"Law of nature" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their ancient ways for the novel paths of civilization. With this association of the higher forms of the earth under the leadership of man, there began an entirely new and unprecedented condition of the world's affairs. In place of the ancient law of nature there came the control of our species which had been, in a way, chosen to be the ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... with no great difficulty the senate was bullied into approving the new conscription, and the volatile people soon listened without alarm to the siren voice of their Emperor, which said these boys would be only a national guard, children obeying the law of nature, the objects of his own paternal care. Louis, who was governing Holland with reference to its own best interests, and ordering the affairs of his family rigidly but admirably, received a severe and passionate reprimand from the Emperor for his economy. What was wanted was ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... bonds of your affection, to accustom you to live in one family and to pay honour to one head. I have loved you all alike, as a father should, without exception or preference. I have disposed of my throne according to the law of nature and the inspiration of my conscience: Here are the heirs of the crown of Naples; you, Joan, and you, Andre, will never forget the love and respect that are due between husband and wife, and mutually sworn by you at the foot of the altar; and ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... her young. God gives to woman a quarter of a century in which to mold her immortal offspring. Because the period of infancy of one child covers the entire period of motherhood capacity, marriage binds for life, and the sanctity of marriage rests squarely on this law of Nature." ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... the bounds of laws to satisfy that general law of nature, and turn open thieves, house-breakers, highwaymen, clippers, coiners, &c., till they run the length of the gallows, and get a deliverance the nearest way ...
— An Essay Upon Projects • Daniel Defoe
... choicest opportunities of charity. To be charitable is to be good. One of your illustrious writers, Bernardin de Saint Pierre, said, 'Were every one to regulate his own house, order would be the law of nature.' We may also say, were each one to do good, universal happiness would ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... were there also; and they, too, were exemplifying a law of nature, that is to say, a law of male nature in every clime and every age. They did not love Washing Day. They felt no joy in the possibility of its observance, they felt no need of its processes. And yet again ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... to you, often at our own expense. If you did not think it worth your while to hunt up your runaway, it was none of our concern. Sometimes a man among us, more of a humanitarian than a jurisconsult, and better versed in the law of nature than the law of the land, illegally, but conscientiously, aided your bondman to escape. John Brown did so, and you hanged him for it! But no State, as such, and no authority within a State, ever hesitated or ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Belton, she had thought that the danger to herself of having any one near her who might know her quite justified her in endeavouring to create ill-will between Clara and her cousin. 'Self-preservation is the first law of nature,' she would have said; and would have failed to remember, as she did always fail to remember that nature does not require by any of its laws that self-preservation should ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... tim'rous deer, and harmless sheep, When love into their veins doth creep, That law of Nature cease ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... Court of Appeals of Kentucky said: "Slavery is sanctioned by the laws of this State, and the right to hold them under our municipal regulations is unquestionable. But we view this as a right existing by positive law of a municipal character, without foundation in the law of nature or the unwritten common law." I am not acquainted with any case or writer questioning the correctness of this doctrine. (See also 1 Burge, Col. and For. Laws, 738-741, where ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... his deserts, should die as he has lived by it. He considers treaties as mere court promises; and these, in the vulgar acceptation of a pie-crust, whenever they cover any advantage, it is but breaking them, and down with friendship and honour in a bite. He looks upon interest to be the true law of nature, and principal a Sinking Fund, in which no Dutchman should be concerned. He looks upon money to be the greatest good upon earth, and a pickled herring {83}the greatest dainty. If you would ask him what wisdom is, he'll answer you, Stock. If you ask him what benevolence is, he'll reply, Stock: ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... the belief that a really great poet can be a bad man. Be assured that the fruits of genius have never grown, and will never grow, in such a soil. Of all great poets Byron might seem at first glance to constitute an exception to this—I venture to call it—law of Nature. Yet hear what Walter Scott, a sufficient ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... she said, "you must know that the flowers are the husbands and wives of plants, made so by nature. They are in their way as truly married as Mr. and Mrs. Jones are in their way, or as your papa and I are. This marriage is a law of nature, invented to carry on the race, whatever that race may be, whether it is that of mankind, or plants, or animals, or birds, or even fishes. For not only do men and flowers marry, everything in nature does the same—turtles, ...
— Every Girl's Book • George F. Butler
... in heat and cold; and, as yet more deeply ingrained in every atom and every fluid, is known to us under the name of Polarity,—these "fits of easy transmission and reflection," as Newton[53] called them, are the law of nature because they are ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... not wrong to love oneself; that is the first law of nature. One, and one only being, the Maker, are we bound to love more than ourselves. The neighbor is to be loved as ourselves. And if our just interests conflict with his, if our rights and his are opposed to each other, there is no legitimate means but we may employ to obtain ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... and put about; near cursing himself moreover for having helped to break up her high serenity thus. The whole thing was manifestly impossible as he told himself, outside every recognized law of Nature and sound science. Even during the mistrustful phantasy-breeding watches of the night, when reason inclines to drag anchor setting mind and soul rather wildly adrift, he had refused credence to the apparent evidence of his own senses. Now in ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... litter of puppies, which is never the case,—for in all time we find repeated in the offspring the structure, the instincts and all the general characteristics of the parents, and never those of another species. Such is the law of nature and hence the axiom that "like produces like." But while experience teaches the constancy of hereditary transmission, it teaches just as plainly that the constancy is not absolute and perfect, and this introduces us to another law, viz: that ...
— The Principles of Breeding • S. L. Goodale
... the insults and disgraces offered to the family aforesaid, did, in a manner unparalleled, except by an act of his own on another occasion, fraudulently and inhumanly endeavor to make the wife and son of the said administrator, contrary to the sentiments and the law of Nature, the instruments of his oppressions: directing, "that, if they" (the mother and son aforesaid) "could be induced to yield the appearance of a cheerful acquiescence in the new arrangement, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... say income not dependent on personal merit or exertion of any kind, is the breath of life to the kept classes; and as a corollary of the "First Law of Nature," therefore, the invested wealth which gives a legally equitable claim to such income has in their eyes all the sanctity that can be given by Natural Right. Investment—often spoken of euphemistically as "savings"—is consequently a meritorious act, conceived to be very serviceable to the community ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... Osborne, by birth a simple country gentleman, owed his white staff, his garter, and his dukedom. The encroachment of the power of the Parliament on the power of the Crown resembled a fatality, or the operation of some great law of nature. The will of the individual on the throne, or of the individuals in the two Houses, seemed to go for nothing. The King might be eager to encroach; yet something constantly drove him back. The Parliament might be loyal, even servile; yet ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... perfection was left to Isaac Newton, an English Philosopher, who, seeing an apple tumble down from a tree, was led to think thereon with such gravity, that he finally discovered the attraction of gravitation, which proved to be the great law of Nature that keeps everything in its place. Thus we see that as an apple originally brought sin and ignorance into the world, the same fruit proved thereafter the cause of vast knowledge and enlightenment;—and indeed we may doubt whether any ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... follows:—It is the law of nature that the strong shall rule; a law which every one recognises in fact, though every one repudiates it in theory. Government therefore simply means the rule of the strong, and exists, no matter what its form, whether tyranny, oligarchy, or democracy, ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... and made pastry that moved Paul, usually little preoccupied about his food provided there was plenty of meat, to lyric raptures. The difference she made in Lydia's life was inconceivable. It was as though some burdensome law of nature had been miraculously suspended for her benefit. She gauged her past discomfort ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... with seeking by that Bow of his to defraud the Infernal Powers of their due. Apollo defends himself: he is but visiting friends he loves: he has no thought of using force. But would he could persuade Death to choose his victims according to the law of nature, and slay ripe ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... upon bread to do it.' Of her possible marriage I could not bear to think, for it seemed like a death that she should cleave to another man, and grow to think his house her home rather than mine. But I saw it was the law of nature that this should be, and that it was for the maid's happiness that she should have a home when I was gone; and I made up my mind without a murmur to help it on for her sake. In my youth I had wronged my dead friend, and to make amends I determined to give her, ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... lamentation of the multitude, from what happened to the legislator himself; for although he was always persuaded that he ought not to be cast down at the approach of death, since the undergoing it was agreeable to the will of God and the law of nature, yet what the people did so overbore him, that he wept himself. Now as he went thence to the place where he was to vanish out of their sight, they all followed after him weeping; but Moses beckoned with his hand to those that were remote from him, and bade them stay behind in quiet, while he ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... And Socrates is always playing between the two points of view, and putting one in the place of the other. In this very argument, what Polus only meant in a conventional sense has been affirmed by him to be a law of nature. For convention says that 'injustice is dishonourable,' but nature says that 'might is right.' And we are always taming down the nobler spirits among us to the conventional level. But sometimes a great man will rise up and reassert his ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... who are possessed of an ideal type of perfection, which they are striving to impress upon their stock, I have a few words to say upon the hindrances they may find in the way of satisfactory results. It is a law of nature that the offspring resembles some one or more of its ancestors, not only in the outward appearance, but in the construction of the vital organism and mental peculiarities, and is simply a reproduction, with the accidental or intentional additions that from time to time are accumulating ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... and misconduct, he resolved to embrace the first favourable opportunity of going abroad, being inflamed with the desire of seeing foreign countries; and actually set out for Holland, where, for the space of two years, he studied the Roman law, with the law of nature and nations, under the famous professors ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... their origins. Now that the greater number of these animals have an origin, the descriptions given of them bear the most unequivocal marks; as in almost all of them we see merely the different parts of known animals united by an unbridled imagination, and in contradiction to every established law of nature."(2) ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... aid of grace. To put it somewhat differently: Baius and Jansenius hold that fallen man can perform no morally good works because of physical or moral impotence on the part of the will. This assumption is false. Man is physically able to perform good works because they are enjoined by the moral law of nature under pain of sin; he is morally able because, in spite of numerous evil tendencies, not a few gentiles and unbelievers have led upright lives and thereby proved that man can perform good works without the aid of grace.(168) This is also the ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle
... of the Inhabitants to be found. Thus the Spaniards being blinded with the Lustre of their Gold, deserted by God, and given over to a Reprobate Sense, not undrestanding (or at least not willing to do so) that the Cause of the Indians is most Just, as well by the Law of Nature, as the Divine and Humane, they by Force of Arms, destroying them, hacking them in pieces, and turning them out of their own Confines and Dominions, nor considering how unjust those Violences and Tyrannies are, wherewith they have afflicted these poor Creatures, ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... though we are desirous that marriadge be free according to the law of nature, yett undervow not to have these maids deterred and married to servants, but only to such freemen or tenants as have means to maintaine them; we pray you therefore to be fathers to them in this business, not enforcing them to ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... inclination of all bodies towards the centre of the earth; and which was established by Sir Isaac Newton, as the great law of nature. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... philosophies; all science. If we return to a void, such as some interpreters of the Vedas declare, then surely this urge within mankind toward this annihilatory state would hardly be expected. It would be inconsistent with that instinct of self-preservation which we are told is the first law of nature. ...
— Cosmic Consciousness • Ali Nomad
... doors or windows of one's house, I admire. There is nothing inhuman in this practice. It rather calls forth some of the better feelings of the heart—gives pleasure to us and the birds, yet violates no law of nature. ...
— Small Means and Great Ends • Edited by Mrs. M. H. Adams
... these peoples had proven belligerent in the extreme. In common with the rest of the fauna of Caprona the first law of nature as they seemed to understand it was to kill—kill—kill. And so it was that Bradley had no desire to follow up the little stream toward the pool near which were sure to be the caves of some savage tribe, but fortune played him an unkind trick, ...
— Out of Time's Abyss • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... in their fellow-man only, not of the image of their kind only,—sacred by natural universal laws,—but of the chosen image of it, the ideal of it, the one in whom the natural love of their kind was by the law of nature concentred,—the wife and the mother,— destroyed not as the wolf destroys its prey, but with ferocity, or with prolonged and studious harm, that it required the human brain to plan and perpetrate. Look at this pale lengthening widening train of their victims. We ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... and the negative, or South pole. If any magnet, of any size, and having as one piece two poles only, be cut into two, or a hundred pieces, each separate piece will be like the original magnet and have its two poles. The law is arbitrary and invariable under all circumstances, and is a law of nature, as unexplainable and as invariable as any in that mysterious code. All bar magnets, when suspended by their centers, turn their ends to the North and South, a familiar example of this being the ordinary compass. But in magnetism, like repels like. The world is a huge magnet. ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... it all when everything was in place, and I realized that if the disaster had come, I should have found it easy to reconcile myself to it in an epoch where millions were facing it with me. It is the law of Nature. Material things, like the friends we have lost, may be eternally regretted. They cannot be eternally grieved for. We must "—be up and doing, With a heart for ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... always found gone when lines are pulled up! This would seem to be an angling law of nature. At all events, it would seem to have been a very aggravating law of nature on the present occasion, for John Watt frowned and growled to himself as ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... and unbelief is not a right.... All the rights the sects have, or can have, are derived from the State, and rest on expediency. As they have, in their character of sects hostile to the true religion, no rights under the law of nature or the law of God, they are neither wronged nor deprived of liberty, if the State refuses to grant them any rights at all."—Brownson's Review, Oct., ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... understand political power aright and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in; and that is a state of perfect freedom to order their actions and dispose of their persons and possessions as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man—a state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... further intensified by the fact that a less dense cannot absorb and transmit so much heat as a more dense atmosphere. Here then we have an absolute law of nature to be observed operating everywhere on the earth, and the mode of action of which is fairly well understood. This law is, that reduced atmospheric pressure increases radiation, or loss of heat, more rapidly than it increases insolation ...
— Is Mars Habitable? • Alfred Russel Wallace
... suppose, will be found in all histories, sacred and profane.' Without saying here what he means by a miracle, Hume argues that 'experience is our only guide in reasoning.' He then defines a miracle as 'a violation of the laws of nature.' By a 'law of nature' he means a uniformity, not of all experience, but of each experience as he will deign to admit; while he excludes, without examination, all evidence for experience of the absence of such uniformity. That kind of experience cannot be considered. 'There must be a ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... community, and to exact from it a greater remuneration. Every circumstance which injures production, must equally be the source of uneasiness to him; for its immediate effect is to diminish his services, and consequently his remuneration. This is a fortunate and necessary law of nature. The immediate good or evil of favorable or unfavorable circumstances must fall upon the producer, in order to influence him invisibly to seek the one ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... petulantly and irritably we desire to do so, because it simply is not in our power to effect it. We talk about the power of the will, but no effort of will can obliterate the life that we have lived, or add a cubit to our stature; we cannot abrogate any law of nature, or destroy a single atom of matter. What it seems that we can do with the will is to make a certain choice, to select a certain line, to combine existing forces, to use them within very small limits. We can ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... maintenance of principles contrary to the natural rights of man, which are the only purpose of every political organization.... The natural rights of man to be governed only by laws to which he has given his consent cannot be invoked in favor of a man who is himself at the very moment violating the law of nature." The pamphlet closes with the remark that the planters can doubtless speak concerning their own interests, "but that on their lips the sacred word 'rights' would ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... intellect by the power of volition possessed by a sound mind of withdrawing from the ideal world into the world of sense. It is but a step which may carry us from the wanderings of fancy into the aberrations of delirium. The endurance of attention, even in minds of the highest order, is limited by a law of nature; and when thinking is goaded on to exhaustion, confusion of ideas ensues, as straining any one of our limbs by excessive exertion ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... that Texas had been sought as a slave State. He would not admit that the whole of Texas was bound to be a slave Territory. By the very terms of annexation, provision had been made for admitting free States out of Texas. As for Webster's "law of nature, of physical geography,—the law of the formation of the earth," from which the Senator from Massachusetts derived so much comfort, it was a pity that he could not have discovered that law earlier. The "law of nature" surely had not been ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... the wiser are we; what does the explanation explain? Is it any more than a grandiloquent way of announcing the fact, that we really know nothing about the matter? A phenomenon is explained when it is shown to be a case of some general law of Nature; but the supernatural interposition of the Creator can, by the nature of the case, exemplify no law, and if species have really arisen in this way, it is absurd to attempt to discuss ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... action is entirely satisfactory when the distance between the keys and the organ is great. This is often due to a law of nature rather than to imperfection of design ...
— The Recent Revolution in Organ Building - Being an Account of Modern Developments • George Laing Miller
... the efficiency of God; but he teaches that God, in this world at least, never acts except through those causes. He applies this doctrine even to miracles, which he regards as effects produced by second causes of which we are ignorant, that is, by some higher law of nature. The Scriptures, however, teach that God is not thus bound; that He operates through second causes, with them, or without them, as He sees fit. It is a purely arbitrary assumption, that when Christ raised the dead, healed the lepers, or gave sight to the blind, any second ...
— What is Darwinism? • Charles Hodge
... without fidelity or sincerity." Celibacy, condemned by public [349] opinion,—except in the case of Buddhist priests,—was equally condemned by the code. "One should not live alone after sixteen years of age," declares the legislator; "all mankind recognize marriage as the first law of nature." The childless man was obliged to adopt a son; and the 47th article of the Legacy ordained that the family estate of a person dying without male issue, and without having adopted a son, should be "forfeited without any regard to his relatives or connexions." ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... my soul, is nothing but a stipulation for national ignominy; an illusory expedient to baffle the resentment of the nation; a truce without a suspension of hostilities on the part of Spain; on the part of England a suspension, as to Georgia, of the first law of nature, self-preservation and self-defence; a surrender of the rights and the trade of England to the mercy of plenipotentiaries, and, in this infinitely highest and sacred point, future security, not only inadequate, but directly ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... is beyond all question. To impute to it the present decadence of the Moslem world is altogether too puerile. The truth is that nations have their day; and to a period of glorious splendour succeeds a time of lassitude and slumber. It is a law of nature. And then one day some danger threatens them, stirs them from their torpor and ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... chapter of Adamnan's work, the miracle is again alluded to as follows:—"He took a white stone (lapidem candidum) from the river's bed, and blessed it for the cure of certain diseases; and that stone, contrary to the law of nature, floats like an apple ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... S'pose water won't wet! S'pose fire won't burn! S'pose the sun won't shine! That's the law of nature, man! If you think I hain't got no sense at all I jest dare you to ask Doctor Carey. 'Twouldn't take him long to comb the kinks ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... was still even among us a small group who held themselves aloof from the beginning, and even locked themselves up. But what lock can stand against a law of nature? Daughters will grow up even in the most careful families, and it is essential for grown-up daughters ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... chin,—and it is not without reason that we have become accustomed to form such a picture of such a personage. Everyone knows to what great abuses the royal tax-farming led, and it seems as though there were a law of nature which renders fatter than the rest of mankind those who fatten, not only upon their own laziness, but also upon the ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... doctrine of the new school, was the most characteristic tenet of the school from which it dissented. All the speculative part of the English literature in the first half of the eighteenth century is a prolonged discussion as to the meaning and value of the law of nature, the religion of nature, and the state of nature. The deist controversy, which occupied every one of the keenest thinkers of the time, turned essentially upon this problem: granting that there is an ascertainable and absolutely ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... observation of results. The latter indeed is the essence of scientific inquiry. When certain series of phenomena have been classified together as obviously occurring under the domination of the same or similar causes, we speak of having determined a law of nature. For example, the fact that any body in motion tends to go on at the same rate of speed in a direct line forever, expresses such a law. The fact that the gravitation pull is directly as the mass and inversely as the square ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... so my neighbour cannot think it hard, if I prefer myself, who am the original, before him, who is only the copy. Thus, if any matter equally concern the life, the reputation, the profit of my neighbour, and my own; the law of nature, which is the law of God, obligeth me to take care of myself first, and afterwards of him. And this I need not be at much pains in persuading you to; for the want of self-love, with regard to things of this ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... literature. Elsewhere it is common enough. That tragedy should be stately, decorous, and on the whole somewhat uneventful as far as visible action goes,—comedy bustling, crammed with incident, and quite regardless of decorum,—might seem a law of nature to the audience of AEschylus and Aristophanes, of Plautus and Pacuvius, even to the audience of Moliere and Racine. But the vast and final change, the inception of which we have here to record, has made tragedy, tragi-comedy, comedy, and ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... or pendicle of the coat at the time of purchase, when it hung exposed for sale over the white-headed Welshman's little finger, became according to the law of nature and nations, as James Batter wisely observed, part and pendicle of the property of me, Mansie Wauch, ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... hot and bitter. In a speech of remarkable power, William L. Yancey of Alabama upbraided the Northern delegates for truckling to the Free-soil spirit. "You acknowledged," he said, "that slavery did not exist by the law of nature or by the law of God—that it only existed by state law; that it was wrong, but that you were not to blame. That was your position, and it was wrong. If you had taken the position directly that slavery was right ... you would have triumphed. But you have gone down before the enemy ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... serious deprivation—are not these thwartings, we ask, signs of a terrible lack of sympathy? The truth is, that the difficulties of moral education are necessarily of dual origin—necessarily result from the combined faults of parents and children. If hereditary transmission is a law of nature, as every naturalist knows it to be, and as our daily remarks and current proverbs admit it to be; then, on the average of cases, the defects of children mirror the defects of their parents;—on the average of cases, we say, because, complicated ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... down-hearted enough; ay, so erringly faithful that she mourns for him. 'Tis hard for her; she is honestly in love, without any thought of vanity or conquest. And not ashamed, no; she is a strong woman full of weakness; she is but following the law of nature all about her; it is the glow of autumn in her as in all things else. Her breast heaves with feeling as she packs up food for Gustaf to take with him. No thought of whether she has the right, of whether she dare risk this or that; she gives herself up to it entirely, hungry to taste, to enjoy. Isak ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... down even to bankruptcy of money! And so this poor Versailles Court, as the chief or central Solecism, finds all the other Solecisms arrayed against it. Most natural! For your human Solecism, be it Person or Combination of Persons, is ever, by law of Nature, uneasy; if verging towards bankruptcy, it is even miserable:—and when would the meanest Solecism consent to blame or amend itself, while there ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... be well hidden. The common tern lays its eggs amongst rough stones, where you would think that anything so fragile as an egg would easily get broken. Near his case there is a beautiful pure white gull, who lives in the Arctic regions among the ice and snow. It is a wonderful law of Nature that birds and animals often resemble their surroundings. We have seen that the tiger is not easily seen among his bamboo-stems, and that birds the colour of sand live on sand; well in the Arctic regions, where there is perpetual ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... mythology, upon which their religion was based. They believed that in the beginning all was chaos, in which was a fountain that sent forth twelve rivers. These streams flowed so far from their source that the waters froze, and the ice, defying the modern law of nature, sank till the fathomless deep was filled up. Far south of the world of mist, in which this miracle was wrought, was a world of fire and light, whence proceeded a hot wind that melted the ice, from the drops ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... speaking, how can there be any courage except moral courage? If a man braves death or physical suffering, the quality that enables him to brave it is certainly not physical; certainly it does not pertain to the physical body. The "first law of nature" impels him to escape or yield; and it impels him with a powerful force. If this force be not successfully ...
— The Navy as a Fighting Machine • Bradley A. Fiske
... The end of government, as the end of all conduct, must be the increase of human happiness. The province of government is limited by another consideration. It has to deal with one class of happiness, that is, with the pains and pleasures 'which men derive from one another.' By a 'law of nature' labour is requisite for procuring the means of happiness. Now, if 'nature' produced all that any man desired, there would be no need of government, for there would be no conflict of interest. But, as the material ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... and splendor. [No German couturier will ever clothe you!] Thou hast even virtues that women do not possess, for thou art patient and calm. Clouds come between thy worshipers and thee, dawn each morning extinguishes thy light, yet dost thou bow before the supreme law of nature without a murmur. I pray thee inspire with submission thy sisters of the earth; teach them calmly and patiently to await the return of ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... retained its privileged position. It was considered a law of nature that the noblemen should assist the monarch in the administration of the State and as leaders of the army; the peasant should cultivate the fields and provide food; the commoner should provide money through ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... domestic virtue, of her righteous laws, and of her anyway challenged or endangered honour. A state without virtue, without laws, and without honour, he is bound not to defend; nay, bound to redress by his own right hand that which he sees to be base in her. So sternly is this the law of Nature and life, that a nation once utterly corrupt can only be redeemed by a military despotism—never by talking, nor by its free effort. And the health of any state consists simply in this: that in it, those who are wisest shall also be strongest; its rulers should be also its soldiers; ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... thinks that he has a mission to guide and instruct the world, and this mission he manfully fulfils in defiance of Prussians and Prussian cannon. It is true that he knows rather less of foreign countries than an intelligent Japanese Daimio may be supposed to know of Tipperary, but by some curious law of nature, the less he knows of a subject the more strongly does he feel impelled to write about it. I read a very clever article this morning, pointing out that, if we are not on our guard, our empire in India will come to an end by a Russian fleet ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... of God; usually called instinct, that guides these wild animals; doubtless it is the law of nature given to ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... a law of nature that progress, as well as time, should be marked by periods of alternate light and ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... protests of the Luxemburg and Belgian Governments. We shall repair the wrong we are doing as soon as our military aims have been achieved." And again the Chancellor said the invasion of Belgium "is contrary to the law of nature." To Mr. Bernard Shaw's peculiar sense of international morality such dealing is ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... loneliness, sensitiveness, despondency, moroseness, are connected with personal interests. Turn more of those selfish interests into unselfish ones, and by so much we change opportunities for disheartenment into their opposite. By a law of Nature part of her beautiful economy, he who lives most for others is really living ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward
... Waterford was not proof against the law of nature. It followed the rule deduced by practical men from the phenomena of every-day experience, and the formula laid down by those learned in physics. When I twitched the rope, I suddenly and violently overcame the inertia of the tender. Though without any malice on my part, ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... made against the severe exactions which they imposed upon their vassal allies. They avowed that their empire was a tyranny, and frankly stated that they solely trusted to force and terror to uphold it. They appealed to what they called "the eternal law of nature, that the weak should be coerced by the strong." [THUC. i. 77.] Sometimes they stated, and not without some truth, that the unjust hatred of Sparta against themselves forced them to be unjust to others in self-defence. To be safe they ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... German statisticiao, was born at Elbing, in East Prussia, in October 1719. He studied at Jena, Halle and Leipzig, and took a degree at the last-named university. He removed to Marburg in 1746, where for two years he read lectures on history and on the law of nature and of nations. Here, too, he commenced those inquiries in statistics by which his name became known. In 1748 he was given a professorship at Gottingen, where he resided till his death in 1772. His chief works were connected with statistics. The ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... in opposition to it. Such a proceeding on the part of a plant must seem to a stone a pure miracle. If a piece of granite should write a book of theology, it would probably say that the plant, in growing up, had violated or suspended a law of nature. But it has not. The force of gravitation has worked on according to its own law; it has been dragging the plant downward all the time, only the vital power in the plant has overcome its force, and modified the result. And, again, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... species. Birth as the natural sequence of mating is her solemn and invariable law. It is in birth and rebirth that nature renews herself and all the life of the animal and vegetable world, and her primal aim is to encourage it. Human law recognizes this underlying law of nature by forbidding man to tamper in a preventive way with her hallowed and mysterious processes for perpetuating the human race. Religious law, based on the divine dispensation of the Scriptures, indorses the law of nature and that of ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... irresistibly, and as if by the force of a law of nature, there would gravitate around your person the very elements which the Supreme Council, in its indefatigable zeal for the state, is most eager to render harmless and to punish in an exemplary manner. For your part, my dear Casanova, you would give us ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... If the law of Nature is "struggle," it is better to look the matter in the face and adapt yourself to the conditions of your existence. Nature will not bow to you, neither will you mend matters by patting her on the back and telling her ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler
... with its nature, and the reciprocal rights and duties of governors and the governed. The compact itself they held was not voluntarily formed by the people themselves, either individually or collectively, but was imposed by God, either immediately, or mediately, through the law of nature. "Every man," says Cicero, "is born in society, and remains there." They held the same, and maintained that every one born into society contracts by that fact certain obligations to society, and society certain obligations to him; for under the natural law, every one has certain ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... the nine or more States ratifying the Constitution, and the remaining few who do not become parties to it? The first question is answered at once by recurring to the absolute necessity of the case; to the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent law of nature and of nature's God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed. PERHAPS, also, an answer may be found without searching beyond ...
— The Federalist Papers
... unshorn. But if you are, provided you have any strength with breadth of will, do not despair. Though mesmeric power may not save you, it may help you; try it at all events. In this instance I was conscious of power coming into me, and by a law of nature, I know Winters was correspondingly weakened. If I could have gained more time I am sure he would not ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... of these commanding figures dealt a blow at the national spirit. There are usually long intervals between Caesars and Napoleons. Nations have, in obedience to some law of Nature, to pass through periods of mediocre rule, and when men of great genius and dominating qualities come to clear up the mess, they are only tolerated possibly by fear, and never for long by appreciation. ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... and observed until our wretched times. Since the Spaniards entered the Indias, their excessive cupidity has devised new methods of preaching the gospel such as our Lord Jesus Christ never ordained, or His holy apostles knew; they are not permitted by the law of nature, nor do they ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... predominated: he had made up his mind that, if the daughter of his brother refused to wed her cousin, and so carry out what he asserted to have been the declared wish of her father, she should go after her father, and leave her property to the next heir, so that if not in one way then in another the law of nature might be fulfilled, and title and property united without the intervention of a marriage. As to any evil that therein might be imagined to befall his niece, he quoted the words of Hamlet—"Since no man has ought of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes?"—she would be no worse than she must ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... his seat, and looked vacantly out of the window, with a vague dissatisfaction at heart. Unrecognized fully as yet, the great law of nature, which brings to each a distinct and separate existence, was beginning to operate. As she had said to Mara, vital interests were looming up, new experiences coming, of which she could no more think ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... from beneath the lava of the Reef. At first, he supposed it was merely the remains of some small portion of the ocean that had penetrated to a cavity within, and which was now trickling back through the crevices of the rocks, to find its level, under the great law of nature. But it looked so pleasant to see once more water of any sort coming upwards from the earth, that the young man jumped down upon the sands, and hastened to the spot for further inquiry. Scooping up a little ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... kaleidoscopic character about the events of the ten days or so preceding the opening performance of most musical comedies which would make a sober chronicle of them seem fantastically incredible; and this law of Nature made no exception in the case of The Girl Up-stairs. There were rehearsals which ran so smoothly and swiftly that they'd have done for performances; there were others so abominably bad that the bare idea of presenting the mess resulting from six weeks' toil, before people who had ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the rest of your physics," said the clergyman, laughing. "Don't you see that she must have had some weight, only it wasn't worth mentioning, being no greater than the ordinary weight of the atmosphere. Besides, you know very well that a law of nature could not be destroyed. Therefore, it was only witchcraft, you know; and the laws of that remain to be discovered—at least so far as my knowledge goes.—Mr. Smith, you have gone in for a fairy-tale; and if I were you, I would claim the immunities ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... but the dialect of them true; and very strange to us. Like that of an Arab Sheik among his tribesmen; like that of a man whose authority needs no keeping up, but is a Law of Nature to himself and everybody. He permits a little bantering even; a rough joke against himself, if it spring sincerely from the complexion of the fact. The poor men are terribly tired of this work: such bivouacking, packing, unpacking; and continual ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... no answer, except by steadfastly declaring I was an innocent prisoner, an officer unjustly broken; unjustly, because I had never been brought to trial; that consequently I was released from all my engagements; nor could it be thought extraordinary that I should avail myself of that law of nature which gives every man a right to defend his honour defamed, and seek by every possible means to regain his liberty: that such had been my sole purpose in every enterprise I had formed, and such should still continue to be, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... an economic mistake, but a great crime against humanity. If it had been such a crime, as for a moment she dimly perceived it might have been, then through the long centuries there had been piled up a catalogue of wrong and outrage which, if the law of compensation be a law of nature, must some time, somewhere, in some way, be atoned for. She herself had not escaped the penalty, of which, she realized, this burden placed upon her conscience ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... the cranium of the living child, or in any way destroy its life with a view to save the mother? If three consulting physicians agree that this is the only way to save her, he will not be molested by the law courts for performing the murderous operation. But will the law of nature and of nature's God approve or allow his conduct? This is the precise question under our consideration. We have seen that the infant, a true human being, has a right to live, as well as its mother. "All men are created equal, and have an equal right to life," declares the first ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... to be a law of nature, that all heavy bodies fall to the ground, it would probably be said that the resistance of the atmosphere, which prevents a balloon from falling, constitutes the balloon an exception to that pretended law of nature. But the real law is, that all heavy bodies tend ...
— Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... commit a known felony on either." "In such a case he is not obliged to retreat, but may pursue his adversary till he find himself out of danger; and if in a conflict between them he happens to kill, such killing is justifiable. The right of self-defense in case of this kind is founded on the law of nature, and is not, nor can be, superseded by any law of society. Where a known felony is attempted upon the person, be it to rob or murder, the party assaulted may repel force by force; and even his servant attendant on him, or any person present, may interpose for ...
— Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California with Other Sketches; To Which Is Added the Story of His Attempted Assassination by a Former Associate on the Supreme Bench of the State • Stephen Field; George C. Gorham
... fair agreement the estimates of its probable temperature. This is in great measure due to the acquisition of a workable formula by which to connect temperature with radiation. Stefan's rule of a fourth-power relation, if not actually a law of nature, is a colourable imitation of one; and its employment has afforded a practical certainty that the sun's temperature, so far as it is definable, neither exceeds 12,000 deg. C., nor falls short of 6,500 ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... The notion of a miracle cannot well be separated from such a revelation, whether it happens out of, on, or in men. What is revealed may belong to the order of nature, but an order higher and unknown to us, which we could never have known without miracles, and cannot bring under the law of nature."[4] ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... richer, more corrupt, and more bestial, as recent events in Berlin and elsewhere show."[166] The "Iron Law of Wages" is irrefutable and irresistible. "Economists have come to talk about the 'Iron Law of Wages' with as much assurance as if it were an irreversible law of Nature."[167] ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... usual perspicuity, but in accordance with a common practice of believers in the miraculous, defines a miracle as a "violation of the laws of nature," or as "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... lawlessness." Her marriage, after the initial act, had in it nothing whatever of lawlessness. She believed there exists a higher rule than that of Parliament, and to this higher law she submitted. To her this was not a law of self-will and personal inclination, but the law of nature and social obligation. That she was not overcome by the German individualistic and social tendencies may be seen in the article on "Weimar and its Celebrities," in the Westminster Review, where, in writing of Wieland as an educator, she says that the tone of his ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... chap, vii.) tells us that "the whole earth is destined to feed its inhabitants; but this it would be incapable of doing if it were uncultivated. Every nation is then obliged by the law of nature to cultivate the land that has fallen to its share, and it has no right to enlarge its boundaries or have recourse to the assistance of other nations, but in proportion as the land in its possession is incapable ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... process was not fully known until Darwin revealed it, and illuminated it by the light of natural selection. He had, in the "Origin of Species," given reasons for the belief that it is an almost universal law of nature that the higher organic beings require an occasional cross with another individual. He here emphasised that doctrine by a series of proofs from a peculiar and otherwise inexplicable order of plants, and showed that the arrangements by which orchids ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... Indians.' Question—'What Indians?' Answer—'The American Indians.' Question—'Why are they the first city we come to in the spirit-land, on the plane, and most accessible?' Answer—'Because the Indians lived more in accordance with the law of nature in their earth life, according to their knowledge, and were the most abused class by the whites except the slaves, and many of them now are in advance of the whites in 'spirituality,' and are the most powerful ministering ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... America; they will no more fight against us; and it relieves our race once for all of its crime and false position. The first condition of success is secured in putting ourselves right. We have recovered ourselves from our false position, and planted ourselves on a law of Nature. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... either to fall a prey to the savages themselves, or to run the risk of shooting the women, who had been placed in the canoes in the hope of deriving protection from their presence. But "self preservation is the first law of nature," and the captain very justly remarked, there would not be much humanity in preserving their lives at such a sacrifice, merely that they might become victims of savage ...
— Heroes and Hunters of the West • Anonymous
... This is the law of nature. Why do you oppose her? Do you not see that in thinking to correct her you destroy her work and counteract the effect of all her cares? In your opinion, to do without what she is doing within is to redouble the danger. On the contrary, it is ...
— Emile - or, Concerning Education; Extracts • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... of becoming a recalcitrant and sour old maid. Will, a healthy and normal young man, with no bad habits, was in danger of being driven to them by the emptiness and exasperation of his mind. The worst of it all was that both of the young people were, in accordance with a well-known law of nature, growing older with what seemed to them a frightful and unreasonable rapidity. The years crawled like snails. But the sum of them rose by leaps and bounds to an appalling total. Alice found two grey hairs in her red-gold locks. Will had to use glasses for reading fine print at night. ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... nature, it is the condition of existence for all created things. Even the wild flowers in the meadow wage war, and they wage it more ruthlessly even than man, for with them defeat means extermination. The law of Nature is that the fit should kill the unfit. The Lord is the Lord of Hosts. The lame, and the halt, and the blind must remain behind, while the strong ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... too, by what mysterious law of nature it is that before you have left your watch "to be repaired" half an hour, some one is sure to stop you in the street and conspicuously ask you the time. Nobody even feels the slightest curiosity on the subject when ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... kind, Mr. Seagrave, but still you see it is the law of nature. When it is a question of life, it is every one for himself, for life is sweet: they are not more unkind than they would be to each other, if there were too many for the boat to hold. I've seen all this before in ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... talionis' — the law of retaliation — is the law of nature and of right; to abstain from avenging the death of a relative would be considered, by the tribe of the deceased, an act of unpardonable neglect. Their own customs, which are to them as laws, point out the mode of vengeance. ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... light; and not only delighted in beholding the variety of things and vicissitude of times, but raised also to find out and discern the ordinances and decrees which throughout all those changes are infallibly observed. And although he doth insinuate that the supreme or summary law of Nature (which he calleth "the work which God worketh from the beginning to the end") is not possible to be found out by man, yet that doth not derogate from the capacity of the mind; but may be referred to the impediments, as of shortness ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... blend. (1) Neptune is the purely physical obstacle of the sea, very great in those early days. (2) Nature has her law, and if it be not observed, the penalty follows, when she may be said to be mythically angry. If a man jump down from a high precipice, he violates a law of nature, gravitation, and she executes him on the spot, it may be; she is always angry and quick to punish in such cases; but he may climb down the height and escape. In like manner a man, undertaking to swim across the sea, encounters the wrath of Neptune; but he may construct a ship, ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... entertain upon any terms. But that every cure ever performed by medicine should have been founded upon this principle, although without the knowledge of a physician; that the Homoeopathic axiom is, as Hahnemann asserts, "the sole law of nature in therapeutics," a law of which nothing more than a transient glimpse ever presented itself to the innumerable host of medical observers, is a dogma of such sweeping extent, and pregnant novelty, that it ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... somewhat unphilosophically. No doubt suicide, under many circumstances, is a crime, a very heinous one. When the father of a family, for example, to escape from certain difficulties, commits suicide, he commits a crime; there are those around him who look to him for support, by the law of nature, and he has no right to withdraw himself from those who have a claim upon his exertions; he is a person who decamps with other people's goods as well as his own. Indeed, there can be no crime which is not founded upon the depriving ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... brethren." This virtue must prevail among Christians everywhere. They are to manifest toward one another the love and faithfulness of brothers according to the flesh. It is a law of nature that brothers have a peculiar confidence in one another, being of the same blood and flesh and having a common inheritance. Particularly is this true when in distress. Although they may not be united in other respects, yet when stranger blood assails and ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... just like that before; reared in the family tradition, it had seemed a law of nature that he should have subjects to work for him and suffer for him and die for him, if need be; he had been taught that it was God himself who had given place and power to his house; and that, if other less-favoured people ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... late—but every true woman kens well that her right sphere is a home of her own, and that her mission is to find her happiness in the happiness of her husband and children. There are exceptional cases, no doubt, but that is the law of nature. Though why I should be saying all this to you, Miss Graeme, my dear, is ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... curious law of Nature that the most undeserving brothers always have the best sisters. Thrifty, plodding young men, who get up early, and do it now, and catch the employer's eye, and save half their salaries, have sisters who never speak civilly ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... delegates sent from Massachusetts, and his visit to Philadelphia at this time was the first occasion of his going beyond the limits of New England. In the discussions in the committee on the declaration of colonial rights, he took an active part in resting those rights on the law of nature as well as the law of England; and when the substance of those resolutions had been agreed upon he was chosen to put the matter in shape. In his diary the most trustworthy and graphic descriptions are to be found of the members and doings of that famous but ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... have they misused? This whole country is covered with ruins, and they all go to show that it has been inhabited by a highly-civilized race of people. And what has become of them? I believe the Indians cleaned them out long years ago; and now their turn has come. I find it's a law of Nature"—and here the narrator's tone grew more reverent as if touching upon a higher theme—"that the weak go to the wall. It's a hard law, but I don't see any way out of it. The old Aztecs had to go under, and the Indians will have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... the man whom she adored—no harsh word ever crossed his lips to her—she was his first care and thought—no party of pleasure ever tempted him from her side—nothing but the claim of business could induce him to spend an evening away from her. And so the years passed on. It is an unalterable law of nature that passion must succumb before habit, but it may be succeeded by a calm content, a happy trustful confidence, that wears better, and is perhaps in ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... them had made the greatest progress in the study of the law of nature and nations, of any one I know. He had perfectly mastered, and even improved, the notions of Grotius, and the more refined ones of Puffendorf. He could refute Hobbes with as much solidity as some of greater ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... rejecting the proffered love of the Chaldaean Aphrodite, Istar, freely expresses his very low estimate of her character; and it is interesting to observe that, even in this early stage of human experience, men had reached a conception of that law of nature which expresses the inevitable consequences of an imperfect appreciation of feminine charms. The injured goddess makes Izdubar's life a burden to him, until at last, sick in body and sorry in mind, he is driven to seek ...
— Hasisadra's Adventure - Essay #7 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... saw the light of day in England, Scotland, Ireland, America, India, Canada, South Africa, and Australia. Before becoming aviators many of them had fought in the infantry on the western front, in Gallipoli, and in Egypt; some as officers, some as privates, but for no general reason, unless the law of nature which prevents squirrels from remaining on the ground also applies to men, they one by one in divers ways drifted into the Flying Corps, and flew different types of machines on different fronts ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... but comparatively simple. The only curious fact was the accidental meeting between the Russian woman and the American girl. But then just such comings together of persons with a common bond of interest or affection is an hourly occurrence in the world. Behind such apparent accidents is some law of nature, a like ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... are accused, madam," said he, "but not condemned, of having conspired the destruction of our lady and queen anointed. You say you are a queen; but, in such a crime as this, and such a situation as yours, the royal dignity itself, neither by the civil or canon law, nor by the law of nature or of nations, is exempt from judgment. If you be innocent, you wrong your reputation in avoiding a trial. We have been present at your protestations of innocence; but Queen Elizabeth thinks otherwise, and is heartily sorry for the appearances which lie against you. To examine, therefore, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... your ambition to become a great actor? Then remember that if you make it the object of your life to play to influence the hearts, the lives, and so the destinies of men, this same great law of nature that operates in the case of the orator will come to your assistance, will aid you in your growth and development, and will enable you to attain to heights you could never attain to or even dream of, in case you play for ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... an unfortunate law of nature that injurious acts appear to us in their true light only after the harm is done. The burnt child dreads the fire after he has been burned—not before. So the fact that the middle-aged man cannot read small, or crooked, or badly grouped type means simply that ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick |
