"Arbitrarily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his master has wronged him intolerably, he can take sanctuary at the Temple of Theseus, and claim the privilege of being sold to some new owner. A slave, too, has still another grievance which may be no less galling because it is sentimental. His name (given him arbitrarily perhaps by his master) is of a peculiar category, which at once brands him as a bondsman: Geta, Manes, Dromon, Sosias, Xanthias, Pyrrhias,—such names would be repudiated as ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... and Gallic liveliness had enabled her to keep the secret close from the girls as well as from Hans, any betrayal to them being likely to reach Mirah in some way that would raise an agitating suspicion, and spoil the important opening of that work which was to secure her independence, as we rather arbitrarily call one of the more arduous and dignified forms of our dependence. And both Mrs. Meyrick and Deronda had more reasons than they could have expressed for desiring that Mirah should be able to maintain ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... philosophies of life we know three; two have already been passed through by humanity, and the third is that we are passing through now in Christianity. These philosophies of life are three in number, and only three, not because we have arbitrarily brought the various theories of life together under these three heads, but because all men's actions are always based on one of these three views of life—because we cannot view life otherwise than in these ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... spread over an area extending back from one to six miles from the improved road. The assessment area is generally divided into about four zones parallel to the road. The zone next the road is assessed at a rate arbitrarily determined as a fair measure of the benefit, and each succeeding zone is assessed at a somewhat lower rate. Generally about three-fourths of the total assessment is placed on the half of the assessment area lying next to ...
— American Rural Highways • T. R. Agg
... traders who combine, by [arbitrarily fixing] an improper price, to impede [the traffic in] any commodity, or to make [an injurious] sale of it,[341] the ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... with life, and knew that Eros never mingles more arbitrarily in the intercourse of a young couple than when, after a long separation, there is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in horror. Faugh!—I tell you I'm sick of such cowardly cant. A pretty example the Almighty's set me of justice and mercy! Handsome encouragement He has given me to be virtuous and sober! Much I have for which to praise His holy name! Arbitrarily, without excuse, or faintest show of antecedent reason, He has elected to curse. And the curse will cling forever and ever, till they lay me in a coffin nearly half as short again as that of any other man, and leave the hideousness of my deformity ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of etiquette, where surely they should least have been expected to occur. These disputes are the most insusceptible of determination, because they have no foundation in reason. Arbitrary and senseless in their nature, they are arbitrarily decided by every nation for itself. These decisions are meant to prevent disputes, but they produce ten, where they prevent one. It would have been better, therefore, in a new country, to have excluded etiquette altogether; or if it must be admitted in some form or other, to have made ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... densely wooded we run "line of level" by using the slope board or clinometer and by taking elevations at points arbitrarily selected. Our lines ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... war because it tries to do good by doing harm, we must not ourselves do an injury to human nature while trying to smooth it out. Now the test and limit of all necessary reform is vital harmony. No impulse can be condemned arbitrarily or because some other impulse or group of interests is, in a Platonic way, out of sympathy with it. An instinct can be condemned only if it prevents the realisation of other instincts, and only in so ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... not guilty?" The brown eyes that had been wont to blaze so fiercely now looked pleadingly into the Woman's face, and the sable muzzle was pressed more closely against her. "They started you off all wrong, Jack. They let you become headstrong, and then tried to force you arbitrarily into their ways, instead of persuading you. If you had been a human being, all this would have been considered Temperament, but being only a dog it was Temper, and was dealt with as such." McMillan gravely extended his paw in appreciation ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... reflect that our thoughts throughout this little volume are mainly for those who dwell within the broad zone of the average heretofore referred to. In this republican land no one can say that the bounds of good society lie arbitrarily here and there; certainly they are not marked by a line drawn between occupation and leisure. The same young girl—after leaving school, at the period when society life begins—may be "in society" during leisure hours and in business during ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... international law and practice and his art and skill in conducting delicate negotiations, we have probably never had his equal in diplomatic initiative, or in the thorough preparation and presentation of cases. He did not meet occasions merely but made them, not arbitrarily but for the world's good. Settling the Alaskan boundary favorably to the United States at every point save one, crumbling with the single stroke of his Pauncefote treaty that Clayton-Bulwer rock on which Evarts, Blaine, and Frelinghuysen in turn had tried ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... which the skipping is done ready to hand. But, with all the respect due to the author of Thalatta, the process is not, at least speaking according to my judgment, successful. No one can really taste that eccentric book unless he reads it as a whole; its humours arbitrarily separated and cut-and-dried are nearly unintelligible. Indeed Professor Ferrier's original attempt to give Wilson's work only, and not all of that work when it happened to be mixed with others, seems to me to have been a mistake. But ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... are at times arbitrarily fixed on the basis of the benefit to the patron. The rates of freight from a coal mine are sometimes made by a railroad on the basis of the profits of operating the mine. The rates to a quartz mine in the mountains are often so regulated. A contractor, dependent on a transportation company, ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... of that "splendid composite of imagery," and that application of modern ideas to legendary material, or to invented material arbitrarily placed in an archaic setting, which are characteristic of this artist. The poem's sub-title is "A Medley," ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... with the money bought the labour of his fellows, and by the manipulation of that labour and by turning pebbles into money he took away from the labourer the money which he had paid them for the labour until all in the land were slaves of the moneymaker. These few tricksters said: We will arbitrarily manufacture these chips—stocks. After we have manufactured them, we will sell the world what the world can pay for, and then by the use of the unlimited supply we still have we will win away from the world what it has bought, and repeat ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... is said to be printed from the Original Copies; I believe they meant those which had lain ever since the Author's days in the playhouse, and had from time to time been cut, or added to, arbitrarily. It appears that this edition, as well as the Quarto's, was printed (at least partly) from no better copies than the Prompter's Book or Piece-meal Parts written out for the use of the actors: For in some places their very(38) names are thro' carelessness set down instead of the Personae ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... lines. Cornill, by using the introduction Thus saith the Lord, omitting the remnant of Israel, combining two pairs of lines and including the following couplet, effects the arrangement of octastichs to which he has throughout the book arbitrarily committed himself. Duhm has ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... out to her that a girl in her position—in short, the duties of a girl in her position?" Mrs. Wilson's come-down at this point was an example of a solemn warning to the elocutionist who breaks out of bounds. She was obliged to fall back arbitrarily on her key-note in the middle of the performance. "Have I said this to you, Mr. Wilson, or have ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... English king of his crown. In another view, the resolution of the House of Commons, apparently not so dangerous to your Majesty, is still more alarming to your people. Not contented with divesting one man of his right, they have arbitrarily conveyed that right to another. They have set aside a return as illegal, without daring to censure those officers who were particularly apprised of Mr. Wilkes' incapacity, not only by the declaration of the House, but expressly by the writ directed to them, and who, nevertheless, ...
— English Satires • Various
... wryly. "I wonder what the residents of each of these planets call their worlds. Hardly the same names we have arbitrarily bestowed." ...
— Adaptation • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... the expressional power of color,—not the conventional significance whereby certain colors have been associated arbitrarily with mental conditions. This last has often violated all the principles of natural relation; yet no fact is more generally accepted than this,—that colors, from the intensity of the primitives to the last faint tints derived therefrom, bear fixed and demonstrable relations to the infinite ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... much scantily as arbitrarily furnished. It contained a big mahogany sideboard; a common deal table, an extraordinary kind of folding wash-hand-stand; a deal bookshelf, the cane lounge, and three unrelated chairs. There were three ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... Berossus this feature of the story is completely absent. We are there given no reason why Ut-napishtim was selected by Ea, nor Xisuthros by Kronos. For all that those versions tell us, the favour of each deity might have been conferred arbitrarily, and not in recognition of, or in response to, any particular quality or action on the part of its recipient. The Sumerian Version now restores the original setting of the story and incidentally proves that, in this particular, the Hebrew Versions have not embroidered ...
— Legends Of Babylon And Egypt - In Relation To Hebrew Tradition • Leonard W. King
... Emmaus in Part V. The Phoenician Sailor and the Merchant appear later; also the "crowds of people," and Death by Water is executed in Part IV. The Man with Three Staves (an authentic member of the Tarot pack) I associate, quite arbitrarily, ...
— The Waste Land • T. S. Eliot
... this pressed hard on the labouring class, as less employment was given. Thirdly, although the remission of debt may bring prosperity for a time, it may be doubted whether it will permanently benefit the country; for it will be noticed that the attempt to fix prices arbitrarily applied only to the letting and hiring and not to other transactions. To give a typical instance of what has occurred in many cases: a tenant held land at a rent of L1. 15s. 0d. per acre; he took the landlord into Court, swore that the land could not bear such a rent, and had it reduced ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... changed, without any harm, to Friar Peter; for why should the Duke unnecessarily trust two in an affair which required only one. The none of Friar Thomas is never mentioned in the dialogue, and therefore seems arbitrarily placed at ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... judgments, to arrange existing codes in a certain order as lower and higher, to frame some notion of what constitutes progress. He may hold before himself, in outline, at least, an ideal of conduct, and not one taken up arbitrarily but based upon the phenomena of the moral consciousness as he has observed them. And in the light of this ideal he may judge of conduct; his appeal is to ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question, whether discontented individuals, too few in number to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily, without any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask: 'Is there, in all republics, this inherent and fatal weakness?' 'Must a government, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... especially here in our own United States, we find evidence of the extensive employ of "birth control" measures to prevent that normal development of family life which underlies the vigor and racial power of every nation. These preventive measures which arbitrarily control human birth had long been in use in France with results which, especially since the war, have been frequently and publicly deplored in the press, and have led the French Government to offer ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... colony in its straits. As it too often happened in those old times of colonial rule, the home government could with difficulty be brought to understand that the economic principles which might satisfy the state of affairs in Great Britain could not be hastily and arbitrarily applied to a country suffering under peculiar difficulties. The same unintelligent spirit which forced taxation on the thirteen colonies, which complicated difficulties in the Canadas before the rebellion of 1837, seemed for the moment likely to prevail, as soon as the ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot
... subject or subjective must have an object.' Here is the great though unconscious truth (shall we say?) or error, which underlay the early Greek philosophy. 'Ideas must have a real existence;' they are not mere forms or opinions, which may be changed arbitrarily by individuals. But the early Greek philosopher never clearly saw that true ideas were only universal facts, and that there might be error in universals as ...
— Parmenides • Plato
... institutions. From a recent examination of the archives of the State of New Jersey we learn that, owing to a liberal Quaker influence, women and negroes exercised the right of suffrage in that State thirty-one years—from 1776 to 1807—when "white males" ignored the constitution, and arbitrarily assumed the reins of government. This act of injustice is sufficient to account for the moral darkness that seems to have settled down upon that unhappy State. During the dynasty of women and negroes, does history record any social revolution peculiar to that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... though not under so harsh a name. The laws they would frame for an uncultured and wretched population, would distinguish between the colonizers and the aboriginals (excepting perhaps only the native chiefs, accustomed arbitrarily to command, though not systematically to enslave the rest). The laws for the aboriginal population would still be an improvement on their previous savage and irregulated state—and generations might pass before they would attain a character ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... making bricks without straw. Justly excepting the comparatively few public men who tower over mediocrity in public place, journalism gives the position and fashions the fame of most of them. It is not done arbitrarily nor from choice, as public and political necessities are often paramount with journalists, as with others, in awarding public honors; but with all its exactions and responsibilities, which are ever magnified by the greater opportunities for ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... violence and severity of his temper made him incapable of feeling any remorse in the execution of this tyrannical purpose, he had art enough to conceal his intention, and to preserve still some appearance of justice in his oppressions. He ordered all the English, who had been arbitrarily expelled by the Normans during his absence, to be restored to their estates [y]: but at the same time he imposed a general tax on the people, that of Danegelt, which had been abolished by the Confessor, and which had always been extremely ...
— The History of England, Volume I • David Hume
... motion the complex machinery of music, and with about equal scientific knowledge of what they are doing. To the philosophic mind, however, they are not playing or singing; they are producing and controlling sound-vibrations, arbitrarily varied in duration and quality; a series of such pulsations constituting a note; a series of notes constituting an air. These vibrations are diffused from the instrument or the lips, at a speed varying with temperature, media, and ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... but it is possible to name them according to the response. Study may also be classified into supervised study, or unsupervised study, into individual or group study. We might also classify study as it has to do with books, with people, or with materials. The term has been rather arbitrarily applied to activities that dealt with books, but surely much study is accomplished when people are consulted instead of books, and also when the sources of information or the standards are flowers, or rocks, ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... Durham was called and largely attended, at which a number of speakers uttered very inflammatory doctrines. It culminated in resolutions of protest against Thorne personally, against his rangers, and his policy, alleging that one and all acted "arbitrarily, arrogantly, unjustly and oppressively in the abuse of their rights and duties." Finally, as a crowning absurdity, the grand jury, at its annual session, overstepping in its zeal the limits of its powers, returned findings against "one Ashley Thorne ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... always after him. Pelle had once or twice received a hint not to employ him, but firmly refused to submit to any interference in his affairs. It was then arbitrarily decided that Peter Dreyer should report himself ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Anyone who reads the stories will find an infinity of questions suggesting themselves to him, and he will doubtless get no little pleasure and profit from attempting to answer them. As will be seen, some of the questions are not simple. If Swift has been wise he has not reduced everything arbitrarily on a horizontal scale to one-twelfth of its apparent size, capacity, weight, or strength, but has properly apportioned all. The reader may find that he will be called upon for some nice discrimination, before he can judge correctly as to ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... the plain word compensation is circumscribed by the phrase, "compensation as far as it is possible and consistent with the interests of all." In other and plainer words, compensation is to be arbitrarily given, and its proportion to the property acquired is apparently to be determined not by its value or by fairness and equity, but by the will of those who may be ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... oppression under which the whole land is groaning. The memorial of the citizens of Augusta County, bearing the signatures of many slave- holders, placed the evils of slavery in a strong light before the convention. Its facts and arguments could only be arbitrarily thrust aside and wantonly disregarded; ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... in circulation. The rate of exchange, and the price of all commodities, soon disclosed the political truth that, however the quantity of the circulating medium may be augmented, its aggregate value cannot be arbitrarily increased; and that the effect of such a depreciating currency must necessarily be, to discourage the payment of debts, by holding out the hope of discharging contracts with less real value than that for which they were ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Burton picks up the distinction between an inland city, living by handicraft, and a port city, handling weighty materials and feeding freely on commerce! His livers by their finger-ends are especially "those within the land." Just so the great capital of France, arbitrarily concentred amongst her provinces, and deprived of a port, can only thrive by her exceptional genius in fine and easily-moved articles de Paris. The site now under our consideration, however, means ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... desirable that the public should insure the safety of one whose work it uses. It might be said that in such cases the chance of a jury finding for the defendant is merely a chance, once in a while rather arbitrarily interrupting the regular course of recovery, most likely in the case of an unusually conscientious plaintiff, and therefore better done away with. On the other hand, the economic value even of a life to ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... leaned toward her. "Stop," he said peremptorily, raising himself with a wrenching effort. Something in the stern eye held her. His extended hand pointed toward her as arbitrarily as if, instead of lying helpless at her feet, he could command her to his bidding. "I want to ask you a question. I've told you the truth. I have just one cartridge. If you are going to send your cousin and his men here, it's only fair I should ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... went up in a kind of dark well, and once up it was a difficult matter to get down without a plunge from top to bottom, since the undefended opening was just where no one would expect to find it. Sometimes an angle was so arbitrarily walled up that you felt sure there must be a secret chamber there and furtively rapped on the wall to catch the hollow echo within. Then again you opened a door, expecting to step into the wilderness of a garden, and found yourself in a set of little rooms running ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretences made in this case, or on any other pretences, or arbitrarily without any pretence, break up their Government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask: 'Is there in all republics, this inherent and fatal weakness?' 'Must a Government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... lamentable lack of regard for the interests of the public. Persons and communities found themselves entirely at the mercy of railroad corporations, which, by vicious discriminations, built up and destroyed where they chose, and even endeavored to control arbitrarily the economic future of entire groups of states regardless of their natural advantages or the choice of their people. And not only did the railroad companies themselves become a source of danger, but they were instrumental in the creation and development of great industrial combinations, which were ...
— Outline of the development of the internal commerce of the United States - 1789-1900 • T.W. van Mettre
... merely telegraphs the word 'Hamlet.' If he wishes to say 'Bills of lading go forward by this mail, Invoices will follow,' he has only to telegraph 'Heretic.' For the most part, the compilers of these codes seem to have used the words arbitrarily, for the word 'Ellwood' has no visible connection with the words 'Blue Velvet,' which it represents; neither is there connection between 'Doves' and 'French Brandy,' nor between 'Collapse' and 'Scotch Coals,' though there does seem ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... classified occupations. Women are found in all but 43. Even allowing for the inaccuracy of such figures, and passing over the occupations which take in only an occasional woman, it is seen that "woman's sphere" can no longer be arbitrarily defined. The following facts and figures for women give us ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... week to Europe, one ship and no more, provided that solitary ship were painted in a manner prescribed in the permission, and then held strictly to a course laid down by the German admiralty. Germany, a third rate naval power, had arbitrarily forbidden us ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... more easily if we observe the differences between written and spoken language. The written word "stone," and the spoken word, are each of them symbols arrived at in the first instance arbitrarily. They are neither of them more like the other than they are to the idea of a stone which rises before our minds, when we either see or hear the word, or than this idea again is like the actual stone ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... His papers seem to have averaged five or six a year. They form, with those which had been previously inserted in the Revue de Paris, a series of Portraits, now embraced in seven volumes, and divided, somewhat arbitrarily, into Portraits litteraires, Portraits contemporains, and Portraits de Femmes. The names included, which with few exceptions are those of French writers, belong to different epochs, different schools, and different ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... different shades of bloom worn by this handsome, robust perennial afford an excellent illustration of the trials that beset one who would arbitrarily group flowers according to color. If the capricious blossom shows a decided preference for any shade, it is for magenta, the royal purple of the ancients, scarcely tolerated now except by Hoboken Dutch and the belles of ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... quantities of food. Also, I had accustomed my system to certain amounts of alcohol. I was organized on that basis—fatly and flabbily organized, to be sure, but organized just the same. Now, then, when I arbitrarily cut down the amount of food and drink for which my system was organized that entire system rose up in active revolt and yelled for what it had been accustomed to get. There wasn't a minute for more than three months when I wasn't hungry, actually hungry for ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... the games played according to an arbitrarily fixed schedule, so as not to inconvenience patrons—that would be out of the question, being open to the objection that it would then be possible to have every game that figures in the result of the series played on the home grounds of one of the contestants. ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... the Christian religion, does not require the assumption of numerical identity of origin, but rather the contrary. "It is not necessary," he says, "to assume the arithmetical oneness of mankind, and the derivation of all from a single pair, thus arbitrarily confining and limiting the creative power of the Highest Being;" and this position he proceeds to advocate by a variety of arguments, at the same time controverting the opposite opinion, and especially the notion of the late Major Noah that the Indians of this continent ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... that even in the case of metallic currency, the immediate agency in determining its value is its quantity. If the quantity, instead of depending on the ordinary mercantile motives of profit and loss, could be arbitrarily fixed by authority, the value would depend on the fiat of that authority, not on cost of production. The quantity of a paper currency not convertible into the metals at the option of the holder ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... of planners will bring about; he is merely telling what the people will require and compel. And he could have added—which would be perfectly true—that the people will not be moved to it by speculation and cogitation and planning, but by Circumstance—that power which arbitrarily compels all their actions, and over which they have not the ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... therefore do sufferings. The Master assigns their kinds and degrees, not arbitrarily indeed but sovereignly; and it is His manifest will that not all equally faithful Christians should equally encounter open violence, or even open shame, "for His sake." But it is His will also, definitely revealed, that suffering in some sort, "for ...
— Philippian Studies - Lessons in Faith and Love from St. Paul's Epistle to the Philippians • Handley C. G. Moule
... the several States that they shall have republican governments. How are the poor people of this District to have a republican form of government if gentlemen who have come to this city, perhaps for the first time in their lives, undertake to control them as absolutely and arbitrarily as Louis Napoleon controls France or Maximilian Mexico? Gentlemen ask, What right have they to hold an election and express their sentiments? What right have they to hold such an election? Surely they ought to have the right to ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... them. Young minds cannot appreciate great sacrifices made for them; they judge their parents by the words and deeds of every-day life. They are won by little kindnesses, and alienated by little acts of neglect or impatience. One complaint unnoticed, one appeal unheeded, one lawful request arbitrarily refused, will be remembered by your little ones more than a thousand acts of the most devoted ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse
... his acts. There was no standard of orthography for surnames till the latter part of the seventeenth century. Neither the owners, nor others, were slaves to uniformity. Posterity has used its own liberty of selection, often very arbitrarily. Robert Cecil, for instance, signed his name Cecyll, and nobody follows him, not even his descendants. For Ralegh's name his contemporaries never had a fixed rule to the end of him. Transcribers with the signature clear ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Holiness, Michael Angelo designed the facade of a palace that the Pope had a mind to build in Rome, a thing new and original to those who have seen it—not bound to any laws, ancient or modern, as in many other works of his in Florence and in Rome—proving that architecture has not been so arbitrarily handled in the past that there is not room for fresh invention no ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... happen. Future historians would simply state that in the dark days of Queen Victoria young men at Oxford and Cambridge were subjected to a horrible sort of religious torture. They were forbidden, by fantastic monastic rules, to indulge in wine or tobacco during certain arbitrarily fixed periods of time, before certain brutal fights and festivals. Bigots insisted on their rising at unearthly hours and running violently around fields for no object. Many men ruined their health in these dens of ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... born at Venice about 1278, and was elected doge in 1354. For many years the government of the republic, under an oligarchy, had been arbitrarily dominated by the Council of Ten, an assembly that, after serving a special purpose for which it was created, was declared permanent in 1325 and became a formidable tribunal. Professing to guard the republic the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... vigilance exercised by their white protectors the others still found the means of depredating and imposing upon these good but ignorant creatures. Instead of devastating their rude homes and arbitrarily taking possession of everyone and everything they pleased, they soon established another system ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... familiarize one's self with the characteristic elements of a score, but, as I have urged in the book quoted above, if we confine our study of Wagner to the forms of the musical motives and the names which have arbitrarily been given to them, we shall at the last have enriched our minds with a thematic catalogue, and nothing else. It is better to know nothing about these names, and content ourselves with simple, sensuous enjoyment, than to spend our time at the theatre ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... follow straight. 'Tis planned most wisely, if I judge aright: We climb the Brocken's top in the Walpurgis-Night, That arbitrarily, here, ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Psychologically, the mentally defective child does not belong to a distinct type, nor does the genius. There is no line of demarcation between either of these extremes and the so-called "normal" child. The number of mentally defective individuals in a population will depend upon the standard arbitrarily set up as to what constitutes mental deficiency. Similarly for genius. It is exactly as we should undertake to classify all people into the three groups: abnormally tall, normally tall, ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... The violence of the reaction reached such a height that Angouleme, now on the march to Cadiz, was compelled to publish an ordinance forbidding arrests to be made without the consent of a French commanding officer, and ordering his generals to release the persons who had been arbitrarily imprisoned. The council of ambassadors, blind in their jealousy of France to the danger of an uncontrolled restoration, drew up a protest against his ordinance, and desired that the officers of the Regency should be left ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... "self-government of schools"! These would not have the children learn to govern themselves and one another, but would have the masters rule them, ignoring the fact that this common practice in childhood may be a foundation for that evil condition in adult society where the citizens are arbitrarily ruled by political bosses. ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... amount of more than six million dollars, were distributed with a view to influence votes in the House of Representatives upon the Lecompton Bill. Some of the lesser ones, such as those for furnishing mules, dragoon-horses, and forage, were granted arbitrarily to relatives or friends of members who were wavering upon that question. The principal contract, that for the transportation of all the supplies, involving, for the year 1858, the amount of four millions and a half, was granted, without advertisement or subdivision, to a firm in Western ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... the suit of doubtful or worse Prognosticks; of the Events that arbitrarily fall to Man's Lot, those things which hardly can any Prescience or Plans or Conditions of our own making amend. Thence is it that in especiall comes a serious, nay even a gloomy appearance to the Parallelogram. Your first Glance at it, therefore, gives you a Generall Character in it, to state ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... in an advantageous position in Paris by the very fact of being an American. His intellect, talents, manners, person, fitted him to grace the most refined society; and, coming from a land where distinctions of rank are not arbitrarily governed by the accident of birth, but where men are assigned their positions in the social scale through a juster, higher, more liberal verdict, the young Carolinian gained facile admission into the most exclusive circles abroad, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... and tenants for generations, is utterly unwarranted. In several respects indeed he has been treated by the Act as if the land did not belong to him, while freedom of contract, until recent years one of the most cherished principles of our law, is arbitrarily interfered with. The chief alterations made by the Act ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... centralization of power, and a deep-seated disaffection of the vast majority of the subjects. Nor was this all. There had never been any fixed settlement of the succession; and not even the sagacity of this politic emperor was superior to the temptation of arbitrarily transferring the dignity of heir-apparent from one son to another during his long reign. True, this was no vice confined exclusively to Aurangzeb. His predecessors had done the like; but then their systems had ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... another, at some time or another. The Third sets aside a day for the worship of the Divinity. Thus the general command of the first precept is specified. This is the time, or there is no time. With the Third Commandment before him, man cannot arbitrarily choose for himself the time for his worship, he must do it ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... principle admits of being carried, or how many votes might be accorded to an individual on the ground of superior qualifications, I answer, that this is not in itself very material, provided the distinctions and gradations are not made arbitrarily, but are such as can be understood and accepted by the general conscience and understanding. But it is an absolute condition not to overpass the limit prescribed by the fundamental principle laid down in a former chapter as the condition of excellence in the constitution of a representative ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... disguise and distort it. There is no monopoly of poetry for particular ages and nations; and consequently that despotism in taste, which would seek to invest with universal authority the rules which at first, perhaps, were but arbitrarily advanced, is but a vain and empty pretension. Poetry, taken in its widest acceptation, as the power of creating what is beautiful, and representing it to the eye or the ear, is a universal gift of Heaven, being shared ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... may, and often does, make a wrong choice, that he may try to traverse the wrong path, to accomplish the wrong work, and do many things in the wrong way, is a clear proof that his course in life is not arbitrarily fixed, that he has been left to the freedom of his own will, and may therefore fall short of the best, though he may be fortunate enough to attain the good or the better. Hence devolves upon every one the responsibility ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... expelling Spaniards from his realm, and forbidding his subjects to trade with them. Moreover, the seminary building is being erected in a place selected in violation of a royal decree, and which has been arbitrarily seized from its owners; and the monopolies granted are a grievance and injury to many persons, especially to the Indians who reside near Manila. The Audiencia accordingly revoke these, and order that the seminary building be demolished; ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXI, 1624 • Various
... in bed, and so up and to the office, where all the morning alone doing something or another. So dined at home with my wife, and in the afternoon to the Treasury office, where Sir W. Batten was paying off tickets, but so simply and arbitrarily, upon a dull pretence of doing right to the King, though to the wrong of poor people (when I know there is no man that means the King less right than he, or would trouble himself less about it, but only that he sees me stir, and so he would ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... to any genus. Gaps in our collections are being continually filled up, to the effacement of our dividing lines of demarcation. We are thus compelled to settle the limits of species and variety arbitrarily, and in a manner about which there will be constant disagreement. Naturalists are daily classifying new species which blend into one another so insensibly that there can hardly be found words to express the minute differences between them. ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... that might tend to weaken the respect for such principles with which he had sought to inspire the mind of his daughter. In them he knew lay the power that was to protect her in the world. But he could not interfere, arbitrarily, with his wife; that he would have considered more dangerous than to let her act in freedom. But he felt concerned for the consequence, and frequently urged her not to be too ...
— Home Lights and Shadows • T. S. Arthur
... because of lack of food and raiment. Commissioner Scott had complained to Holmes of the Indian privations[545] and Holmes had been forced to concede, although only at the eleventh hour, the Indian claim to some consideration. He had arbitrarily shared tribal quota of supplies, bought with tribal money, with white troops and had lamely excused himself by saying that he had done it ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... any of them to meet me when I see good.'[728] They never dreamt of disobeying him. So great was the awe which he inspired that when the Deed of Declaration was drawn up in 1784, and Wesley selected, somewhat arbitrarily, one hundred out of one hundred and ninety-two preachers to be members of the Conference, though several murmured and thought it hard that preachers of old standing should be rejected, yet when the time came none durst ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... needful to use a common-sense interpretation in getting at the meaning. It is a simple law that one principle of interpretation should be applied uniformly and consistently to all parts of any one document. If I say arbitrarily, "this part is rhetorical; it doesn't mean just what it says, but something else; and this other part means just what it says," clearly I am reading my own ideas and prejudices ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... that they are, in fact, the real government of the country, exercising far more control over the lives of the common people than the regularly constituted, constitutional government of the country does. It is also true that they can arbitrarily fix prices in many instances, so that the natural law of value is set aside and the workers are exploited as consumers, as purchasers of the things necessary to life, just as they are exploited ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... of history which we call the Middle Ages covers a span of well-nigh a thousand years. If we arbitrarily date its beginning from the successful invasion of Rome by the barbarians in the early part of the fifth century, and its ending with the final development of the craft guilds in the middle of the ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... we seek an impenetrable, unfathomable judge? Is this region not our own; are we not here in the best explored, best known portion of our dominion; and is it not we who organise misery, we who spread it abroad, as arbitrarily, from the moral point of view, as fire and disease scatter destruction or suffering? Is it reasonable that we should wonder at the sea's indifference to the soul-state of its victims, when we who have a soul, ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... Speaking of the spirit of that usurpation, the royal manifesto describes, with perfect truth, its internal tyranny to have been established as the very means of shaking the security of all other states,—as "disposing arbitrarily of the property and blood of the inhabitants of France, in order to disturb the tranquillity of other nations, and to render all Europe the theatre of the same crimes and of the same misfortunes." ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... in regard to the power of instant removal, many of the most pronounced reformers of the civil service holding that power to be essential, and believing that it will not be abused so long as the removing power cannot arbitrarily appoint the successor. The matured opinion of others is that a tenure of office definitely fixed for a term of years, during which the incumbent cannot be disturbed except upon substantial written charges, will secure a better class of officials. They hold that a subordinate officer ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... the married woman (or vice versa) are often debated. The single woman certainly has the advantage in being able to give all her time and energy to the work, though the married woman can give help to married women in a way that an unmarried woman cannot. It is not a matter for anyone to decide arbitrarily. Remember that "each man hath his own gift from God, one after this manner, and another after that" (I Cor. 7:7). Whatever God has called us to do, we can do. Each state has its own blessings. When one sees the "trouble in the flesh" (I Cor. 7:28, K.J.V.) that bringing ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson
... hide horrible things: but to decorate things already adorable. A mother does not give her child a blue bow because he is so ugly without it. A lover does not give a girl a necklace to hide her neck. If men loved Pimlico as mothers love children, arbitrarily, because it is THEIRS, Pimlico in a year or two might be fairer than Florence. Some readers will say that this is a mere fantasy. I answer that this is the actual history of mankind. This, as a fact, is how cities did grow great. Go ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... almost more of a mathematical problem than the free expression of emotions and aesthetics. "Correct" music has now hardly more liberty than Egyptian sculpture or Byzantine painting once had. Certain dissonances are permitted, and certain others, no more dissonant, forbidden, quite arbitrarily, or on hair-splitting theories. It is as if one should write down in a book a number of charts, giving every scheme of color and every juxtaposition of values permissible to a painter. The music of certain Oriental nations, in which ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... retained the shadow of a popular character. But it was necessary that he should possess a Senate merely to vote men; a mute Legislative Body to vote money; that there should be no opposition in the one and no criticism in the other; no control over him of any description; the power of arbitrarily doing whatever he pleased; an enslaved press;—this was what Napoleon wished, and this he obtained. But the month of March 1814 resolved ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... with its setting-up, and while thou art busy at it, it will rise of its own accord." And so it came to pass. Hardly had Moses put his hand upon the Tabernacle, when it stood erect, and the rumors among the people that Moses had arbitrarily put up the Tabernacle without the command of God ceased ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... last instance of such extravagant despotism, and it exposed Macquarie to much inquietude during his life. That a person so humane in his general character should forget the precautions due in equity and in law, and punish arbitrarily for imaginary offences, proved that no power is safely bestowed, unless its objects ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... created arbitrarily and deliberately by the recent convention in Chicago. It had become an accomplished fact months ago, and the Chicago gatherings did nothing more than ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... the higher reason, and validated by the greater number of conclusively-established facts. In the case of a strongly intuitive mind, it might be possible to guess the exact order of three or four apparently disconnected events, but to arbitrarily associate with them other and more distinctively subordinate occurrences, like the appearance or disappearance of whole groups and classes of plants and animals, the supposition that guess-work, and not positive information, governed ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... the purpose of the rules and regulations prescribed for the government of the civil service either to restrict the power of removal or to extend the tenure of service, such power will not be exercised arbitrarily, and therefore applications must not be entertained by any authority having the duty of nomination or appointment for the removal of any person in the civil service, nor will any person be removed for the mere purpose of making a place for ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... of the players and chorus-singers come also within the province of the orchestral conductor; particularly for concerts. It is impossible to indicate arbitrarily the best method of grouping the performers in a theatre or concert-room; the shape and arrangement of the interior of these places necessarily influence the course to be taken in such a case. Let us add, that it depends, moreover, upon the number of performers requiring to be ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... enlightens us. We want to know what the Sunday schools exist for, and whether they are accomplishing the object of their existence. But we cannot define, nor even enumerate all the objects. We therefore arbitrarily select three which are directly related to the establishment of a native Church, and make one table serve. We inquire: (1) How they are related to the Christian constituency; from this we hope to learn the extent to which Sunday schools ...
— Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions • Roland Allen
... will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will ruin and divide them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such a minority. For instance, why not any portion of a new confederacy, a year or two hence, arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this. Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new Union as to produce harmony only, ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... them to his own people. A feine, aithech, or ceile (kailyeh), as a farmer was generally called, might hire stock in one of two distinct ways: saer-"free", which was regulated by the law, left his status unimpaired, could not be terminated arbitrarily or unjustly, under which he paid one-third of the value of the stock yearly for seven years, at the end of which time what remained of the stock became his property, and in any dispute relating to which he was ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... for the first time have never yet been correctly stated. A well meant but unskilful attempt had been made to complete a reform which the Bill of Rights had left imperfect. That great law had deprived the Crown of the power of arbitrarily removing the judges, but had not made them entirely independent. They were remunerated partly by fees and partly by salaries. Over the fees the King had no control; but the salaries he had full power to reduce or to withhold. That William had ever abused this power was not pretended; but it ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... has two equally good loop formations. As it has but one delta, it cannot be classified as a whorl of the double loop type nor as a loop since it would be difficult to make a preferential choice between the two looping ridges. It is arbitrarily given the classification of a ...
— The Science of Fingerprints - Classification and Uses • Federal Bureau of Investigation
... and other spirits. Artificial divination is also of two kinds: the one argues from natural causes, as in the predictions of physicians relative to the event of diseases, from the tongue, pulse, etc. The second the consequence of experiments and observations arbitrarily instituted, and is mostly superstitious. The systems of divination reduceable under these heads are almost incalculable. Among these were the Augurs or those who drew their knowledge of futurity from the flight, and various other actions of birds; ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... peace and quiet. It cannot be supposed that they should intend, had they a power so to do, to give to any one, or more, an absolute arbitrary power over their persons and estates, and put a force into the magistrate's hand to execute his unlimited will arbitrarily upon them. This were to put themselves into a worse condition than the state of nature, wherein they had a liberty to defend their right against the injuries of others, and were upon equal terms of force to maintain it, whether invaded by a single ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... continued to close down, and they were held back by numerous and unavoidable delays. At Windy Arm, Stine arbitrarily dispossessed Kit of the steering-sweep and within the hour wrecked the boat on a wave-beaten lee shore. Two days were lost here in making repairs, and the morning of the fresh start, as they came down to embark, on stern and bow, in large ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... fought shy of the women. Most of them had put the best face upon their lives, rejoicing in the occasional streaks of fat, eating the lean uncomplainingly. They led a migratory existence, moved arbitrarily, like pawns, at the will of eminent and elderly gentlemen a thousand or so miles away, whom they did not know and who did not know them. Continually, as their temporary habitations began to take on the semblance of homes, they were transferred, from mountains to plains, from the far north ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... of paratime on any level in which the prevalent culture has a common origin and common characteristics. They are divided more or less arbitrarily into sub-sectors. Belts are areas within sub-sectors where conditions are the result of recent alternate probabilities. For instance, I've just come from the Europo-American Sector of the Fourth Level, an area of about ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... there were many quiet and most picturesque nooks in the forest. Chacao was formerly the principal port in the island; but many vessels having been lost, owing to the dangerous currents and rocks in the straits, the Spanish government burnt the church, and thus arbitrarily compelled the greater number of inhabitants to migrate to S. Carlos. We had not long bivouacked, before the barefooted son of the governor came down to reconnoitre us. Seeing the English flag hoisted ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... rather arbitrarily it must be admitted, a few of the characteristic works that preceded the appearance of Graca Aranha's Canaan, the novel that was lifted into prominence by Guglielmo Ferrero's fulsome praise of ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis |
