"Nugatory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Pittsburgh bond are still more palpably rendered nugatory by contradictions, manifold evasions and ambiguous phrases; such as "accepted manuals, our fathers' covenants," etc.; while the solemn pledge to "maintain Christian friendship with pious men of every name, ...
— The Auchensaugh Renovation of the National Covenant and • The Reformed Presbytery
... satisfactory preparations showing the cilia, and the discovery that these motile organs are not formed on all substrata, or are only developed during short periods of activity while the organism is young and vigorous, render this character almost nugatory. For instance, B. megatherium and B. subtilis pass in a few hours after commencement of growth from a motile stage with peritrichous cilia, into one of filamentous growth preceded by casting of the cilia. (2) By far the majority of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... deduced. They assign to him, in short, absolute free will. However, I am also convinced that if such persons reflect on the matter, and duly weigh in their minds our series of propositions, they will reject such freedom as they now attribute to God, not only as nugatory, but also as a great impediment to organized knowledge. There is no need for me to repeat what I have said in the note to Prop. xvii. But, for the sake of my opponents, I will show further, that although it be granted that will pertains to the essence of God, ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... religion! The Catholic asks you to abolish some oaths which oppress him; your answer is that he does not respect oaths. Then why subject him to the test of oaths? The oaths keep him out of Parliament; why, then, he respects them. Turn which way you will, either your laws are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by religious obligations as you are; but no eel in the well-sanded fist of a cook-maid, upon the eve of being skinned, ever twisted and writhed as an orthodox parson does when he is compelled by the gripe of reason to admit anything ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... to cultivate it properly. Illiberality, jealousy, and local policy, mix too much in our public councils, for the good government of the union. In a word, the confederation appears to me to be little more than a shadow without the substance; and congress a nugatory body, their ordinances being little attended to. To me, it is a solecism in politics:—indeed it is one of the most extraordinary things in nature, that we should confederate as a nation, and yet be afraid to give the rulers ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... 1506] a grammar and dictionary of this language, performed a great service for scholarship. In the late Jewish work, the Cabbala, he believed he had discovered a source of mystic wisdom. The extravagance of his interpretations of Scriptual passages, based on this, not only rendered much of his work nugatory, but got him into a great deal of trouble. The converted Jew, John Pfefferkorn, proposed, in a series of pamphlets, that Jews should be forbidden to practise usury, should be compelled to hear sermons and to deliver up all their Hebrew books to be burnt, except the Old Testament. When ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Gibbon's attempt was rendered nugatory by the bridge over the second canal being commanded from the heights, the guns on which opened upon our columns with shrapnel, while the gunners were completely protected by their epaulements. And a further attempt ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... sovereignty vests in the French people as the French state; but the imperial constitution, which is the constitution of the government, not of the state, studies, while acknowledging the sovereignty of the people, to render it nugatory, by transferring it, under various subtle disguises, to the government, and practically to the emperor as chief of the government. The senate, the council of state, the legislative body, and the emperor, are all creatures of the French state, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... party. In writing to a friend, that "after the inflammatory character of the oratory of the Carlton Club, it is quite supererogatory for me to state (it being notorious) that all conciliatory measures will be rendered nugatory," he thus expressed himself:—"After the inflammawhig character of the orawhig of the nominees of the Carlton Club, it is quite supererogawhig for me to state (it being nowhigous) that all conciliawhig measures ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... prolong the term of the ultimatum would render nugatory the proposals made by the Austro-Hungarian Government to the Powers, and would be in contradiction to the ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... that Lord Brougham's counsel to the Glasgow students is not only bad counsel,—and bad counsel for the result, as well as for the grounds, which are either capricious or nugatory,—but also that, in the exact proportion in which the range of thought expands, it is an impossible counsel, an impracticable counsel—a counsel having for its purpose to embarrass and lay the mind in fetters, where even its utmost freedom and its largest resources will be found all too little for ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... legatine powers over the whole of Scotland, instead of over his own province of the archdiocese, so as to render nugatory the exemption granted to the king's old tutor and favourite prelate ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... of great wealth who have not otherwise the means of procuring game, except by purchase, and who will have it. These must necessarily encourage poaching, which, to a very large extent, must continue to render all game laws nugatory as to their intended effects ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... Saturday Lord Mount Severn intended finally to quit East Lynne. The necessary preparations for departure were in progress, but when Thursday morning dawned, it appeared a question whether they would not once more be rendered nugatory. The house was roused betimes, and Mr. Wainwright, the surgeon from West Lynne, summoned to the earl's bedside; he had experienced another and a violent attack. The peer was exceedingly annoyed and vexed, and ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... with relation to Spain, now began to excite a good deal of attention in this country; appearances being in favour of the supposition generally entertained, that the labours of Wellington in the Peninsula were about to be rendered nugatory by the presence there of a powerful French army, and the consequent return of Spain to the position she held as a French dependency ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... greater degree than it can be by any previous subscription. You come round again to subscription, as the best and easiest method; men must judge of his doctrine, and judge definitively: so that either his test is nugatory, or men must first or last prescribe his public interpretation ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... eye; if he had two eyes like the ordinary man, he could still see though one be put out. That this purpose be accomplished, he must somehow be shorn of his physical strength; finally any resistance which might come from the rest of the Cyclops outside must be rendered nugatory. Such are the three chief points of the impending problem, which Ulysses has to meet and does meet with astonishing skill and foresight; the Cyclops is blinded, is made helpless by drink, and ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... literature, one must also have self-possession; a double current of impulse and deliberation; a free stream of ideas spontaneously obeying a sense or order, harmony, and form. Eloquence in the informal discourse of the parlour or the country walk did not mean in Diderot's case the empty fluency and nugatory emphasis of the ordinary talker of reputation. It must have been both pregnant and copious; declamatory in form, but fresh and substantial in matter; excursive in arrangement, but forcible and pointed in intention. No doubt, if he ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... disease further than my own family, but the very extensive influence which the conviction of its efficacy in resisting the smallpox has had upon the minds of the people in general has rendered that intention nugatory, as you will perceive, by the continuation of my cases enclosed in this letter, [Footnote: Doctor Marshall has detailed these cases with great accuracy, but their publication would now be deemed superfluous.—E.J.] by which it will appear that since the 22d ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... The first arose out of the experience, now first obtained, that these assassins pursued the plan of secreting themselves within the house where they meditated a murder. All the care, therefore, previously directed to the securing of doors and windows after nightfall appeared nugatory. The other feature brought to light on this occasion was vouched for by one of the servants, who declared that, the moment before the door of the kitchen was fastened upon herself and fellow servant, she saw two men in ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... harden them, but long enough to lay the foundation of disease. Volunteer companies parade and are reviewed oftener, and drill more constantly; but the good effects of the manual exercise are rendered nugatory by its being conducted in confined ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... to the King, which I thought at the time a particularly nugatory and even schoolboy step, and only consented to because I had held the reins so tight over my little band before, has raised a deuce of a row—new proclamation, no one is to interview the sacred puppet without consuls' permission, two days' notice, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that I think she should not come in, certainly I do not think she will come in, with the offer of military aid. But if she stays out of it altogether she will have withdrawn from this world congress that must sit at the end of the war a mediating influence which may go far to render it nugatory. ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... He little thought that there were about five hundred orders from the admiralty tacked on to them, which, like the numerous codicils of some wills, contained the most important matter, and to a certain degree make the will nugatory. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... "to be completed," in Ps. vii. 10, xii. 2. The sense in which the woman, the type of the Israelitish people, is called completion,—i.e., one who, in her whoredom, had proceeded to the highest pitch,—is so obvious from the context, as to render nugatory the argument which Maurer (p. 360) has drawn from the omission of express statements on this point, in order thereby to recommend his own interpretation, which is altogether opposed to the laws of the language. A significant proper name can, in any case, convey only an allusion; ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... lapse of time these just prescriptions have been rendered nugatory in great part, as regards the native Jews, by the legislation and municipal regulations of Roumania. Starting from the arbitrary and controvertible premises that the native Jews of Roumania domiciled there for centuries are "aliens not ...
— Notes on the Diplomatic History of the Jewish Question • Lucien Wolf
... of the life of Dee was "bound in shallows and in miseries." Queen Elizabeth we may suppose soon found that her dreams of immense wealth to be obtained through his intervention were nugatory. Yet would she not desert the favourite of her former years. He presently began to complain of poverty and difficulties. He represented that the revenue of two livings he held in the church had been withheld from him from the time of his going abroad. He stated that, shortly after that period, his ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... were not completed within certain specified times, the lands unsold or unpatented should revert to the United States. The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States practically made these provisions nugatory, and ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... commissioners would only agree that there should be no further confiscations and prosecutions, and that congress should recommend the several states to revise their laws concerning them. These articles were nugatory. Nothing short of a renewal of the war could have induced the Americans to forego their revenge, and if the war had gone on longer, the loyalists' fate would have been no better. Everywhere, with the exception of South ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt
... the gospel, must be, in a special sense, the expositors of the Old Testament, from whose interpretations, when once fairly ascertained, there is no appeal. The attempt of some to make a distinction between Christ's authority and that of his apostles is nugatory. As it is certain that our Lord himself could not have been in error, so it is certain also that he would not have commanded his apostles to teach all nations concerning himself and his doctrines, and have further given them, in the possession of miraculous powers, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... earlier witnesses. The coloured man, Harry Jones, had died in hospital, but Mr. Booth, the proprietor of the Wagtail, Baldwin Meadows, Mr. Dawes, and the man who was stabbed in the wrist, all gave evidence of a rather nugatory character. Lowes-Parlby could do nothing with it. The findings of this Special Inquiry do not concern us. It is sufficient to say that the witnesses already mentioned all returned to Wapping. The man who had received the thrust of a hatpin through his wrist did not think it advisable to ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... answer unto deep; and great characters only come with much meditation on the things that are highest. And, on the other hand, the misconstruction of life's meaning flings man back upon himself, and makes his action nugatory. Byronism was driven "howling home again," says the poet. The universe will not be interpreted in terms of sense, nor be treated as carrion, as Carlyle said. There is no rest in the "Everlasting No," because ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... a great diplomatic triumph by the peace of Westphalia in 1648; but Spain had remained outside that group of treaties; and, owing to the civil war of the Fronde, Conde's successes against her had been to a great extent made nugatory—and now Conde was a rebel and in command of Spanish troops. But Conde, with a Spanish army, met his match in ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... distinguished from every other group at present known, all misgivings are at an end. Implicit trust in the immutability of species is then restored, and the more insensible the shades from one extreme to the other, in a word, the more complete the evidence of transition, the more nugatory does the argument derived from it appear. It then simply resolves itself into one of those exceptional instances of what is called a ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... claim. So far as my utter want of all legal knowledge would allow me to decide, I could perceive nothing in the will itself which would admit of a lawyer's successful cavil: my reasons for suspicion, so conclusive to myself, would seem nugatory to a judge. My uncle was known as a humourist; and prove that a man differs from others in one thing, and the world will believe that he differs from them in a thousand. His favour to me would be, in the popular eye, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
