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noun
Plurality  n.  (pl. pluralities)  
1.
The state of being plural, or consisting of more than one; a number consisting of two or more of the same kind; as, a plurality of worlds; the plurality of a verb.
2.
The greater number; a majority; also, the greatest of several numbers; in elections, the excess of the votes given for one candidate over those given for another, or for any other, candidate. When there are more than two candidates, the one who receives the plurality of votes may have less than a majority. See Majority. "Take the plurality of the world, and they are neither wise nor good."
3.
(Eccl.) See Plurality of benefices, below.
Plurality of benefices (Eccl.), the possession by one clergyman of more than one benefice or living. Each benefice thus held is called a plurality. (Eng.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Plurality" Quotes from Famous Books



... the laws provide that, in certain cases and conditions, one person may preempt one hundred and sixty acres, and that in regard to municipal occupation a plurality of persons may, in certain cases and conditions, preempt three hundred and twenty acres. In the latter contingency, there is no special privilege as to quantity, but a disability rather; for two persons together may preempt three hundred and twenty acres by agricultural ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews

... sufficient knowledge of their language to instruct them, many of these ignorant people might be drawn over to the true Christian faith, and civilized; for many with whom I have conversed upon Christian laws have liked all very well, except the prohibition of a plurality of wives, as they are all very lascivious, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr

... I do not possess can only have been imparted to me by a more perfect being than I, which has bestowed on me all that I am and all that I am capable of becoming. If I had created myself, I would have bestowed upon myself these absent perfections also. And the existence of a plurality of causes is negatived by the supreme perfection which I conceive in the idea of God, the indivisible unity of his attributes. Among the attributes of God his veracity is of special importance. It is impossible that ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... owne industrie, and by the fruites of the Earth, they may nourish themselves and live contentedly; is, to conferre all their power and strength upon one Man, or upon one Assembly of men, that may reduce all their Wills, by plurality of voices, unto one Will: which is as much as to say, to appoint one man, or Assembly of men, to beare their Person; and every one to owne, and acknowledge himselfe to be Author of whatsoever he that so beareth their ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... and imagine a trinity of gods. And I fear, those of us who know most, use not to worship God as he hath revealed himself,—Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and yet one God. Our minds are reduced to such a simple unity as we think upon one of them alone or else distracted and divided into such a plurality, that we worship in a manner three gods instead of one. It is a great mystery to keep the right middle way. Learn, I beseech you, so to conceive of God, and so to acknowledge him, and pray to him as you may do it in the name of Jesus Christ, that all the persons may have equal honour, and all ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... on the favourite's ambition in procuring and getting into his hands the greatest offices of strength and power in the kingdom, and the means by which he had obtained them, drew a picture of "the inward character of the duke's mind." The duke's plurality of offices reminded him "of a chimerical beast called by the ancients Stellionatus, so blurred, so spotted, so full of foul lines that they knew not what to make of it! In setting up himself he hath set upon the kingdom's revenues, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... called the Mohammedan heaven. This heaven, like others, is divided into three, the highest, middle and lowest. Those who acknowledge the Lord to be one with the Father and thus the one God are in the highest heaven; in the next heaven are those who renounce a plurality of wives and live with one; and in the lowest are those who are being initiated. More about this religion may be seen in Continuation about the Last Judgment and the Spiritual World (nn. 68-72), where the Mohammedans ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... becloud an obvious text and invent interpretations which never occurred to any other ecclesiastical writer before or after his time. The conundrum can only be solved by the assumption that Augustine believed in a plurality of literal senses in the Bible and held that over and above (or notwithstanding) the sensus obvius every exegete is free to read as much truth into any given passage as possible, and that such interpretation lay within the ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... are polytheists; yet, while they have a plurality of gods, many of whom are the spirits of their ancestors, these gods are but mediums through which to reach their one great father of ...
— The Religious Life of the Zuni Child - Bureau of American Ethnology • (Mrs.) Tilly E. (Matilda Coxe Evans) Stevenson

... the discussion of the public propriety or impropriety of a plurality of wives would have been impossible. Polygamy had not obtained a foothold as an institution in any civilized land. Being well known as not uncommon among certain heathenish and barbarous tribes, it ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg

... absolutely in war, yet at home and in time of peace they exercise very little dominion, and have but a very moderate sovereignty, the resolutions of peace and war being ordinarily either in the people, or in a council. Tho' the war itself, which admits not of plurality of governors, naturally devolves the command into the king's sole authority. Sec. 109. And thus in Israel itself, the chief business of their judges, and first kings, seems to have been to be captains in war, and leaders of their ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke

... It was probably found that an 'informality' had occurred in certain communes, and that through this 2,494 votes must be annulled. News of this discovery was instantly sent to the Parisian newspapers. As it was supposed that they would give M. Joffrin a plurality of the votes to be recognised, sundry newspapers actually printed the name of M. Joffrin at the head of the list of candidates in the place usually accorded by a really enlightened press to the elect of universal suffrage. Unfortunately ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... spirits and angels from them, is very well known in the other life; for in that life, every one who from a love of the truth and consequent use desires it, is allowed to speak with the spirits of other earths, so as to be convinced that there is a plurality of worlds, and informed that the human race is not from one earth only, but from numberless earths; and so as to be informed, besides, of what genius and life they are, and of what character ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg

... closed in uncertainty and for three days speculation filled the papers, and election bets remained unpaid. Then the decks cleared. Mr. Preston was elected mayor by a narrow plurality; and out of the eighteen aldermen, the reform element had carried seven, Dick Percival among them, to victory. The Municipal Club counted its gains and was jubilant, for this meant that, if the city council passed any objectionable measure, their iniquity could be vetoed by the mayor, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter

... close in one. For as the unit never deviates from its orbit, but (as its name signifies) always remains one, but the number two contains within it the seeds of infinity, for when it departs from itself it becomes plurality at once by doubling, so speech confined in one person's breast is truly secret, but if it be communicated to another it soon gets noised abroad. And so Homer calls words "winged," for as he that ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... a breach which did not owe its beginnings to any offence. And it would seem, that till we have reduced mankind to the state of a family, or found some external consideration to maintain their connection in greater numbers, they will be for ever separated into bands, and form a plurality of nations. ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... betrayed them to their enemies; but others, more considerate, alleged, that if they put me to death, and should afterwards be taken, they could expect no mercy from the legislature, which would never pardon outlawry aggravated by murder. It was therefore determined by a plurality of votes, that I should be set on shore in France, and left to find my way back to England, as I should think proper, this being punishment sufficient for the bare suspicion of a crime in ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... she can compress as many changes of form and structure, on a small scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one; and taking moss for forests, and grains of crystal for crags, the surface of a stone in by far the plurality of instances is more interesting than the surface of an ordinary hill; more fantastic in form, and incomparably ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin

... not an aesthetic delight. It is not essential to our admiration. Before the days of Kepler the heavens declared the glory of God; and we needed no calculation of stellar distances, no fancies about a plurality of worlds, no image of infinite spaces, ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana

... impossible at this late date to estimate the effect of Starr King's appeal to the voters of California in the presidential election of 1860. As we have already noted, Lincoln carried the State by a very narrow plurality, and we need not ascribe the swaying of many votes to the eloquence of King's advocacy to make it appear that his influence was marked in ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds

... accept with a good grace the custom of a plurality of wives; in Tibet men accept with good grace a plurality of husbands. In the western world .. ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain

... into an apartment possessing exactly the same peculiarities as the former one; viz. a most disproportionate plurality of windows, a commodious scantiness of furniture, and a prospect without, that seemed as if the house had been built on the ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... strange, that, when we have a great thing to say, we are always compelled to speak so simply in monosyllables? Perhaps this, too, is an example of the law that continually reduces many to one,—the unity giving the substance of the plurality; but as the heroes of the "Iliad" were obliged to repeat the messages of the gods literatim, so we must say a great thing as it comes to us, by itself. It is curious to me now, that I was not the least excited in announcing the discovery,—not because I did not feel the force of it, but because ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... field is granted to our friendship, and though it may reveal itself under a plurality of aspects to those who seek it, strange to say, the world knows very little about it. We speak of it as of some regretted treasure that has been long lost to humanity. We are half convinced that the ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"

... talk a good deal about that book of Whewell's on the Plurality of Worlds. I recommend Fields to pirate it. Have you seen it? It is to show that Jupiter, Venus, Saturn, etc., are all pretty certainly uninhabitable,—being (Jupiter, Saturn, etc., to wit) strange washy limbos of places, where at the best only mollusks ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various

... indulging in a plurality of wives, as adopted by many of the mountaineers, never received the sanction, in thought, word or action, of Kit Carson. His moral character may well be held up as an example to men whose pretensions ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... which that food was stored. This store was inhabited or guarded by spirits, the di penates, who together with Vesta represent the material vitality of the family; these spirits, always conceived and expressed in the plural, form a group in a way which is characteristic of the Latins, and their plurality is perhaps due to the variety and frequent change of the material of the store. The religious character of the store is also well shown by the fact, if such it be, that no impure person was allowed to meddle with it; the duty was especially that of the children of the family,[149] ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... and gave me some momentary spirts: but though I do not absolutely despair, I own I greatly distrust. I readily allow the King of Prussia to be 'nec pluribus impar'; but still, when the 'plures' amount to a certain degree of plurality, courage and abilities must yield at last. Michel here assures me that he does not mind the Russians; but, as I have it from the gentleman's own mouth, I do not believe him. We shall very soon send a squadron to the Baltic ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... man of free condition has a plurality of wives, it is found necessary (to prevent, I suppose, matrimonial dispute) that each of the ladies should be accommodated with a hut to herself; and all the huts belonging to the same family are surrounded by a fence, constructed of bamboo canes split and formed into a sort of ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... and ship, which would threaten to jam him—still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of mine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in most cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a plurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your apothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True, you may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these and the multitudinous other evil chances of life. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... be not four principal burghers chosen by plurality of voices, whose business is to see the rules observed, and furnish the ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... tool, was elected by a plurality vote over Fremont and Fillmore, the candidate of the American party. Fremont carried, with good majorities, all the free States save Indiana, New ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer

... even with the baptized little fortitude and growth in grace could be observed—many deviated grievously from the right path. In Nain, Nathaniel, a baptized Esquimaux, had taken a baptized woman for a second wife and had gone with her to the heathen, with whom a plurality of wives is very common, and is considered as a mark of superiority; he being considered a great man who possesses two or three wives, and as soon as any one possesses a European boat he is, according to the opinion ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous

... French deists, but are stated with extreme bitterness. The most novel part of this work is the use which Paine makes of the discoveries of astronomy(636) in revealing the vastness of the universe and a plurality of globes, to discredit the idea of interference on behalf of this insignificant planet,—an argument which he wields especially against the doctrine of incarnation. But no part of his work manifests such bitterness, and at the same time such a ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... have nothing to say upon the subject. My opinion of it has not been printed, nor do I know that it ever will be; however, it was written at the same time the extract was made. From this I passed to the 'Polysynodie', or Plurality of Councils, a work written under the regent to favor the administration he had chosen, and which caused the Abbe de Saint Pierre to be expelled from the academy, on account of some remarks unfavorable ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau

... years before the Trojan war; others 5000 years before that famous war; others 6000 years before that great event. Some believe that Zoroaster is the same as Ham, the son of Noah. Lastly, others maintain that there were several Zoroasters. What appears indubitably true is, that the worship of a plurality of gods, as also magic, superstition, and oracles, came from the Egyptians and Chaldeans, or Persians, to the Greeks, and from ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... Lord in these epistles; as when he says,—"some of you." (v. 10.) Hence it may be inferred that there is no proof in these epistles on which to erect the antichristian hierarchy of diocesan prelacy; and consequently that ecclesiastical government is by divine right, lodged in the hands of a plurality ...
— Notes On The Apocalypse • David Steele

... in the Institute for the Blind in New York city; but soon began the study of law, and settled in Buffalo. He was assistant district attorney of Erie County, sheriff and mayor of Buffalo, and in 1882, as the Democratic candidate for governor of New York, carried the state by 192,000 plurality. Both when mayor and when governor he was noted for his free use ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... restriction upon slavery in the Territories. The Northern Whigs scouted the idea and Toombs led the Southern members out of the meeting. The organization of the House was delayed three weeks, and finally, under a plurality resolution, the Democrats elected Howell Cobb of Georgia Speaker over Robert C. Winthrop of Massachusetts. In the midst of these stormy scenes Mr. Toombs forced the fighting. He declared with impetuous manner ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... back on a disconnected plurality of beings, and God Himself, viewed as personal (in this sense) is but one among many. Albeit immeasurably the greatest, He cannot be regarded as the ground of the possibility and existence of all the rest—the home and bond of union ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell

... that would deny disinterested benevolence, or would resolve beneficence into veracity. He urges against Hutcheson, that, these being independent and distinct virtues, a distinct sense would be necessary to each; in other words, we should, for the whole of virtue, need a plurality of ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... mistress of the house and three or four masters, who are almost always brothers, is their unique remedy for the hardships of their lot, so lowly and yet (topographically) so elevated. Among their Mohammedan and Hindu compatriots the "twin barbarism" of a plurality of wives appears to be confined in practice to a few of the powerful and wealthy. Until within the last few years its repulsive features were wont to be brought into more hideous relief by the cruel custom of suttee, or widow-burning. It is only within half a generation past ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... effects tied in a blue cotton pocket handkerchief, to proceed to seek his fortune in Newbury. And never did stranger in Yankee village rise to promotion with more unparalleled rapidity, or boast a greater plurality of employment. He figured as schoolmaster all the week, and as chorister on Sundays, and taught singing and reading in the evenings, besides studying Latin and Greek with the minister, nobody knew when; thus fitting for college, while ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... not shrink from applying it on occasion. It is extraordinary what a large body of reputable opinion was prepared to tolerate polygamy, at least in exceptional cases. Popes, theologians, humanists like Erasmus, and philosophers like Bruno, all thought a plurality of wives a ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... a description of the natural disposition, traits of face, sorts of cloaths wt the excercises the men and women are addicted to. They are al Pagans, worshiping plurality of gods, seweral things in their religion symbolizing wt the Christian, which may be imputed to some seeds of the Gospel the Aposle Thomas sowed their in going to the ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... violate the constitution at will, renders it of no more avail than "a sounding brass or tinkling cymbal." It will be no alleviation, says Mr. Jefferson, in his work above quoted, page 195, that in the case of Congress unlimited powers are vested in a plurality of hands. One hundred or two hundred despots are surely as oppressive as one. Let those who doubt it turn their eyes on the republic of Venice. In the next place I will show, that independent of this objection, the Mexican constitution contains principles and provisions 500 years behind ...
— Texas • William H. Wharton

... ROBERT CECIL, interposing in ordered business of Supply, moves adjournment with view of calling attention to "growing danger created in Ireland by existence of volunteer forces and failure of Government to deal with situation." It is plurality of situation that disturbs philosophical mind. As long as there was but one volunteer force, its locality confined to Ulster, its purpose to defeat Home Rule Bill, its commander-in-chief CARSON, it was well. Nay more, it was patriotic. But when Ulster's challenge, uttered by one hundred ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 24, 1914 • Various

... application of carbon to use in transmitters has taken many forms. They may be classified as those having a single contact and those having a plurality of contacts; in all cases, the intimacy of contact is varied by the diaphragm excursions. An example of the single-contact type is the Blake transmitter, long familiar in America. An example of the multiple-contact type is the loose-carbon ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller

... absence of difference[10]: difference cannot be avoided by those who add to or take from the Unity, as for instance the Arians, who, by graduating the Trinity according to merit, break it up and convert it to Plurality. For the essence of plurality is otherness; apart from otherness plurality is unintelligible. In fact, the difference between three or more things lies in genus or species or number. Difference is the necessary correlative of sameness. Sameness is predicated in three ways: By genus; e.g. a man and ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

... gratified by the exhibition thereof. We presume that it is with this commendable feeling that pins'-heads (whose smallness in former days became a proverb) should now resemble the apex of a beadle's staff; and, as though to make "assurance doubly sure," a plurality is absolutely required for the decoration of a gentleman. In these times, when political partisanship is so exceedingly violent, why not make the pins indicative of the opinions of the wearer, as the waistcoat was in the days of Fox. We could suggest some very appropriate designs; for instance, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... the presbyterial government? For, 1. Who should tyrannize, what persons, what ruling assemblies? Not the ministers; for, hitherto they have given no just cause of any suspicion, since this government was in hand: and they are counterpoised in all assemblies with a plurality of ruling elders, it being already studiously[3] provided that there be always two ruling elders to one minister: if there be still two to one, how should they tyrannize if they would? Neither ministers nor ruling elders are likely to tyrannize, if due care be taken by them, whom it ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... with what he had acquired; "that if he had annexed Europe to Asia, and the British Isles to Europe, he would have sought out some no-man's-land to conquer." So insatiable was his ambition, that when the courtly philosopher Anaxarchus explained to him the theory of the plurality of worlds he bemoaned himself because as yet he was not master of one. "Heu me, inquit, miserum, quod ne uno quidem adhuc potitus sum."—Valerius Maximus, De Dictis, etc., lib. viii. cap. xiv. ex. 2. See, too, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... of obscure birth, but had managed to ingratiate himself with the Protector, and was employed in various capacities—ranging, it would appear, from chaplain to scout-master—in the Scottish army. In 1656, he appeared in Cromwell's Parliament, as member for Haddington, and secured for himself a plurality of offices, which combined a tellership of the Exchequer, with the captaincy of a troop of horse. The time was favourable for the adventurer whose advance was delayed by no scruples of conscience, and no deficiency of self-assurance; and Downing increased his importance ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... two and three principles, hot and cold, moist and dry, which were ever marrying and being given in marriage: in speaking of these, he is probably referring to Pherecydes and the early Ionians. In the philosophy of motion there were different accounts of the relation of plurality and unity, which were supposed to be joined and severed by love and hate, some maintaining that this process was perpetually going on (e.g. Heracleitus); others (e.g. Empedocles) that there was an alternation of them. Of the ...
— Sophist • Plato

... selected, as will happen where one makes up his library chiefly by writing book-notices: Peter Bayne's Essays; Coleridge; the first volume of Masson's Life of Milton; Vanity Fair; the Dutch Republic; the Plurality of Worlds; and Mommsen's Rome. That very attractive book in red you need not take down; it is only the history of Norwalk, Conn., with the residence of J. T. Wales, Esq., for a frontispiece; the cover is all there is to it. Finally, there are two shelves of Patent Office Reports, and Perry's ...
— Saint Patrick - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin

... be compared to an impetus, because no image borrowed from the physical world can give more nearly the idea of it. But it is only an image. In reality, life is of the psychological order, and it is of the essence of the psychical to enfold a confused plurality of interpenetrating terms. In space, and in space only, is distinct multiplicity possible: a point is absolutely external to another point. But pure and empty unity, also, is met with only in space; it is that ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... immediately began to throw aside all regard for decorum;—she seemed utterly to despise all sense of shame, and even to glory in a life of continual dissolution;—the company she kept of both sexes, were, for the most part, persons of abandoned characters: whether she indulged herself in a plurality of amours, is uncertain, though it was said she did so; but there was one man to whom she was most particularly attached;—this was a person who had formerly enjoyed a post under the government, but was turned out on the score of misbehaviour, and had now no other support ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... astronomical facts, only figurative and emblematical accounts of the motion of the heavenly bodies. We are convinced that the very idea of a God, that idea at present so obscure, is, in its first origin, nothing but that of the physical powers of the universe, considered sometimes as a plurality by reason of their agencies and phenomena, sometimes as one simple and only being by reason of the universality of the machine and the connection of its parts; so that the being called God has been sometimes the wind, the fire, the ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney

... General Garfield, the Republican candidate for President, carried the State of New York by a plurality of about 20,000, without which he could not have been elected. It will not be denied by those who are well informed that if the colored men that voted for him in that State at that time had voted against him, he would have lost the State and, with it, the Presidency. Therefore, ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch

... is said to have exclaimed, "I too am a poet," and his genius was awakened. Charles Bossuet's mind was first fired to study by reading, at an early age, Fontenelle's 'Eloges' of men of science. Another work of Fontenelle's—'On the Plurality of Worlds'—influenced the mind of Lalande in making choice of a profession. "It is with pleasure," says Lalande himself in a preface to the book, which he afterwards edited, "that I acknowledge my obligation ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... approaching to each other. In the patriarchal period, a man is his own weaver, tailor, butcher, shoemaker, and so forth; and, in the age of Stock-companies, as the present may be called, an individual may be said, in one sense, to exercise the same plurality of trades. In fact, a man who has dipt largely into these speculations, may combine his own expenditure with the improvement of his own income, just like the ingenious hydraulic machine, which, by its very waste, raises its own supplies of water. Such ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... buys a book off of him when he's making false witness of having a talented dad she'll be encouraging lying, which she can't do, being a full-blood Baptist. So they've got a deadlock, and the jury is hung, and the plurality is equal and unbiased on both sides, and up to date ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler

... and it was found that his son had reverted to Mahometanism. The tribes in Madagascar called Sadias and Fansayros are Mahometan Kafrs[16], and are attached to the liberty allowed by the law of Mahomet, of having a plurality of wives. The king was of the Fansayro tribe, and was now desirous to destroy Andrada and the Portuguese by treachery; incited to this change of disposition by a Chingalese slave belonging to the Jesuits, who had run away, and persuaded the king, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr

... Look at the way you old fellows swung that gas contract in the council. You 'sit in the sun' all right but they all know that the bivouac pulls the plurality vote in this city when it chooses—and they jump when you speak. What are you going to ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess

... Socrates,' we may now consider the metaphysical conceptions which are presented to us. These are (I) the paradox of unity and plurality; (II) the table of categories or elements; (III) the kinds of pleasure; (IV) the kinds of knowledge; (V) the conception of the good. We may then proceed to examine (VI) the relation of the Philebus to the Republic, ...
— Philebus • Plato

... accustomed to use strong language, and, moreover, to make use of a plurality of epithets, some of which were of a figurative kind, as the word peacock, and furthermore the allusion to Nicholas's nose, which was not intended to be taken in its literal sense, but rather to bear a latitude of construction according to the ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... part is a literary essay on lunar inhabitation, presenting in nuce the present state of the enigma of "the plurality of worlds." ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... Seymour was an unsuccessful candidate for governor of his native State, being defeated by his personal friend, Washington Hurt, by a plurality of only 262 votes. Considering the hopeless condition of the Democratic party at that time, and his majority of 20,000 over the same competitor two years later, we can imagine something of his popularity at ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... almost every day of the three months' campaign, and sometimes two or three speeches a day. At the election which was held on November 2, 1858, a legislature was chosen containing fifty-four Democrats and forty-six Republicans, notwithstanding the fact that the Republicans had a plurality of thirty-eight hundred and twenty-one on the popular vote. But the apportionment was based on the census of 1850, and did not reflect recent changes in political sentiment, which, if fairly represented, would have given them an increased strength ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... man, and because he had wit he showed himself an amusing serious man, which is rare. His Dialogues of the Dead were very humorous and, at the same time, in many passages profound; he wrote his Discourses on the Plurality of (Habitable) Worlds; then because he was perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences, came his charming and often astonishing Eulogies of Sages, which ought to be regarded as the best existent history of science in the seventeenth century and in ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet

... till the ancient carols ushered in the day, a certain languor not seldom pervaded the services of the Church a few hours later. Red eyes and heavy, young limbs hardly rested from the Dashing White Sergeant and Sir Roger, throats husky from a plurality of causes—all these were recognised as proper to the season, and, in fact, of a piece with the holly ...
— I Saw Three Ships and Other Winter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... that young Lincoln's wit, wisdom and power of ridicule made him known in that campaign as one of the greatest orators in the State, or that he was elected by such an astonishing plurality that the county, which had always been strongly Democratic, elected Whig representatives ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple

... he, by the rhythms of his attitudes, may represent men's characters, as well as what they do and suffer. There is further an art which imitates by language alone, without harmony, in prose or in verse, and if in verse, either in some one or in a plurality of metres. This form of imitation is to this day without a name. We have no common name for a mime of Sophron or Xenarchus and a Socratic Conversation; and we should still be without one even if the imitation in the two ...
— The Poetics • Aristotle

... sect of infidels to praise the morality of the Mahometans, but I think unjustly; they are said to be honest in their dealings and charitable to those of their own persuasion; but they allow polygamy and a plurality of women, and are despisers and persecutors of the nations professing a different faith. And what a contrast does this morality present to that of the Gospel which inculcates charity to all mankind, and orders benevolent actions to be performed ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy

... fornication with more than one woman; but still we do not hold it dishonorable or unbecoming to do so with more; yet out of our own houses we glory in the one among another: thus we rejoice in the license we take, and the pleasure attending it, more than polygamists. Why is a plurality of wives denied us, when yet it has been granted, and at this day is granted in the whole world about us? What is life with one woman only, but captivity and imprisonment? We however in this place have broken the bolt of this prison, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... the Unity of God does not exclude the idea of a plurality of persons in the Godhead. Not that there are three persons in each person of the Godhead, if we use in both cases the term person in one and the same sense. We believe, therefore, that there are three persons in the Godhead, but one God. Anti-trinitarians represent the evangelical ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans

... based on better foundations than mere assertions, evident philological proofs are required before they can be listened to, and no total and complete diversity of mankind in every aspect has been found any where to support the theory of a plurality of human species and Cradles. Europe and Africa have been repeatedly invaded by migrations from Asia. In America such migrations can be traced north and east by the Atlantic ocean, or north west from Berhring's[TN-10] ...
— The Ancient Monuments of North and South America, 2nd ed. • C. S. Rafinesque

... applicable to the people of the North in our present emergency. In accordance with the plan adopted by the founders of our Government, and practically illustrated in the election of George Washington and his successors, the people by a plurality of votes elected to office and placed at the head of our political system as its highest authority and ruler, the present Chief Magistrate. From the day of his acknowledged election, party politics settled into the calm of acquiescence, and all loyal and true States and men bowed to the arbitrament ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... his old seat in the senate without difficulty; and Harwood ran ahead of his associates on the legislative ticket in Marion County, scoring a plurality that testified to his personal popularity. Another campaign must intervene before the United States Senatorship became an acute issue, and meanwhile the party in the state had not in many years been so united. Credit was freely given to the "Courier" for ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson

... Sadducees did not believe in a plurality of powers in heaven, but only the Christians, in the regard of the Jews, did so (by their profession of the doctrine of the Trinity), it is obvious that here, as well as often elsewhere, the latter and ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... nature. The qualities which accompany this unity, praiseworthy community of purpose and welfare, loyalty to public ends, mutuality of sympathy, are emphasized. But when we look at the facts which the term denotes instead of confining our attention to its intrinsic connotation, we find not unity, but a plurality of societies, good and bad. Men banded together in a criminal conspiracy, business aggregations that prey upon the public while serving it, political machines held together by the interest of plunder, are included. If it is ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey

... at a faithful portrait, succession must be converted into simultaneousness, plurality into unity, and all the changing phenomena must be traced back to their essence. There are ten men in me, according to time, place, surrounding, and occasion; and in their restless diversity I am forever escaping ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Francis I. and his successors the right of presentation to the bishoprics and abbacies in his dominions. The work of reform, which should have claimed special attention at the Lateran Council, was never undertaken seriously. Some decrees were passed prohibiting plurality of benefices, forbidding officials of the Curia to demand more than the regulation fees, recommending preaching and religious instruction of children, regulating the appointment to benefices, etc., but these decrees, apart from ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey

... taken away and all withdrawn but the Register, The Court maturely Weighed and Considered the Evidences and Cases of the Prisoners and by a Plurality of Voices found the sd William Phillips Guilty of the Pyracies, Robberies and Felonys Exhibited against him, and by an unanimous voice found the sd. Isaac Lassen, Henry Gyles, Charles Ivemay, John Bootman, John Coombes and ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various

... state in a recent issue of the ICONOCLAST that McKinley's popular plurality "represents the votes of niggers and the scavangers of Europe's back alleys." I denounce that statement as a falsehood. The votes of native-born Americans elected Mr. McKinley. AMERICUS. ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... so wofully fulfilled the words "having no hope, and without God in the world,"[113] as the present civilized European race. A Red Indian or Otaheitan savage has more sense of a Divine existence round him, or government over him, than the plurality of refined Londoners and Parisians: and those among us who may in some sense be said to believe, are divided almost without exception into two broad classes, Romanist and Puritan; who, but for the interference of the unbelieving portions of society, would, either ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... of the other wives. More frequently this kind of jealousy vents itself in mutilations. Williams, in his book on the Fijians (152), relates that one day a native woman was asked, "How is it that so many of you women are without a nose?" The answer was: "It grows out of a plurality of wives. Jealousy causes hatred, and then the stronger tries to cut or bite off the nose of the one she hates," He also relates a case where a wife, jealous of a younger favorite, "pounced on her, and tore ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... England. We were told, on the banks of the Hawkesbury, that all the men there, and inland, had two wives. Cole-be, Bennillong's friend, had two female companions; and we found, indeed, more instances of plurality of wives than of monogamy. I do not recollect ever noticing children by both; and observed, that in general, as might be expected, the two women were always jealous of and quarrelling with each other. I have heard them say, that the first wife claimed a priority of attachment ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... from the particular objects in which the abstracted attributes may be concretely perceived. There is no foundation in fact for this presumption. The Natives have no difficulty in finding words wherewith to abstract the general essence from a plurality of facts or instances; their vocabulary is as apt and as extensive for this purpose as that which suffices for the mental or spiritual needs of the bulk of European people, indeed, the capacity for abstracting the general nature and character from the particular experience or emotion ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen

... the individual Caesar. It was now made to arise from the very constitution of the office, and the mode of the appointment. To defend the empire, it was the opinion of Dioclesian that a single emperor was not sufficient. And it struck him, at the same time, that by the very institution of a plurality of emperors, which was now destined to secure the integrity of the empire, ample provision might be made for the personal security of each emperor. He carried his plan into immediate execution, by appointing an associate to his own rank of Augustus ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... tracing the laws of nature arises chiefly from the Intermixture of Effects, and from the Plurality of Causes. The possibility of the latter in any given case—that is, the possibility that the same effect may have been produced by different causes—makes the Method of Agreement (when applied to positive instances) inconclusive, if the instances are few; for that Method involves a ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing

... Postumius, and Aulus Cornelius Cossus. Of these Cossus held the command in the city. The other three, after the levy was held, set out to Veii, and were an instance how mischievous in military affairs is a plurality of commanders. By insisting each on his own plans, whilst they severally entertained different views, they left an opportunity open to the enemy to take them at advantage. For the Veientians, taking an opportunity, attacked their line whilst still uncertain ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius

... with beautiful things and beautiful thoughts tend to develop in us that healthy kind of asceticism so requisite to every workable scheme of greater happiness for the individual and the plurality: self-restraint, choice of aims, consistent and thorough-paced subordination of the lesser interest to the greater; above all, what sums up asceticism as an efficacious means towards happiness, preference of the spiritual, the unconditional, the durable, instead ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee

... together with lands attached, in great many cases are owned by the colored people whose morals are called in question. Some of the most fashionable weddings of the day are celebrated among the Negroes. Births out of wedlock, the plurality of wives and divorced cases, have decreased among the Negroes 65 per cent. Womanhood, virtue and honor are defended at any cost, at the proper ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... that philosophy, the moment we have done our stroke of conduct, however small. For in the view of that philosophy the universe belongs to a plurality of semi-independent forces, each one of which may help or hinder, and be helped or hindered by, the operations of ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... the second place, we object to the Calvinistic theory of election, because it ignores and tramples upon a primary principle of philosophy. The principle is this: "That a plurality of principles are not to be assumed when the phenomena can possibly be explained by one" ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace

... A plurality of worlds. Written in French by the author of the Dialogues of the dead. Translated into English by Mr. Glanvill. London, printed for R.W. and sold by ...
— The Library of William Congreve • John C. Hodges

... aught we know, be an instinct of fact. The Rabbis taught a threefold division—nephesh, the animal, ruah, the human, and neshamah, the divine soul, which corresponds to that of Plato into thumos, epithumia, and nous. And even Saint Paul seems to have recognized such inherent plurality when he distinguishes between the bodily soul, the intellectual soul, and the spiritual gift, in his Epistle to the Romans. No such refinements of course as these are to be expected among the red men; but it may be looked upon either as the rudiments of these ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... is reared to believe that the plurality-wife system as it is delicately called here is strictly right; and in linking her destiny with a man who has twelve wives, she undoubtedly considers she is doing her duty. She loves the man, probably, for I think it is not true, as so many writers have stated, ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne

... His appeals to the spirit of democracy and morality, while they voiced nothing new in an electoral campaign, rang with unusual strength and sincerity. The State, which had gone Republican by eighty-two thousand two years before, now elected Wilson its Governor by a plurality of forty-nine thousand. ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... at the court-house of the town; the electors are the gobernadorcillo whose office is about to expire, and twelve of the oldest headmen, cabezas de barangay, collectors of tribute for the gobernadorcillo they must select, by a plurality of votes, three individuals, who must be able to speak, read, and write the Spanish language. The voting is done by ballot, in the presence of the notary (escribano), and the chief of the province, ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... or a, because it implies unity, is applicable to nouns of the singular number only; yet a collective noun, being singular in form, is sometimes preceded by this article even when it conveys the idea of plurality and takes a plural verb: as, "There are a very great number [of adverbs] ending in ly."—Buchanan's Syntax, p. 63. "A plurality of them are sometimes felt at the same instant."—Kames, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... applied to that of a hero, the Christian faith was preached and established from the Euphrates to the shores of the Caspian, and Armenia was attached to the empire by the double ties of policy and religion. But as many of the Armenian nobles still refused to abandon the plurality of their gods and of their wives, the public tranquillity was disturbed by a discontented faction, which insulted the feeble age of their sovereign, and impatiently expected the hour of his death. He died at length after ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... Mrs Ray Jefferson had only heard of a sculptor and a musician, but she drifted into plurality by force of that irresistible tendency to exaggerate trifles which seems inherent in women who are given to scandal even in ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... that no democrat would accept your three-legged stool and its inferences [Lady Dacre had compared the stability of our Government, by the Sovereign, the Lords, and the Commons, to a solid, three-legged stool, contrasting it disadvantageously with that of the United States], for nature scorns plurality of means where one suffices; and the broadest shadowing tree needs but one stem, if the root be deep and widespread enough. This is merely by the way, for I am as little "political" as ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... the ticket headed by the name of Honorable Robert R. Bishop as the candidate for Governor. In that tidal-wave year Mr. Bishop was defeated by General Butler, but Mr. Ames was elected by a handsome plurality; and it is not too much to say that by his courteous official demeanor towards his Excellency, Governor Butler, during the somewhat phenomenal political year of 1883, coupled with his firmness and good judgment in opposing ...
— Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 4, January, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... which is not yet, but which can be realised by our conduct, namely, if it conforms to this idea.] There is a progress here in the order of the categories of UNITY of the form of the will (its universality), PLURALITY of the matter (the objects, i. e. the ends), and TOTALITY of the system of these. In forming our moral JUDGMENT of actions it is better to proceed always on the strict method, and start from the general formula of the categorical imperative: ACT ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... ever see more ecclesiastic fury? Don't you like their avowing the cause of Jacques Clement?'and that Henry IV. was sacrificed to a plurality of gods! a frank confession! though drawn from the author by the rhyme, as Cardinal Bembo, to write classic Latin, used to say, Deos immortales! But what most offends me is the threat of murder: it attaints the prerogative of chopping off the heads ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... and how many smiles ought the same person to have?" cried Florence, impatiently. But that which instantly answered her said forcibly, that a plurality of ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell

... glad to have your reasons for giving up the chair; they are partly pleasant, and partly honourable to you. And I think one may say that every man who publicly declines a plurality of offices, makes it perceptibly more difficult for the next man ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the scale of the Stadtholder. This is the fatal coalition which governs without obstacle in Zealand, Friesland, and Guelderland, which constitutes the States of Utrecht, at Amersfort, and, with their aid, the plurality in the States General. The States of Holland, Groningen and Overyssel vote, as yet, in the opposition. But the coalition gains ground in the States of Holland, and has been prevalent in the Council of Amsterdam. If its progress be not stopped by a little moderation in the Democrats, it will ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson

... suppose," she assented; and Rowdy turned and rode by her side, grateful for the plurality of the pronoun which tacitly included him in her wanderings, and meditating many things. For one, he wondered if she were as nice a girl as her voice sounded. He could not see much of her face, because it was muffled in a white silk scarf. Only her eyes showed, and ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower

... elections for the Constituent Assembly in Petrograd (See App. XI, Sect. 15) gave an enormous plurality to the Bolsheviki; so that even the Mensheviki Internationalists pointed out that the Duma ought to be re-elected, as it no longer represented the political composition of the Petrograd population.... At the same time floods of resolutions from workers' ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed

... One and the Many obtrudes itself at this point; and we are compelled to ask how the plurality of these separate souls can be reconciled with the unity of which they form a part. That they cannot be regarded as absolutely separate is clear from the fact that they can communicate with one another, not only in human language but in a thousand more direct ways. But granting this communication ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... December, 1855, the anti-Nebraska men were divided among themselves, and the Know-Nothings held the balance of power. No candidate for the speakership, however, was able to command a majority, and finally, after it had been agreed that a plurality would be sufficient, the contest closed, on the one hundred and thirty-third ballot, with the election of a Republican, N. P. Banks. Meanwhile in the South, the Whigs were rapidly leaving the party, pausing a moment with the Know-Nothings, only to find that their inevitable ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... away in a measure with the severity of my scruples, and convinced me that I was deceived in some at least of my conclusions. A regular system of polygamy exists among the islanders; but of a most extraordinary nature,—a plurality of husbands, instead of wives! and this solitary fact speaks volumes for the gentle disposition of the ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville

... social compact is framed and accepted. How, in settling the terms of the compact, will you proceed? By majorities? But suppose a minority objects, and demands two-thirds, three-fourths, or four-fifths, and votes against the majority rule, which is carried only by a simple plurality of votes, will the proceedings of the convention bind the dissenting minority? What gives to the majority the right to govern the minority ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... Jackson had a plurality in the nominal returns from the electoral colleges, the question is, whether he had a plurality in the popular votes of the States. In North Carolina, the Crawford men had a great plurality over either of the Jackson and Adams sections; but the ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... Cambridge that Dr. Whewell's book, 'Plurality of Worlds,' reasons to this end: The planets were created for this world; this world for man; man for England; England for Cambridge; and Cambridge for ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell

... there is nothing wanting to their conversion but one who understands their language well, to explain to them the mysteries of religion; for, as to the moral part of Christianity, they understand it, and do assent to it. They abhor adultery, and do not approve of a plurality of wives. Theft is a thing not known among the Creek Indians; though frequent, and even honorable among the Uchees. Murder they look on as a most abominable crime: but do not esteem the killing of an enemy, or one that has injured ...
— Biographical Memorials of James Oglethorpe • Thaddeus Mason Harris

... confidence of the whites, and respect from the blacks amounting almost to reverence. He married—was much married it was said, which I see no reason to doubt, in view of the polygamous example set him by many of the respectabilities of the master-race in that remarkably pious old slave town. A plurality of children rose up, in consequence, to him from the plurality of his family ties; rose up to him, but they were not his, for following the condition of the mothers, they were, under the Slave-Code, the chattels ...
— Right on the Scaffold, or The Martyrs of 1822 - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 7 • Archibald H. Grimke

... on the principle of expense; an objection, however, which, when we come to take a nearer view of it, will appear in every light to stand on mistaken ground. If, in addition to the consideration of a plurality of civil lists, we take into view the number of persons who must necessarily be employed to guard the inland communication between the different confederacies against illicit trade, and who in time will infallibly spring up out of the necessities ...
— The Federalist Papers

... number: Substance or Being, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Place, Time, Position, Possession, Action, Passion. The Metaphysical, so derived, that group our thoughts, are twelve in number: (1) as regards quantity, Totality, Plurality, Unity; (2) as regards quality, Reality, Negation, Limitation; (3) as regards relation, Substance, Accident, Cause and Effect, Action and Reaction; (4) as regards modality, Possibility and Impossibility, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Harry St. George Tucker appeared before the Legislature and ridiculed her and her speech in the most insulting terms. In 1921 Mr. Tucker was a candidate for Governor and was defeated at the primaries by Senator E. Lee Trinkle, whose plurality was 40,000. He had been a strong supporter of woman suffrage and his victory was ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various

... the nuptial copulation, I desired to know of him what laws and customs they had concerning marriage, and whether they kept marriage well, and whether they were tied to one wife? For that where population is so much affected, and such as with them it seemed to be, there is commonly permission of plurality of wives. To this he said: "You have reason for to commend that excellent institution of the feast of the family; and indeed we have experience, that those families that are partakers of the blessings of that feast, do flourish and prosper ever after, in an extraordinary manner. But hear ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... rather not decide the question by a plurality of votes: in such a serious matter as the education of a friend's children, he would consult the one skilled person who has had masters, and has works to show as evidences of his skill. This is not himself; for ...
— Laches • Plato

... Finally, seeing no chance of otherwise terminating the contest, the House yielded to the inevitable domination of the slavery question, and resolved, on February 2, by a vote of 113 to 104, to elect under the plurality rule after the next three ballotings. Under this rule, notwithstanding the most strenuous efforts to rescind it, Nathaniel P. Banks, of Massachusetts, was chosen Speaker by 103 votes, against 100 votes ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay

... its provisions all the powers of government—legislative, executive, and judicial—resulted to the legislative body, holding that "the concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one. One hundred and seventy-three despots would surely be as oppressive as one." "As little will it avail us that they are chosen by ourselves. An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... given to the clouds in the hymns of the Rig Veda. Both expressions evidently point to a time when figurative language, if no longer a necessity, was at all events a common and favourite form of speech, and was understood by all. Dr. Whewell [Footnote: Plurality of Worlds, chap. x. Section 5.] has put forward the curious notion that when the creation of the interior planets was completed, there remained a superfluity of water, which was gathered up into the four exterior planets. But the only fact in favour of such an hypothesis is the close ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... of government. The older and leading men assembled in a council, in which they settled upon and proposed all that was necessary for the affairs of the village. This was done by a plurality of voices, or in accordance with the advice of some one among them whose judgment they considered superior; such a one was requested by the company to give his opinion on the propositions that had been made, and his opinion was minutely ...
— The Makers of Canada: Champlain • N. E. Dionne

... president elected by direct popular vote for a six-year term; presidential election last held 19 April 1998 (next to be held in the spring of 2004); chancellor traditionally chosen by the president from the plurality party in the National Council; in the case of the current coalition, the chancellor was chosen from another party after the plurality party failed to form a government; vice chancellor chosen by the president on the advice of the chancellor election ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... bought a book, remarking at the same time that he supposed he ought to buy four, as he had that number of wives. A bystander asked if this did not sound very strangely in the ears of one so unaccustomed to a plurality of wives. I quickly responded that the men of Utah must have large hearts to be capable of taking in four wives, or even more, when our men had scarce courage to marry one. My reply evidently touched some responsive chord, for all at once bought books. Their system of co-operative trade ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms

... envelopes; a law to take the sense of the people whether a Convention shall be called to revise the Constitution of the State; a law changing the composition of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University; the Plurality Act, in accordance with which members of Congress at the second trial, and Presidential electors at the first, are elected by a plurality of votes. At the special election to supply three vacancies in the Congressional representation, Mr. RANTOUL, Free-Soil Democrat, and Messrs. THOMPSON ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... The following are other instances. With the "Filles de Saint-Vincent de Paule," the superior of the "Pretres de la Mission" proposes two names and all the Sisters present choose one or the other by a plurality of votes. Local superiors are designated by the Council of Sisters who always reside at the principal establishment.—With the "Freres des Ecoles Chretiennes," assembled at the call of the assistants in function, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... and therefore, I cannot call him a "duplicate" or a triplicate collector. . . . But he atones for this by being liberal in the loan of his volumes. The learned and curious, whether rich or poor, have always free access to his library.' Heber's own explanation of this plurality of purchase was cast somewhat in this fashion: 'Why, you see, sir, no man can comfortably do without three copies of a book. One he must have for his show copy, and he will probably keep it at his country house. Another ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts

... Burnet grounded the claim of William and Mary on the right of conquest, a view which gave such offence that the pamphlet was burnt by the common hangman three years later. As bishop he proved an excellent administrator, and gave the closest attention to his pastoral duties. He discouraged plurality of livings, and consequent non-residence, established a school of divinity as Salisbury, and spent much time himself in preparing candidates for confirmation, and in the examination of those who wished ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... seven hundred institutions of secondary and superior education," says Father Thomas Hughes in his work on Loyola, "in their scope of legislative executive power we find they were not so much a plurality of institutions as ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola

... Wales, made it part of the conditions of his gift that the Master should always be entitled to take one of these livings if a vacancy occurred. Many of the Fellows also held benefices or curacies near Cambridge. In the eighteenth century the business of holding ecclesiastical preferment in plurality became almost a fine art; thus Sir Isaac Pennington, who was President of the College and Regius Professor of Physic, left to the College by his will a fund to provide the sum of L200 a year for the Master "if he be rector of Freshwater and not otherwise," a direct and curious ...
— St. John's College, Cambridge • Robert Forsyth Scott

... separates him from all offices, not only of civility but of working charity. A long sickness will weary friends at last, but a pestilential sickness averts them from the beginning. God himself would admit a figure of society, as there is a plurality of persons in God, though there be but one God; and all his external actions testify a love of society, and communion. In heaven there are orders of angels, and armies of martyrs, and in that house many mansions; in earth, families, cities, churches, colleges, all plural things; and ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne

... those born blind and certain people can see things that are happening a great distance away, and their reports have been proved correct; certain phenomena of double-consciousness cannot be explained without the plurality—the duality, at all ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal

... Christian should demean himself under the weighty thoughts of the doctrine of the Trinity, or plurality of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... mean—of eternity; behold his crushed and crownless hat—his hollow eyes—his rheumy visage—look at that petition penned on his breast. Poh! 'tis a surveyor's notice to pull down. But, then, look at that plurality parson with rotund prominence of portico, and red brick cheeks of vast extent, and that high, steeple-crowned hat—look at the smug, mean, insignificant dwarf of a meeting-house, sinking up to its knees in a narrow lane, and looking as blank as a wall, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various

... of connection in time or space; and, further, they are compared with the ideas which define them best. We do not have consciousness of an object, but of the relations existing between several objects. Relation is the new state produced by the fact that one perceives a plurality of objects, and perceives ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet

... academies and schools, to which none but the free youth were admitted. To learning alone was the tribute of applause offered. At those solemn festivals to which all Greece resorted, whoever had the plurality of votes was crowned in the presence of the whole assembly, and his efforts afterwards rewarded with an immense sum of money; sometimes a million of crowns. Statues, with inscriptions, were also raised to those who had thus distinguished ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... having a plurality of wives at one time, but are allowed to have just as many as they desire, simply getting rid of one and ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman

... against Brigham, it was simply a protest against his tyranny—his exorbitant tithing system—a mere refusal to render tribute unto him; not at all a disavowal of the Morman religion or of polygamy. But as bond after bond has burst, this last, strongest and tightest one of plurality of wives is beginning to snap asunder. To illustrate: One man, a noble, loving, beautiful spirit—nothing of the tyrant, nothing of the sensualist—with four lovely wives, three of whom I have seen, and in the homes of two of whom I have broken bread, with thirteen loved and ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... evolved the moral idea, or principle of action, according to which interest allies itself with interest in order to be free-handed and powerful against the common hereditary enemy, the heavy inertia and the incessant wear of the cosmos. Through morality a plurality of interests becomes an ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry

... Gospel and Epistle of St. John stand like a rock against this fatal error, and in this feature some German critics have rightly discerned their supreme value to mystical theology.[69] "In all life," says Grau, "there is not an abstract unity, but an unity in plurality, an outward and inward, a bodily and spiritual; and life, like love, unites what science and philosophy separate." This co-operation of the sensible and spiritual, of the material and ideal, of the historical and eternal, is maintained throughout by St. John. "His view is mystical," says ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... Republican stronghold, which gave | |Roosevelt a plurality of 51,000 over Wilson in 1912,| |the reception accorded the President is regarded as | |quite satisfactory. Downtown in the business | |district there was ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer



Words linked to "Plurality" :   battalion, relative majority, relative quantity, large indefinite amount, large number, pack



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