"Arbitrarily" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Noctes Ambrosianae," in 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 of that further, when we come to speak ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... and described it as he had seen it, with the keen eyes of imagination and faith. With all its weird unearthliness, there is hardly another book in the whole range of human literature which is marked with such unswerving veracity as the "Divine Comedy." Nothing is there set down arbitrarily, out of wanton caprice or for the sake of poetic effect, but because to Dante's imagination it had so imposingly shown itself that he could not but describe it as he saw it. In reading his cantos we forget the poet, and have before us only the veracious traveller in strange realms, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... these islands naked savages, without books, education, or courts of justice. The people were slaves, governed arbitrarily by chiefs. It was a nation of debauchees, thieves and drunkards. There were no marriage laws. Two-thirds of the children born were destroyed. If an infant was ailing or troublesome, the mother scooped a hole in the ground, covered the child with earth and trampled out its life. The aged and infirm ...
— A Story of One Short Life, 1783 to 1818 - [Samuel John Mills] • Elisabeth G. Stryker
... certain that punishment for her own petty errors might not be wreaked upon her innocent child? For the faith of the day did not demand that the sinner receive upon himself the recompense for his deeds; the mighty Ruler above could and would arbitrarily choose as the victim the offspring of an erring parent. Says Winthrop in the History of ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... can be established, namely, either that such a paralysis of the nervous system as would render the subject insensible to pain during the process of extracting teeth, would not embrace the principle of it, or on the other hand, that nitrous oxyd gas is arbitrarily to be excluded from its proper place in a class of agents, all of which are nearly identical in their operation. And even if this difficult task could be accomplished, there would still remain another equally difficult ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... between the release of the Russian captives and the date of this visit various foreign vessels had appeared on the coast of Japan, each with some special excuse for its presence, yet each arbitrarily ordered to leave. One of these, an American trading vessel, the Morrison, had been driven off with musketry and artillery, although she had come to return a number of shipwrecked Japanese. Some naval vessels ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... music intensifies and exalts the emotions of educated men. St. Augustine's devotion "glowed within him" when he heard the music. It is for this power that the church has always employed music as a hand-maid; and those ecclesiastics who would to-day banish it arbitrarily from the church, know not what a valuable ally they are blindly repulsing in these days of religious scepticism. As Mr. Gladstone very recently remarked: "Ever since the time of St. Augustine, I might ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... Words arbitrarily formed by a constant and settled analogy, like diminutive adjectives in ish, as greenish, bluish; adverbs in ly, as dully, openly; substantives in ness, as vileness, faultiness; were less diligently sought, and many sometimes have been omitted, when I had no authority that ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... will belong to us now. What is the use of owning half a continent if the owner lives on an acre of it and grows what he wants there, and has never seen the broad lands that yet belong to him? Nothing hinders a man from indefinitely increased possession of a growing measure of God, except his own arbitrarily narrowed measure of desire and capacity. Therefore it becomes a solemn question for each of us, Am I day by day becoming more and more fit to possess more of God, and enjoy more of the God whom I possess? In Him we have each 'a potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice.' Do we growingly ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the child's promises. He had strong feelings, a strong will, and, though so very young, much endurance. A law, at variance almost with a law of his nature, had been arbitrarily enacted, and he could not obey it. As well might his father have shut him up, hungry, in a room filled with tempting food, and commanded him not to touch or taste it. Had an allegation of evil conduct been brought against Emily Winters; had any right reason for the interdiction ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... countersigns the act of a sovereign, is morally responsible for that act; and I should think myself wanting in my duty to your Majesty, and perhaps to myself, if I were weak enough to set my hand to such measures. If your Majesty choose to reign by the laws, you have no right, arbitrarily to pronounce, by a simple decree, sentence of death, and forfeiture of property, against your subjects. If you choose to act as a dictator, and to have no law but your own will, you have no need of ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... away. He 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 ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... the fertile Muscovite imagination, which was eager to find an excuse for the appropriation of a neighbour's property. On the contrary, capital punishment was only inflicted when the laws had been infringed; and there is no instance of the Khan having arbitrarily put any one ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... customary in these cases to let an accident occur to some junior member of the family, over whose prostrate body the old ones may kiss again with tears. Accordingly, no sooner had mention been made, quite arbitrarily, of an automatic pistol, alleged to be unloaded, than old stagers knew by instinct that Ursula would shoot herself inadvertently. This occurred with such promptitude that even the author recognised that we should not be satisfied with so ingenuous an episode. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, June 17, 1914 • Various
... 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, ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... demanded of the Pope the deposition of Anselm. He could not himself depose the archbishop. He could elevate him, but not remove him; he could make, but not unmake. Only he who held the keys of Saint Peter, who was armed with spiritual omnipotence, could reverse his own decrees and rule arbitrarily. But for any king to expect that the Pope would part with the ablest defender of the liberties of the Church, and disgrace him for being faithful to papal interests, was absurd. The Pope may have used smooth words, but was firm in the uniform policy ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... canary in its cage; the magpie on the fence—are each setting in 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 other conditions; ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... Commissioner; Christiaan Joubert, Minister of Mines; Schmitz-Dumont, Acting State Mining Engineer; and J.F. de Beer, first special Judicial Commissioner, Johannesburg. Mr. Thos. Hugo, the General Manager of the National Bank, was appointed financial adviser, and certain advisory members were arbitrarily selected by the Government. The complete exclusion of all those who had had any direct or indirect association with the late Reform movement or with those in any way connected with it strengthened the conviction that the Government designed ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... much flagging of wing both in his verse and in his prose that, if we did not remind ourselves what flights he was born to take, we might persuade ourselves at times that there was little in his work but the dull flappings and slitherings of a penguin. His genius is intermittent and comes arbitrarily to an end. He is inspired only in fragments and aphorisms. He was all but incapable of writing a complete book or a complete poem at a high level. His irresponsibility as an author is described in that sentence ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... had been joyous and carefree. Her school years, too, had been filled with delightful and satisfying activities. After her graduation she had been content with the gayeties and triumphs of the life to which she had been arbitrarily removed by her father and the new process, and for which she had been educated. She had felt the need of nothing more. Then came the war, and, in her brother's enlistment and in her work with the various departments of the women forces at home, she had felt herself a part of the great ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... traditions of the Hebrews from the creation of the world to the death of Joseph. "A French physician of the eighteenth century, Astruc, was the first scholar to point out that the two principal designations of God in Genesis, Elohim and Jahveh, are not used arbitrarily. If we place side by side the passages in which God is called Elohim, and those in which he is called by the other name, we get two perfectly distinct narratives, which the author of the Pentateuch, as we possess it, has juxtaposed rather than fused. This one discovery ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... spoken of as preternatural. This is only a farther development of animistic belief. The preternatural agency is not necessarily conceived to be a personal agent in the full sense, but it is an agency which partakes of the attributes of personality to the extent of somewhat arbitrarily influencing the outcome of any enterprise, and especially of any contest. The pervading belief in the hamingia or gipta (gaefa, authna) which lends so much of color to the Icelandic sagas specifically, and to early Germanic folk-legends, is an illustration of this sense of an extra-physical ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... prices by the market rate was a practical plan; and I cannot conceive what satisfactory substitute you can have devised for it. The government being the only possible employer, there is of course no labor market or market rate. Wages of all sorts must be arbitrarily fixed by the government. I cannot imagine a more complex and delicate function than that must be, or one, however performed, more certain ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... of the various members; who were all at first in great alarm, until an order from the king was put into their hands, to render themselves at Pontoise, in the course of two days, to which place the parliament was thus suddenly and arbitrarily transferred. ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... Administration, these gigantic contracts, involving an 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, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... translation of [Hebrew: iqrav]. And when Jerome, in opposition to the Alex., remarks that, according to the Hebrew, the translation ought to be: Nomen ejus vocabunt, he does not contend against their use of the Singular per se, but only against their arbitrarily supplying "Jehovah" as the subject; against their explaining "The Lord shall call," instead of "one" shall call. The manner in which the false reading [Hebrew: iqrav] first arose, is clearly seen from the reasons by which its later defenders endeavour to support it; compare ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... plants and animals. We must trace these and many other con-causes (conditions) back and back till we come to 'whatsoever is first of all things': it is merely childish to choose some few of the conditions, and arbitrarily to regard them as ...
— Mind and Motion and Monism • George John Romanes
... became greater than that of the vacancies, and Caesar accordingly increased the number of senators, though it is uncertain what number he fixed upon, and raised a great many of his friends to the dignity of senators. In this, as in many other cases, he acted very arbitrarily; for he elected into the senate whomsoever he pleased, and conferred the franchise in a manner equally arbitrary. These things did not fail to create much discontent. It is a remarkable fact that, notwithstanding ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... when Manetti was thirty years old, by which date the character of Donatello's work had greatly changed. These traditional names have caused many critical difficulties, as, when accepted as authentic, the obvious date of the statue has been arbitrarily altered, so that the statue may harmonise in point of date of execution with the apparent age of the individual whom it is supposed to portray. A second example of the confusion caused by the over-ready acceptance of these nomenclatures is afforded by the remarkable figure ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... 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 substantial rewards to encourage the propagation ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... paper of any size, folded in two equal parts, makes two leaves of folio size; folded evenly once more, four leaves of quarto size. But book-publishers use these words arbitrarily. With them a sheet about 19 by 24 inches is supposed to be the proper size, unless otherwise specified. A folio leaf is, consequently, about 12 by 19 inches; a quarto leaf, about 9 by 12 inches: an octavo leaf, about 6 by ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... others that it would be impolitic to try to do. Nothing could possibly compensate her for antagonizing Felipe. Nothing could so deeply wound her, as to have him in a resentful mood towards her; or so weaken her real control of him, as to have him feel that she arbitrarily overruled his preference or his purpose. In presence of her imperious will, even her wrath capitulated and surrendered. There would be no hot words between her and her son. He should believe that he determined ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... been the wrestling-ground of the most extravagant exegesis, of bold hypotheses, and hazardous conjectures. No Latin or Greek classic has been so ruthlessly attacked and dissected; no mediaeval poetry so arbitrarily interpreted. As a natural consequence, the aesthetic elements were more and more pushed into the background. Only recently have we begun to ridicule this craze for hypotheses, and returned to more sober methods of inquiry. Bible criticism reached the climax of absurdity, and the scorn was ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... Constitutional Law is the "rule of reason." In the last analysis, there are few private rights which are not subordinate to the general welfare; but, on the other hand, legislation which affects private rights must have a reasonable tendency to promote the general welfare and must not arbitrarily invade the rights of particular persons or classes. Inasmuch as the hard and fast rules of an age when conditions of life were simpler are no longer practicable under the more complex relationships of modern times, there is today an inevitable ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... that the first or perfect number is the world, the human or imperfect number the state; nor has he given any proof that the second harmony is a cube. Nor do I think that (Greek) can mean 'two incommensurables,' which he arbitrarily assumes to be 2 and 3, but rather, as the preceding clause implies, (Greek), i.e. two square numbers based upon irrational diameters of a figure the side of which is 5 50 ...
— The Republic • Plato
... put it up." But God answered: "Go, get busy 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 ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME III BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... is everywhere in modern science the chief variable, is only a time-length, indefinitely and arbitrarily divisible. There is no genuine duration, nothing really tending to evolution in Spencer's evolution: no more than there is in the periodic working of a turbine or in the stationary tremble of a diapason. Is not this ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... the Assembly that the translator, Mr. P. E. Desbarats, was a very efficient officer and worthy man, and that it was within their province to pay him such a sum as they estimated his services to be worth. But they did not arbitrarily do that which it seemed to them they might have done. With extreme courtesy, they addressed the Governor, begging that His Excellency would make such addition to the salary of this officer as to His Excellency might seem fit. So far, however, from complying with a very reasonable ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... [Greek: alochos] "wife," though, as far as Achilles is concerned, it means concubine. Of course it would have been awkward for England's Prime Minister to make Achilles say that "every man must love his concubine, if he has sense and virtue;" so he arbitrarily changes the meaning of the word and then begs us to notice the moral beauty of this sentiment and the "dignity" of the relation between Achilles and Briseis! Yet no one seems to have denounced him for this transgression against ethics, philology, and common sense. On the contrary, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... Council have become czars in a most important field. They arbitrarily decide what is, and what is not, in the public interest. When the Advertising Council "accepts" a project, the most proficient experts in the world—leading Madison Avenue people—go to work, without charge, to create (and saturate the media of mass communication with) the ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... priestly office and the furniture of the tabernacle, and consider how the rush has been to all time the first natural carpet thrown under the human foot. Then next observe the three virtues definitely set forth by the three families of plants—not arbitrarily or fancifully associated with them, but in all the three cases marked for us by Scriptural words: 1st. Cheerfulness, or joyful serenity; in the grass for food and beauty—"Consider the lilies of the field, ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... 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, ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... may be long! It seems that even so long ago parents were afraid they could not win honor from their children. Abraham's place was on the pile, just as it is the place of the modern parent who looks upon his child as his chattel; disposing of him as he will; arbitrarily making rules for his conduct which he would not dream of observing for himself; stifling his natural demands for knowledge; converting what is pure and most beautiful in the world into a mire of filth ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... and emerge in completely contradictory functions. In the form of mathematical logic, for instance, it can dispose most drastically of that living organic world which in the form of experimental science it assumes to be the only truth. Again it may happen that reason will arbitrarily ally itself with one or the other of the other attributes and on the strength of such an alliance seek to obliterate all the rest. Thus while it is impossible to avoid the admission that of all these ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... Vinland. It is unquestionably sound history for the first part; why should it be anything else for the second part? What shall be said of a style of criticism which, in dealing with one and the same document, arbitrarily cuts it in two in the middle and calls the first half history and the last half legend? which accepts its statements as serious so long as they keep to the north of the sixtieth parallel, and dismisses them ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... elements into the controversy in assailing as unlawful the jurisdiction of British prize courts over neutral vessels seized or detained. Briefly, Great Britain arbitrarily extended her domestic law, through the promulgation of Orders in Council, to the high seas, which the American Government contended were subject solely to international law. So these Orders in Council, under which the British naval authorities acted ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... 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 ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... given to the Puritans is hard to conceive. Prynne, in his 'Histriomastix,' may have pushed a little too far the argument drawn from the prohibition in the Mosaic law: yet one would fancy that the practice was forbidden by Moses' law, not arbitrarily, but because it was a bad practice, which did harm, as every antiquarian knows that it did; and that, therefore, Prynne was but reasonable in supposing that in his day a similar practice would produce a similar evil. Our ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... thirty notable burghers, to be named by the Emperor, with the great dean and second dean of the weavers, all dressed in black robes, without their chains, and bareheaded, should appear upon an appointed day, in company with fifty persons from the guilds, and fifty others, to be arbitrarily named, in their shirts, with halters upon their necks. This large number of deputies, as representatives of the city, were then to fall upon their knees before the Emperor, say in a loud and intelligible voice, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... part of these lands in each case, would inevitably be regarded as a fief held of the crown, and as such liable to the regular feudal services. This was the case in every feudal land, and no one would suppose that there should be any exception in England. The amount of the service was arbitrarily fixed by the king in these ecclesiastical baronies, just as it was in the lay fiefs. The fact was important enough to attract the notice of the chroniclers because the military service, regulated ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... be understood in reference to Kathay; as it is perfectly obvious, that the entrance here spoken of must be in the north-east of Mangi. Supposing the C aspirated, Coigan-zu and Hoaingan-fu, both certainly arbitrarily orthographized from the Chinese pronunciation, are not ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... extensively cleared, and 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 at the yawl's masthead, he asked with the utmost ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... diplomatists with Mr. Hay's mastery of 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 ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the north-south direction, the east-west direction, and the up-down direction. Any place or "point" in space thus is located, relative to some other point, by giving its three distances from the latter, in three (arbitrarily ...
— A Book of Exposition • Homer Heath Nugent
... special creations,...have been produced by variation, but they refuse to extend the same view to other and very slightly different forms...They admit variation as a vera causa in one case, they arbitrarily reject it in another, without assigning any distinction in the two cases. The day will come when this will be given as a curious illustration of the blindness of preconceived opinion.") it is very false to say that I imply by "blindness of preconceived opinion" ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... least, approximately uniform; if, on the other hand, there were no test at all, or, what amounts to much the same thing, a merely personal test, then we might expect that the moral judgments of mankind would vary arbitrarily according to the disposition and temperament of each individual man. But, if there be a test derived from external considerations and capable of being applied to particular cases by the ordinary processes of reasoning, then we may fairly expect that, as the opportunities ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... 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 should 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 ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... some time. They were from North Carolina, born and rais'd there, and had folks there. The elder had been in the rebel service four years. He was first conscripted for two years. He was then kept arbitrarily in the ranks. This is the case with a large proportion of the secession army. There was nothing downcast in these young men's manners; the younger had been soldiering about a year; he was conscripted; there were six brothers (all the boys of the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... place-name—or to speak more generally, the elements of every Indian synthesis are significant roots, not mere fractions of words arbitrarily selected for new combinations. There has been no more prolific source of error in dealings with the etymology and the grammatical structure of the American languages than that one-sided view of the truth which was given by Duponceau[93] in the statement that "one or more syllables of each simple ...
— The Composition of Indian Geographical Names - Illustrated from the Algonkin Languages • J. Hammond Trumbull
... are so very often passed. Consequently I will only allow myself to point out three misstatements of fact in the article about myself: firstly, my supposed title of ex-St. Simonien; secondly, my supposed journey to America; thirdly, my diploma of the University of Konigsberg, which my biographer arbitrarily changes into a diploma of Doctor of Music, which was not ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... 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 ...
— Spalding's Official Baseball Guide - 1913 • John B. Foster
... pitied the men, 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 ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... with few exceptions, personal defamations were omitted. The arrangement of subjects was essentially the same as in the Augustana. Still it was not what it pretended to be. It was no serious attempt at refuting the Lutheran Confession, but rather an accumulation of Bible-texts, arbitrarily expounded, in support of false doctrines and scholastic theories. These efforts led to exegetical feats that made the Confutators butts of scorn and derision. At any rate, the Lutherans were charged with having failed, at the public reading, to control ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... of a fairy egg! So just in its phrases and thoughts, so attentive and good-natured! Every body loves it but its husband, who prefers his own sister the Duchess de Grammont,(938) an Amazonian, fierce, haughty dame, who loves and hates arbitrarily, and is detested. Madame de Choiseul, passionately fond of her husband, was the martyr of this union, but at last submitted with a good grace; has gained a little credit with him, and is still believed to idolize him. But I doubt it—she takes too much pains ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... majority of cases the approximate minimum diameter for cutting which would be fixed by it forester would be somewhere between 16 and 30 inches, but say it were 18 inches, for example, it would not arbitrarily apply throughout the stand. Most trees with yellow, smooth bark and small heavy-limbed tops, perhaps partially dead, are mature regardless of their size. If small, they have been crowded or stunted ...
— Practical Forestry in the Pacific Northwest • Edward Tyson Allen
... claim to possess himself of the lands of England as the spoils of conquest, so neither did he tyrannically and arbitrarily subject them to feudal dependence; but, as the fedual law was at that time the prevailing law of Europe, William I., who had always governed by this policy, might probably recommend it to our ancestors as the most obvious and ready way to put them ...
— Landholding In England • Joseph Fisher
... though such as may be more easily assimilated to real life. Idalia's 'velvet-green' has something of cant. An epithet or metaphor drawn from Nature ennobles Art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from Art degrades Nature. Gray is too fond of words arbitrarily compounded. 'Many-twinkling' was formerly censured as not analogical; we may say 'many-spotted,' but scarcely 'many-spotting.' This stanza, however, has ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... more than forty years after his death. Having in a former work ('Intellectual system of the Universe') contended against the 'Atheistical Fate' of Epicurus and others, he here attacks the 'Theologick Fate' (the arbitrarily omnipotent Deity) of Hobbes, charging him with reviving exploded opinions of Protagoras and the ancient Greeks, that take away the essential and eternal discrimination of moral good and evil, of just ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... of difference is 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 ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... 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 herself. Perhaps "the little ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... 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 ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... 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 departments of literature. Many are famous; some are obscure; not a few, which ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... whose lips the words "Proletariat" and "Proletarian" are constantly falling, do not, when it comes to the point, want to obey the Will of the Majority of the whole People, but only the majority of a certain arbitrarily selected section of the people. They are, in fact, willing to recognise the Will of the People only when this accords with their own will—that is, with what they believe ought to be the Will of the People. When I use the expression "the Will of the People lawfully and constitutionally ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... child should not arbitrarily be placed by its parents at what it might later consider ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... kingdom of Naples and Sicily, with the Spanish province of Guipuscoa and the duchy of Milan, in compensation of his abandonment of other claims. When the conditions of this treaty became known they inspired natural indignation in the minds of the people of the country which had thus been arbitrarily allotted, and the dying Charles of Spain was infuriated by this conspiracy to break up and divide his dominion. His jealousy of France would have led him to select the Austrian claimant; but the emperor's undisguised greed for a portion of the ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... this bill upon the interests of pure and spiritual religion, the promise seems every way satisfactory. The Jacobinical and precipitous assaults of the Non-intrusionists upon the rights of property are summarily put down. A great danger is surmounted. For if the rights of patrons were to be arbitrarily trampled under foot on a pretence of consulting for the service of religion; on the next day, with the same unprincipled levity, another party might have trampled on the patrimonial rights of hereditary descent, on primogeniture, or any institution ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various
... Scottish Act of Supremacy which gave to the sovereign such a control over the Church as might have satisfied Henry the Eighth. Accordingly Papists were admitted in crowds to offices and honours. The Bishop of Dunkeld, who, as a Lord of Parliament, had opposed the government, was arbitrarily ejected from his see, and a successor was appointed. Queensberry was stripped of all his employments, and was ordered to remain at Edinburgh till the accounts of the Treasury during his administration had been examined ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... 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 ...
— Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation • S. D. Gordon
... arbitrarily had settled into the chair next to little Kathleen. His hard, impassive face wore a softer expression than was usually to be observed there, and his voice, ordinarily brusque and domineering, became ludicrously soft ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... that the offender against the law should be punished, and that the punishment should be made to fit the crime, an 'opera bouffe' conception which has been abandoned in reasoning though not in practice. Under this conception the criminal code was arbitrarily constructed, so much punishment being set down opposite each criminal offense, without the least regard to the actual guilt of the man as an ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Club's register till 1893, nor a section to itself in the Stud Book; and up to that date the only real qualification a dog required to be enabled to compete as a Cocker was that he should be under the weight of 25 lb., a limit arbitrarily and somewhat irrationally fixed, since in the case of an animal just on the border-line he might very well have been a Cocker before and a Field ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... 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 ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... proposition into a variable, there is a class of propositions all of which are values of the resulting variable proposition. In general, this class too will be dependent on the meaning that our arbitrary conventions have given to parts of the original proposition. But if all the signs in it that have arbitrarily determined meanings are turned into variables, we shall still get a class of this kind. This one, however, is not dependent on any convention, but solely on the nature of the pro position. It corresponds to ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... but five 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 another ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... suggestion, that he should aid and abet in thwarting Keene's supposed designs. "He had thought it right," he said, "to make Miss Tresilyan and others aware of the real state of the case; but he did not conceive that farther interference lay within the sphere of his duty." It was odd how that same once arbitrarily elastic sphere had contracted since the prophet met the lion in the pathway! Dick Tresilyan—the only other person much interested in the progress of affairs—did not seem to trouble himself much about them. He was perpetually absent on shooting expeditions; but, when at home, it was observed ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence
... most of the old customary rights of the people continued to be recognized. The tenant was commonly allowed to occupy his holding from year to year without interruption. Money rent gradually took the place of service or rent in kind, but the amount exacted does not seem to have been often increased arbitrarily. The rights of common, which were often ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... He had no use for trumpet-blowing, and no confidence in those who did the blowing. And yet he consented, for he did not feel justified in arbitrarily depriving Daniel ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... San Salvador has been ordered by Mr. Chatfield, who threatens Honduras and Nicaragua with a similar blow, unless they accede to certain demands. In a letter to the Nicaraguan Minister of Foreign Affairs, he arbitrarily lays down the boundary line between Honduras, Nicaragua and Musquitia—an assumed kingdom, under cover of which the British authorities have taken possession of the port of San Juan. Mr. Chatfield states that unless these boundaries are accepted, no canal or other ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... reasons which might be given for the same thing, one only is arbitrarily chosen, as some explain the inundation of the Nile by a fall of snow at its source, while there could be other causes, as rain, or wind, or the action ...
— Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism • Mary Mills Patrick
... and grange hall located close together may form the nucleus of a community which does its business at a railroad station village some distance away, possibly over a range of hills. The chief trading points cannot, therefore, be arbitrarily assumed as the base points for determining community areas, but those points at which the more important of the common interests of the people find expression should be considered as community centers. It is not simply a question of where the people go most ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... presented this point with elaboration. The question really involved, was "whether discontented individuals, too few in number to control the administration according to the organic law, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without pretenses, break up the 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 ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... of the past tinged with ideal splendor, the exact time of drawing a line between books that might be included in the third division of the canon must have been arbitrary. In the absence of a normal principle to determine selection, the productions were arbitrarily separated. Not that they were badly adjusted. On the contrary, the canon as a whole was settled wisely. Yet the critical spirit of learned Jews in the future could not be extinguished by anticipation. The canon was not really settled for all time by a synodical gathering at ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... police, for warding off any hazard he might run, from employing the adherents of his enemies. His greatly capacious, yet only half-formed mind, could have parried, as well as braved, every danger and all opposition, had not his inordinate ambition held him as arbitrarily under control as he himself held under ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... things are arbitrarily fixed by law or custom, such as stamps, professional fees, ...
— Everybody's Guide to Money Matters • William Cotton, F.S.A.
... their cloisters; to-morrow, in order to make such cases less frequent, it denied the rights of citizenship to those who had gone out, and rendered the practice of any worldly calling difficult; now it ratified episcopal laws, and then arbitrarily abolished festival-days; in one church it supported the celebration of the mass, in another allowed it to be abolished, so that Basel was as good as given up by the Five Cantons. They refused the Council there permission to examine the acts of the ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... precision the various circumstances in which another electric fish, the torpedo of our seas, gives or does not give shocks. Though this fish had been examined by numerous men of science, I found all that had been published on its electrical effects extremely vague. It has been very arbitrarily supposed, that this fish acts like a Leyden jar, which may be discharged at will, by touching it with both hands; and this supposition appears to have led into error observers who have devoted themselves to researches of this kind. M. Gay-Lussac ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... combine, by [arbitrarily fixing] an improper price, to impede [the traffic in] any commodity, or to make [an injurious] sale of it,[341] ...
— Hindu Law and Judicature - from the Dharma-Sastra of Yajnavalkya • Yajnavalkya
... Louis XV. of France, whose apostolic majesty has taken the sword of the Lord into his blessed hand, to fight the enemies of the Church, and to chastise and punish the rebellious heretic prince who has arbitrarily named himself King of Prussia. God's anger is against him, and He will crush and destroy the presumptuous mockers of the Lord. Woe unto them who will not listen to God's voice, who in their mad blindness cling to this heretic! Woe unto you if, in the ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... 1702, was Tamerlane, in which, under the name of Tamerlane, he intended to characterize king William, and Lewis the fourteenth under that of Bajazet. The virtues of Tamerlane seem to have been arbitrarily assigned him by his poet, for I know not that history gives any other qualities than those which make a conqueror. The fashion, however, of the time was, to accumulate upon Lewis all that can raise horrour and detestation; and whatever good was withheld from him, that it ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... troops to its side or preparing for them a fate similar to that which befell the overpowered portions of the Eleventh Greek Division at Saloniki. Free communication with Athens was interrupted and intercourse with the home authorities was controlled by the Entente and refused arbitrarily by the Entente. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... race; and therefore only by understanding what has happened, can we understand what will happen; only by understanding history, can we understand prophecy; and that not merely by picking out—too often arbitrarily and unfairly—a few names and dates from the records of all the ages, but by trying to discover its organic laws, and the causes which produce in nations, creeds, and systems, health and disease, growth, change, decay and death. If, in one small corner of this ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... couldn't do less than love one when fortune had enabled her to do so much for him." So she had simply approved of his declaration, down by the run, of affection for which she was not yet ready, and she approved of him all the more fondly because he did not passionately and arbitrarily demand or expect that she should feel as he did, in return. "I didn't," she had said to herself a score of times, "and that ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... shutting the door. Nothing, therefore, could be more clearly demonstrated than that the Scotch are strongly justified in leaving the door open when they quit an apartment. Doubts, indeed, may be entertained as to the values arbitrarily put on the respective items in the account: but to venture into this remote part of the inquiry would be to plunge us into the depths of metaphysics. Even supposing we were to make the matter as clear as the sun at noonday, there would still be sceptics. On shewing ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various
... arts and of the institutions of ownership have taken such a turn that the working system of industry and business no longer runs on national lines and, indeed, no longer takes account of national frontiers,—except in so far as the national policies and legislation, arbitrarily and partially, impose these frontiers on the workings of trade and industry. The effect of such regulation for political ends is, with wholly negligible exceptions, detrimental to the efficient working of the industrial system under modern conditions; and it is therefore ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... that, when a master on occasion of a public legal act—such as in the making of a testament, in an action at law, or in the census—expressly or tacitly surrendered his -dominium-, neither he himself nor his lawful successors should ever have power arbitrarily to recall that resignation or reassert a claim to the person of the freedman himself or of his descendants. The clients and their posterity did not by virtue of their position possess either the rights of burgesses or those of guests: ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... longer soft and pleading, but determined. The imperious manner of the queen, instead of intimidating the pale and gentle girl, awakened her to the consciousness of her own dignity. "Majesty," she said, with cool decision, "love is not given by command, it cannot be bestowed arbitrarily." ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... a sleepless activity in assailing the authority of 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 were descendants of the lost ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... farm-laborers. The same witness informs us that of the extraordinary imposts the Peasants paid nearly twice as much in proportion to their estimated property as the Barons, Nobles, and Burghers together. Moreover, the upper classes were assessed at their own valuation, while they arbitrarily fixed that of the Peasants, who had no voice, ("Relazioni degli Ambasciatori Veneti." Serie I., tomo ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... while the war lasted, there were difficulties to be encountered. Military authority was supreme, and just when the influx of cotton was greatest, military authority arbitrarily decreed that no cotton should be shipped from Cairo to the North or East without a military permit. For a time this decree seriously embarrassed trade. The warehouses in Cairo were choked and glutted with cotton. New ones were built only to be choked in the same ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... no means unparalleled. Other British subjects, including several from St. Helena and Mauritius, have been arbitrarily arrested, and some of them have been fined, without having been heard in their own defence, under a law which does not even profess to have any application ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... says is, that he was left to himself, to govern himself by his own practice: that is to say, when he had taken one bribe, he might take another; when he had robbed one man of his property, he might rob another; when he had imprisoned one man arbitrarily, and extorted money from him, he might do so by another. He resorts at first to the practice of barbarians and usurpers; at last he comes to his own. Now, if your Lordships will try him by such maxims and principles, he is certainly clear: for there is no manner of doubt that ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... largely confuted that they have for the most part been compelled to make a last defense by declaring: "When the majority of women ask for the suffrage they may have it." By this very concession they admit that there is no valid reason for withholding it, and in thus arbitrarily doing so they are denying all representation to the minority, which is wholly at variance with republican principles. This is excused on the ground that the franchise is not a "right" but a privilege to be granted or not as seems best to those in power. This was the Tory argument before the American ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... three, four or more dimensions. If, for instance, a continuum of four dimensions be supposed available, we may represent it in the following way. With every point of the continuum, we associate arbitrarily four numbers, x[1], x[2], x[3], x[4], which are known as " co-ordinates." Adjacent points correspond to adjacent values of the coordinates. If a distance ds is associated with the adjacent points P and P1, this distance being ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... sensation of indefinable charm which for many a strange room never ceases to yield. He had found far too many tables upholding nothing which one could remember, far too many pictures that returned his look, and rugs that seemed to have been selected arbitrarily and because there was none in stock that the owner really liked. He was therefore pleasantly surprised and puzzled by the room which welcomed him. The floor was tiled in curious blocks, strangely hieroglyphed, as if they had been taken from old tombs. Over the fireplace was set a panel of the same ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... consider is the date of The Nights in its present form; and here opinions range between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries. Professor Galland began by placing it arbitrarily in the middle of the thirteenth. De Sacy, who abstained from detailing reasons and who, forgetting the number of editors and scribes through whose hands it must have passed, argued only from the nature of the language and the peculiarities of style, proposed le milieu ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... life, and knew that Eros never mingles more arbitrarily in the intercourse of a young couple than when, after a long separation, there is anything ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... I'll follow straight. 'Tis planned most wisely, if I judge aright: We climb the Brocken's top in the Walpurgis-Night, That arbitrarily, here, ourselves ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... Anna's scrupulous oath, had a claim on her person and her fortune: and he knew Nagen to be a gambler. As he was now by promotion of service Nagen's superior officer, and a near relative of the Brescian commandant, who would be induced to justify his steps, his object was to reach and arbitrarily place himself over Nagen, as if upon a special mission, and to get the lead of the expedition. For that purpose he struck somewhat higher above the Swiss borders than Karl and Wilfrid, and gained a district in the mountains above the vale, perfectly ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thermal death point of most bacteria ranges from 130 deg.-140 deg. F. where the exposure is made for ten minutes which is the standard arbitrarily selected. In the spore stage resistance is greatly increased, some forms being able to withstand steam at 210 deg.-212 deg. F. from one to three hours. If dry heat is employed, 260 deg.-300 deg. F. for an hour is necessary to kill spores. Where steam is confined ...
— Outlines of Dairy Bacteriology, 8th edition - A Concise Manual for the Use of Students in Dairying • H. L. Russell
... and no order and no record except that orally given five or six years ago, and one which this warden now says was given 'oral and explicit,' transfer defendants placed in a particular institution, and under a particular kind of punishment arbitrarily to another institution, and add to ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... Christ on the twenty-fifth of March was ancient and deeply rooted. It is all the more remarkable because astronomical considerations prove that it can have had no historical foundation. The inference appears to be inevitable that the passion of Christ must have been arbitrarily referred to that date in order to harmonise with an older festival of the spring equinox. This is the view of the learned ecclesiastical historian Mgr. Duchesne, who points out that the death of the Saviour was thus made to fall upon the very day on ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... ascribed to the Lord, since all bodies exist only subsequently to the creation, not previously to it. The Lord, therefore, is not able to act because devoid of a material substratum; for experience teaches us that action requires a material substrate.—Let us then arbitrarily assume that the Lord possesses some kind of body serving as a substratum for his organs (even previously to creation).—This assumption also will not do; for if the Lord has a body he is subject to the sensations ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... Catholic nobleman, who was one of its leading members, to resign. Lather, Parliament further showed its power by compelling the King to sign the Act of Habeas Corpus, 1679 (S482), which put an end to his arbitrarily throwing men into prison, and keeping them there, in order to stop their free discussion of his ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Thomas's peculiar mysticism. The external world was not to him the embodiment of invariable forces, and therefore capable of revealing a general law in a special instance; but rather a system of symbols, signatures of the Plastic Nature, to which mysterious truths were arbitrarily annexed. A Pythagorean doctrine of numbers was therefore congenial to his mind. He ransacks heaven and earth, he turns over all his stores of botanical knowledge, he searches all sacred and profane literature to discover anything that is in the form ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... to the public is the preservation of this personal liberty: for if once it were left in the power of any, the highest, magistrate to imprison arbitrarily whomever he or his officers thought proper, (as in France it is daily practiced by the crown) there would soon be an end of all other rights and immunities. Some have thought, that unjust attacks, even upon life, or property, at the arbitrary will ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... invited then to believe,—for it is well to know at the outset exactly what is required of us,—that from the fifth century downwards every extant copy of the Gospels except five (DLT^{c}, 33, 124) exhibits a text arbitrarily interpolated in order to bring it into conformity with the Greek version of Isa. xxix. 13. On this wild hypothesis I have the following observations ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... skies for a reason, as though a flash of lightning had caused it? Need 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 pre-eminent organ of justice, pay no heed whatever to the innocence ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck |
