"Procrustean bed" Quotes from Famous Books
... our rich inheritance of the world's accumulated knowledge, and evolve from it the answers to the necessities of our own individual development. As boys we were not cribbed by any exact logic and hard common sense, which must stretch us a little later on a Procrustean bed, and we were free to grow as we would and to stand on the highest level of noble thought and heroic deed. The writers whom we read with avidity were those who ennobled us: in those days youth was the era of a high romanticism, and our authors did ... — Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... authors—but like all half measures, it has bred less good than evil. If we could silence a free press, and the very free tongues of modern society; if we could clip the busy, imaginative, craving mind of youth on the Procrustean bed of use and wont, the method might succeed; but we can do neither—the young will read and will hear; and the consequence is, a general complaint that the minds of young women are outgrowing their mothers' guidance, that they are reading ... — Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... bishops themselves could scarcely be brought to agreement. Latimer and Shaxton lost their sees; but the submission of the rest did not extend to complete recantation, and the endeavour to stretch all his subjects on the Procrustean bed of Six Articles was one of Henry's least successful enterprises.[1112] It was easier to sacrifice a portion of his monastic spoils to found new bishoprics. This had been a project of Wolsey's, interrupted by the Cardinal's ... — Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... reckless expenditure of paper and ink, we had already prepared chapters upon several topics, which, though not essential to farm-drainage, were as near to our subject as the minister usually is limited in preaching, or the lawyer in argument; but conformity to the Procrustean bed, in whose sheets we had in advance stipulated to sleep, cost us the amputation of a few ... — Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French |