subtle and too legal to obtain much public support. So that the lawyers were driven to admit that for a just cause the very right itself could be set aside, and every private possession (when public utility and liberty demanded it) confiscated or ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... product, just like the trade expenses. In spite of its high amount, no one looked upon it as a burden, because everyone knew that the greater part of it would flow back to him or to his, and every farthing of it would be devoted to purposes of exclusively public utility, which would immediately benefit him. It was therefore quite correct to recognise no difference whatever between productive outlay by the commonwealth and the more private outlay of the associations and individuals, and accordingly ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... restraint. He had always meant to keep his personal liberty at all costs, as old MacKeller, his first chief, had done, and not, like so many American engineers, to become a part of a professional movement, a cautious board member, a Nestor de pontibus. He happened to be engaged in work of public utility, but he was not willing to become what is called a public man. He found himself living exactly the kind of life he had determined to escape. What, he asked himself, did he want with these genial honors and substantial comforts? Hardships and difficulties ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes |
