"Avoidable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... avoidable, gunpowder is not to be sent from vessels to powder-houses, nor from powder-houses to vessels, in wet weather, nor when there is a probability of wetting the barrels or cases; and the packages must be conveyed in covered boats or ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... between the players. Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids traveling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space. These forms very soon become fixed, and a fine sense of propriety is cultivated with more heed, that it becomes a badge of social and civil ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... mannerisms, tensions that are a constant leakage of vital energy, perhaps semi-imperative acts, contortions, quaint movements, more elaborated than in childhood and often highly anesthetic and disagreeable, motor cooerdinations that will need laborious decomposition later. The avoidable factor in their causation is, with some modification, not unlike that of the simpler feral movements and faulty attitudes, carriage, and postures in children; viz., some form of overpressure or misfit between environment ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... happened during those five memorable years must have crowded in upon him and racked him with feelings of bitter remorse for his avoidable part in the cruel drama; and as he stood upon the spot that had been made famous by England's voluntary captive, it was not unnatural that he should have been overcome by a strange and possibly a purifying sadness. All ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... in all parts of the world have now held that the water company is legally responsible for all avoidable pollution of public water-supplies, and nine tenths of pollutions ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... every evidence of anxious excitement. "What you tell me makes it more than ever imperative that I reach New York without an hour's avoidable delay. I warn you, think well before you hinder ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... the deed, and urged Governor Nicholls to see the guilty brought to justice. The Italian consul at New Orleans averred that, while the victims included bad men, many of the charges against them were without foundation; that the violence was foreseen and avoidable; that he had in vain besought military protection for the prisoners, and had himself, with his secretary, been assaulted ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... takes to avoid the misfortunes of which he has had warning. The line of argument holds good in all cases except when the misfortunes are predicted in a horoscope; for either the ills predicted are avoidable, in which case the horoscope is a useless piece of folly, or else the horoscope is the interpreter of destiny, in which case all the precautions in the world are of no avail. The Chevalier Farsetti was therefore a fool ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... objection to seeing patients slip through ma fingers when it's avoidable, Mrs. Mossop, and I'll do ma best for your father, but ma medicine will na do him any good without your medicine to back me up. He needs a tight hand on him ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... inform me why so many varieties of wines are always served on American tables, and why the sparkling champagne is never avoidable? Wealthy families will spare neither pains nor expense to spread most sumptuous dinners, and it has been reported that the cost of an entertainment given by one rich lady amounted to twenty thousand pounds sterling, although, as I have said, eating is the last ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... female, if one happens to be such; if not, then the feeblest of the two is sacrificed. In their migratory and nomadic life the mother finds it impossible to either carry or care for the two children. The male Hottentot, rather than have any avoidable infanticide in his family, or that his wife should go through and suffer the annoyance and pangs of an unnecessary and unprofitable pregnancy, generously has one testicle removed; this is something that the ordinary civilized white man would not do, ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... English artisans in many branches of labour had to suffer. Why they had sought to see him he could not very well tell—and certainly if it had been left to Hamilton, whose mind was set on sparing the Dictator all avoidable trouble, and who, moreover, had in his heart of hearts no great belief in remedy by working-men's deputation, the poor men would probably not have been accorded the favour of an interview. But the Dictator insisted ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... side, their ship of state, and all that is embarked there, BREAKFAST-TABLE, among other things. Nevertheless, if they were only bugaboos, and mere Shadows caused by Imperial hand-lanterns in the general Night of the world,—ought they to be spoken of in the family, when avoidable? ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... study of Blackstone, and acquired a settled habit of reading novels. So business languished. Early in 1833 Berry and Lincoln sold out to another adventurer. This also was a credit transaction. The purchaser without avoidable delay failed and disappeared. Berry then died of drink, leaving to Lincoln the sole responsibility for the debts of the partnership. Lincoln could with no difficulty and not much reproach have freed himself by bankruptcy. As a matter of fact, he ultimately ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... exactly their range and calibre. She felt rather as a boy might feel who had come upon a cask of gunpowder, and longed to set a match to it, just to see exactly how high it would blow off the roof. She had kept the growing instincts at bay, being determined that nothing avoidable should come between her and her purpose. And then—well considering in what light most men, in their hearts, regarded women—if one might judge from their laws and their conduct and their literature, and the society that they had organized—admiration ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... satisfied with the General Instructions, of October 14, 1861, from the War Department to its Generals, touching the employment of Fugitive Slaves within the Union Lines, and the assurance of just compensation to loyal masters, therein contained, although all avoidable interference with ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... famine. They built another fabric of hopes on "Kitchener's Great Army" in the spring of 1915. But one after another these anticipations were belied by events. And now the nation blithely accepts the further forecasts of the men who are chargeable with this long sequence of avoidable errors. ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... diseases. If there are such diseases—and that is a question the medical profession should be able to decide—it is evident that to incur parentage while one suffers from one of them or to transmit them in any avoidable way, is a cruel, disastrous and abominable act. If such a thing is possible it seems to me that in view of the guiding principle laid down in these papers it might well be put at the nadir of crime, and I doubt if any step the State ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... night-time, and by torchlight. Cicero, in one of his letters, speaks of passing through the towns of Italy by night, as a serviceable scheme for some political purpose, either of avoiding too much to publish his motions, or of evading the necessity (else perhaps not avoidable), of drawing out the party sentiments of the magistrates in the circumstances of honor or neglect with which they might choose to receive him. His words, however, imply that the practice was by no means an uncommon one. And, indeed, from some passages in writers of ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... of the population was liable to render compulsory labour to the crown; but wisely reflecting that it was not only derogatory to the sacredness of the object, but impolitic to exact any avoidable sacrifices from a people so recently suffering from internal warfare, Dutugaimunu came to the resolution of employing hired workmen only, and according to the Mahawanso vast numbers of the Yakkhos became converts to Buddhism ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... treatment of 'unsoling.' It was barbarous, we know barbarous, because unnecessary and easily avoidable. It was practised, however, certainly very little more than two decades ago, and practised by men of standing in the profession. Without dragging the case to light again by mentioning the names of those concerned, we may mention that not many ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... therefore were continually passing through our camp, and I had many opportunities of studying the morale of individuals of all ranks. The result was interesting and worth setting down. My experience was that the good heart of fighting men was affected by only two avoidable causes. The first was the large number of young able-bodied men engaged in occupations, on the lines of communications and at the base, which might have been carried through effectively by others. These young ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... elegant young lady of about twenty, applied a mercurial lotion to her face, which was covered with very small red points; which seemed to have been not acquired by any known or avoidable means; she was seized with inflammation of her liver, and after repeated bleeding and cathartics recovered, and in a few weeks the eruption appeared ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... in which the Northern people, of whom a large part were, it must be remembered, Democrats, seem to have regarded these contentions, and a real sense, apart from these contentions, that conscription was unnecessary or produced avoidable hardship seems scarcely to have existed. It was probably for this reason that Lincoln never published the address to the people, or perhaps more particularly to the Democratic opposition, to which several references have already been made. In the course of it he said: ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... conclusion that more than half the disease which embitters the middle and latter part of life is due to avoidable errors in diet, ... and that more mischief in the form of actual disease, of impaired vigor, and of shortened life accrues to civilized man ... in England and throughout central Europe from erroneous habits of eating than from the habitual use of alcoholic drink, considerable ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... I was in a black rage at all the irrecoverable sorrows of the past, of that great ocean of avoidable suffering of which this was but one luminous and quivering red drop. I walked in the garden and the garden was too small for me; I went out to wander on the moors. "The past is past," I cried, and all the while across the gulf of five and twenty years I could hear my poor mother's heart-wrung weeping ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... forced, in some way or other, to live where we do not choose, and in continual expectation of changing our place of abode. In the present state of society, this is in a great measure unavoidable; but let us remember it is an evil; and that so far as it is avoidable, it becomes our duty to check the impulse. It is not for me to lead you at present into any consideration of a matter so closely touching your private interests and feelings; but it surely is a subject for serious thought, whether it might not be better for many ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... these rules and all avoidable disease will be annihilated. On the other hand, where hygienic and sanitary science is not enforced, filth, decay and putrifying matter is sure to accumulate. In this we have suitable material for the propagation of disease ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... previously entertained. Universal education, we have seen, constitutes the most effectual and the only sure means of securing to individuals and communities, to states and nations, exemption from all avoidable evils of whatever kind, and the possession of a competency of this world's goods, with the ability and disposition so to enjoy them as most to augment human happiness. Yes, education, and nothing short of it, will dissipate the evils of ignorance; it ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... the volume of acetylene which can escape from a leaky supply-pipe will be less than the volume of a gas of lower density, e.g., coal-gas, if the pressure in the pipe is the same for both. This implies that on an extensive distributing system, in which for practical reasons leakage is not wholly avoidable, the loss of gas through leakage will be less for acetylene than for coal-gas, given the same distributing pressure. If v the loss of acetylene from a distributing system and v' the loss of coal-gas from a similar system ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... that I am satisfied my next interview with him must draw them forth from me. Justice, satisfaction in his exertions, and gratitude for their spirited willingness, all call upon me to give him that poor return. The danger of it, however, now, is too great to be tried, if avoidable : and I had far rather avoid seeing him, than either gratify myself by expressing my sense of his kindness, or unjustly withhold from him what ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... umbrella or without it," I do not offer you a genuine option, for it is not forced. You can easily avoid it by not going out at all. Similarly, if I say, "Either love me or hate me," "Either call my theory true or call it false," your option is avoidable. You may remain indifferent to me, neither loving nor hating, and you may decline to offer any judgment as to my theory. But if I say, "Either accept this truth or go without it," I put on you a forced option, for there is no standing place outside of the alternative. Every dilemma based ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... erection of timbers the sap side must be turned up, and framing or cutting of timbers shall not be permitted, if avoidable. All cut surfaces of timbers shall be saturated with hot asphaltum, thinned with creosote oil. The heads of piles when cut shall be promptly coated with the hot asphaltum and oil, even though ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 - Tests of Creosoted Timber, Paper No. 1168 • W. B. Gregory
... circumstances; and it is idle, considering that the manifest ordination and progress of things demand that such thoughts be encountered. The question still returns: Why do they seek amusement in sufferings which are unnecessary and avoidable? and till they honestly and thoroughly answer this question, they must be content to be looked upon as disingenuous reasoners, who are determined to retain ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... frustrate it. Of course, I should have rescued you later. I hold myself responsible for the safe conduct of all who travel in my scows. But it would have been at the expense of much time and labour, and, very possibly, of human life as well—an incident regrettable always, but not always avoidable." ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... you. It is not my suggestion. It is the suggestion of the most sensible, practical, hard-headed men who have walked the earth. I only give it you at second-hand. Try it. Get your mind in hand. And see how the process cures half the evils of life—especially worry, that miserable, avoidable, shameful disease—worry! ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... searching, even understand it. Correspondence left to us, not in the cosmic, elucidated or legible state; left mainly as the Editorial rubbish-wagons chose to shoot it; like a tumbled quarry, like the ruins of a sacked city;—avoidable by readers who are not forced into it! [Herr Preuss's edition (OEuvres de Frederic, vols. xxi. xxii. xxiii.) has come out since the above was written: it is agreeably exceptional; being, for the first time, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... especially in Southern States, they frequently were not only inordinately active in questionable political work, but sought to do party service by secret and sinister manipulation of colored votes, and by other practices inviting avoidable and dangerous collisions between the white ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... porch. This indiscretion, so uncharacteristic, was due to the agitation of a surprised moment, for Duke's experience had inclined him to a peaceful pessimism, and he had no ambition for hazardous undertakings of any sort. He was given to musing but not to avoidable action, and he seemed habitually to hope for something which he was pretty sure would not happen. Even in his sleep, this gave him an air ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... whom you happen to speak to. Yes, it does. Your happiness is always dependent on just that person. Produce friction, and you suffer. Idle to argue that the person has no business to be upset by your tone! You have caused avoidable friction, simply because your machine for dealing with your environment was suffering from pride, ignorance, or thoughtlessness. You say I am making a mountain out of a mole-hill. No! I am making a mountain out of ten million mole-hills. And that is what life does. It is ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... the Governor-General in Council respecting Abdur Rahman will enable you to represent them with adequate accuracy in your reply to the Sirdar's friendly overtures, and it will now be your duty to convey to Abdur Rahman, without any avoidable delay, the answer of the Government of India to the letter and message received from him. His Excellency feels assured that you will give full expression to the spirit of candour and goodwill in which these communications have been ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... certain Maria Theresa, a lady unknown to Messrs. Buttle and Smith.... Dam had found himself developing into a positive bully in his determination to prevent senseless quarrelling, senseless misconduct, senseless humourless foulness, senseless humourless blasphemy, and all that unnecessary, avoidable ugliness that so ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... temporize with the difficulty, to overcome violence by means of peaceable coercion, instead of meeting it by the creation of a naval force so strong as to be a factor of consideration in the international situation, led us into an avoidable war. ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... guarded safety lamp. Yet so culpably reckless of their own and other men's lives are a large number of people everywhere, that in spite of the most stringent and salutary rules, explosions from this cause (and, therefore, easily avoidable) take place constantly to the present day, though far less frequently than before the invention of ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... hath been necessary for me to give an account of the reasons I had to doubt of innate principles. And since the arguments which are against them do, some of them, rise from common received opinions, I have been forced to take several things for granted; which is hardly avoidable to any one, whose task is to show the falsehood or improbability of any tenet;—it happening in controversial discourses as it does in assaulting of towns; where, if the ground be but firm whereon the batteries are erected, there is no further inquiry of ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... viler and far fataler forms of scoundrelism be not resorted to in England, except in cases of the very last extremity. When some new gunpowder plot may be in the wind, some double-dyed high treason, or imminent national wreck not avoidable otherwise, then let us open ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... drudgery that the stupidities of our present-day method of house construction entail, and which the more sanely constructed house of the future will avoid. Consider, for instance, the wanton disregard of avoidable toil displayed in building houses with a service basement without lifts! Then most dusting and sweeping would be quite avoidable if houses were wiselier done. It is the lack of proper warming appliances which ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... my opinion that in cases like ours, where a set of men are deputed to examine countries, time spent on rivers is absolutely thrown away. Of course in many instances such must be the case, but where it is avoidable, marching, and especially returning by a different route, should be adopted. Rangagurrah, be it known, is only two days' march from Suddiyah in a direct line, yet we have been a month proceeding by the circuitous line of ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... Rufio, no. Eat, my son. Eat. (He takes another turn, Rufio chewing dates meanwhile.) The Egyptians cannot be such fools as not to storm the barricade and swoop down on us here before it is finished. It is the first time I have ever run an avoidable risk. I should not have ...
— Caesar and Cleopatra • George Bernard Shaw
... men at the helm; in pilots who betrayed unwillingness to steer for harbour; who preferred recklessly to exploit their valour for the sake of a selfish notoriety. To these haughty, arbitrary men, accidentally armed with authority, was attributed much that was avoidable. Their conduct stirred our invective powers to rich depths of condemnation. Not that from this candid declamation we expected good to flow; it only served as a salve for ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... benevolent, if at times somewhat eccentric humanitarianism, possibly also the advance of democracy—though it is at times somewhat too readily assumed that democracies must of necessity be peaceful—have all contributed to create a public opinion which holds that to engage in an avoidable war is the worst of political crimes. This feeling has found expression in the more ready recourse which, as compared to former times, is now made to arbitration in order to settle international disputes. ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... never seen them molested, though I have noticed them in the indulgence of many eccentricities, and happened once even to see one of them sit down in a lady's lap. But that was on the night of Saint Patrick's day. Generally all avoidable indecorums are rare in the horse-cars, though during the late forenoon and early afternoon, in the period of lighter travel, I have found curious figures there:—among others, two old women, in the old-clothes ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... impossibility in nature considered by itself, but that man might have lived without any public regiment, Hooker's Eccl. Pol. lib. i. sect. 10.) Sec. 75. Thus it was easy, and almost natural for children, by a tacit, and scarce avoidable consent, to make way for the father's authority and government. They had been accustomed in their childhood to follow his direction, and to refer their little differences to him, and when they were men, who fitter to rule them? Their ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... come to the conclusion that more than half the disease which embitters life is due to avoidable errors in diet, ... and that more mischief, in the form of actual disease, of impaired vigor, and of shortened life, accrues to civilized man from erroneous habits of eating than from the habitual use of alcoholic drink, considerable as I know that ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... the world, dispersed, conflicting, unawakened... I see human life as avoidable waste and curable confusion. I see peasants living in wretched huts knee-deep in manure, mere parasites on their own pigs and cows; I see shy hunters wandering in primaeval forests; I see the grimy millions who slave for industrial production; I see some who are ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... the term 'tragedy' (Chapter II). In speaking of 'illusion', we neither intend to cast any blame on some person or another who took part in weaving the illusion, nor to suggest that the emergence of it should be thought of as an avoidable calamity. Rather should illusion be thought of as something which man has been allowed to weave because only by his own active overcoming of it can he fulfil his destiny as the bearer of truth in freedom. Illusion, in the ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... directed the study of the workman to the most strange and ugly conditions of animal form, until at last, even in the most serious subjects, the fiends are oftener ludicrous than terrible. Nor, indeed, is this altogether avoidable, for it is not possible to express intense wickedness without some condition of degradation. Malice, subtlety, and pride, in their extreme, cannot be written upon noble forms; and I am aware of no effort to represent the Satanic mind in the angelic form, which has succeeded in painting. Milton ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... a long story, and a commonplace one, if even the most trivial record of human effort and failure can be so styled. It was the story of half the subalterns in our Imperial Army—of small pay, engulfed by heavy expenses, avoidable and unavoidable; the upkeep of much needless uniform; too big a wine bill at Mess; polo ponies, and other luxurious necessities of Indian life, bought on credit; the inevitable appeal to the "shroff,"[21] ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Nightmares and Imbroglios, when so much had to be subjugated, and drilled into step, in that department. Evidently a long-headed cunning fellow, much of the Grumkow type;—standing very low in Wilhelmina's judgment; and ill-seen, when not avoidable altogether, by the Queen's Majesty. "The man was a poor Country Bailiff's (AMTMANN'S, kind of Tax-manager's) son: from Auditor of a regiment," Papa's own regiment, "he had risen to be Director of Finance, and a Minister of State. His soul was as low as his birth; it was an assemblage ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... world. As a matter of fact, very much of it is read and learnt in the schools.... Next to the intellectual qualification comes the physical, the man must be in sound health, free from certain foul, avoidable, and demoralising diseases, and in good training. We reject men who are fat, or thin and flabby, or whose nerves are shaky—we refer them back to training. And finally the man or woman must ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... for our weakness and our frailty, we ought not to expect Him to indulge us in avoidable and needless errors. We made a mistake. Very well. We knew no better than to make it. But now that we do know better, we have no business repeating it. And right along here comes a great expanse of territory which holiness people need to cover. Here there ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... rejoicing in my strength to defend him against the barbarism of authorized treatment. My only comfort was that in his time of supreme need I could give him supreme kindness, and if death must come there would not be the additional laceration of avoidable cruelty inflicted; and Nature, with every possible aid that could add comfort to the suffering body, ...
— The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure • Edward Hooker Dewey
... having a remedy proposed, as if the proposer were creating a mischief instead of offering relief from one. People are so inured to the evils that they feel as if it were unreasonable, if not wrong, to complain of them. Yet, avoidable or not, he must be a purblind lover of liberty on whose mind they do not weigh; who would not rejoice at the discovery that they could be dispensed with. Now, nothing is more certain than that the virtual blotting out of the minority is no necessary ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... loth to reproach myself, now the cruel creature has escaped me; For what would that do, but add to my torment? since evils self-caused, and avoidable, admit not of palliation or comfort. And yet, if thou tellest me, that all her strength was owing to my weakness, and that I have been a cursed coward in this whole affair; why, then, Jack, I may blush, and be vexed; but, by my soul, I ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... but one example, the faintest notion of contract, which, if he possessed it, would save him from many a foolish undertaking and protect him from many a business betrayal, Far from it. All the disagreeable, and many of the painful incidents of his subsequent life, all equally avoidable if knowledge regarding them had been instilled into him in his early years, he must buy with money and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... booksellers call themselves, while admitting that they can no longer stand under a protective principle, feel certain difficulties as to their future career, for unquestionably there is something peculiar in their business, in as far as a nominal price for their wares is scarcely avoidable. If so, the question is, How is it to be adjusted? at a lower allowance for the retailer? In that case, some would still undersell others; and the old troubles would still be experienced. Ought there, then, to be no fixed retailing price at all, but ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... any tender heart that ever beat in this world; and after another turn or two round the garden, during which she put on an entirely new pair of gloves and made herself as resplendent as possible that she might do no avoidable discredit to the Master of Deportment, we went ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... a hundred of them suffer from malnutrition; thirty in the hundred have defective eyes; eighty in the hundred need dental treatment; twenty odd in the hundred have enlarged tonsils or adenoids. Many, perhaps most, of these deaths and defects are due to the avoidable ignorance, ill-health, mitigable poverty, and other handicaps which dog poor mothers before and after a baby's birth. One doesn't know which to pity most—the mothers or the babies. Fortunately, to help the one is to help the other. In passing I would like to record two sentiments: my strong impression ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... however good and amusing exercise that may be, out of all our school life? We don't expect to win a game with a sprained wrist or ankle, and there really is no reason why we should plan to sprain the back of school or college life by avoidable mistakes. ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... confirmed by their own reflexion. Shame is an invaluable protection to men, as a restraining feeling. But the objects to which it properly attaches are wrong-doing, unkindness, discourtesy, to others, and, as regards ourselves, ignorance, imprudence, intemperance, impurity, and avoidable defects or misfortunes. While it confines itself to objects such as these, it is one of the sternest and, at the same time, most effective guardians of virtue and self-respect. But, as soon as a man begins ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... the whole, improbable. A mere universal disgust with war is no more likely to end war than the universal dislike for dying has ended death. And though war, unlike dying, seems to be an avoidable fate, it does not follow that its present extreme unpopularity will end it unless people not only desire but see to the accomplishment ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... to slip over the tracheal incision afterward, and render difficult the quick finding of the incision during after-care. This covering of the tracheal incision by the slipping back of the drawn-aside thyroidal isthmus is one of the most frequent avoidable causes of mortality, because it deflects the cannula off into the tissues when it is replaced after cleaning during the early postoperative period. The corrugated surface of the trachea can be felt, and its exact location can be ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... (and thus moved) through one alias and then referenced through another, which may lead to subtle (and possibly intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the allocation history of the malloc {arena}. Avoidable by use of allocation strategies that never alias allocated core, or by use of higher-level languages, such as {LISP}, which employ a garbage collector (see {GC}). Also called a {stale pointer bug}. See also {precedence lossage}, {smash the stack}, {fandango on core}, {memory leak}, {memory ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... case of poisoning should there be any avoidable delay in obtaining the advice of a physician, and, meanwhile, the friends or by-standers should endeavor to find out exactly what has been taken, so that the treatment adopted may be as ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... Innovation then was unavoidable on our part, if it be innovation to establish a system. We did it on fair and general ground, on ground favorable to Spain; but they had a system, and therefore innovation was avoidable on their part. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... corners, refusing to spend what needs to be spent, failing to supervise—has to be called philosophical. It comes from a failure on the part of local operators and authorities and much of the public to comprehend the immorality of deliberate avoidable pollution, and it may mean that municipal operation of treatment plants is itself often ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... world human beings with even less vitality than themselves, and take no pains to keep the simplest laws of health, or to teach their children to do so, just so long there will be plenty of sorrow of an avoidable kind, and thousands of shipwrecked, and failing, and inadequate, and useless lives in the fullest sense of the word. How can those who preach to the soul hope to be heard by those who do not even make the best of their bodies? but alas, the convenience and easiness, or pleasure, ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... United States and of the State (unless the latter be passively submitted to) the destruction to which the property of the officers of the customs would be exposed, the commission of actual violence, and the loss of lives would be scarcely avoidable. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... is about one third for the house and two thirds for the expense of running it, largely due to dirt and its consequences. Mr. Wells wisely says: "Most dusting and sweeping would be quite avoidable if houses were ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... useless and aimless lives as a man accumulates fat and morbid products in his blood, it declines in its collective efficiency and vigour and secretes discomfort and misery. Every phase of its evolution is accompanied by a maximum of avoidable distress and inconvenience ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... colonies might have been quite obliterated. The policy of employing savages in warfare between civilized states was denounced then and afterward; it led to the perpetration of sickening barbarities; but it was France's only chance, and, speaking practically, it was hardly avoidable. Besides, the English did not hesitate to enlist Indians on their side, when they could. Had the savages fought after the manner of the white men, it would have been well enough; but on the contrary, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... stirring incident and adventure—should be written in the first person. At the same time, the writer of this unpretentious story of a summer's tramp cannot but feel that he owes his readers—should he have any an apology for any avoidable egotism. His excuse is that, no twit notwithstanding ding the glamour attaching to the old mining towns, it is almost incredible how little is known of them by the average Californian; for the Eastern tourist there is more excuse, since the foot-hills ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... failure of college women to marry can not be exhaustively investigated here, but for the purposes of eugenics they may be roughly classified as unavoidable and avoidable. Under the first heading must be placed those girls who are inherently unmarriageable, either because of physical defect or, more frequently, mental defect,—most often an over-development of intellect ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... and that you delay not your departure to the frontier. This kingdom is a crown land. It shall remain so by the consent of the confederation. If you refuse to obey this injunction, an army will enforce the order. Believe me, Madame, this office is distasteful to me, but it was not avoidable. What disposition am I to submit to ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... shown a disposition to cultivate relations of amity with that Empire that it is hoped the unequivocal tokens of the same spirit toward us which an adjustment of the affairs referred to would afford will be given without further avoidable delay. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... American parlour-car system struck me as evils that were not only unnecessary, but easily avoidable. The first of these is that most illiberal regulation which compels the porter to let down the upper berth even when it is not occupied. The object of this is apparently to induce the occupant of the lower berth to hire the whole "section" of two berths, so as ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... in the rectum may wander into the vagina, and the little girl feel a constant annoyance, which rubbing allays temporarily, but which results in the evil habit of the use of the hands to produce an agreeable sensation. Thus through avoidable causes the evil habit may be acquired. Then it may be taught by one thus learning it to another who, without this instruction, would ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... money difficulties on which he dwelt were also, it is now to be admitted, unquestionable. Beyond his own domestic expenses necessarily increasing, there were many, never-satisfied, constantly-recurring claims from family quarters, not the more easily avoidable because unreasonable and unjust; and it was after describing to me one such with great bitterness, a few days following the letter last quoted, that he thus replied on the following day (19th of November) to the comment I had made upon it. "I was most ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... little. She found her very ignorant in the regions of what is commonly called education, but very quick in understanding where human relation came in. A point in construction or composition she would forget immediately; but once shown a possibility of misunderstanding avoidable by a certain arrangement, Amy would recall the fact the moment she made again the mistake. Her teachableness, coming largely of her trustfulness, was indeed a remarkable point in her character. It was partly through this that Corney gained ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... delight and pain, are conversant with good and evil simply. But good is often attainable only by an effort, and evil avoidable by an effort. The effort that good costs to attain casts a shade of evil or undesirableness over it: we may shrink from the effort while coveting the good. Again, the fact of evil being at all avoidable is a good thing about such evil. If we call evil black, and good white, avoidable ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... older children without suitable protection and care, once thought events to which to be resigned, however sad and pitiable, are now seen to be preventable calamities for which society is to blame. Avoidable cripplement and invalidism of workmen, once considered either their own fault or unexplained misfortune, are now listed as cause for receipt of sickness and accident benefits under Workmen's Compensation Laws. Premature old age, ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... distinctions be derived from the truth or falshood of those judgments, they must take place wherever we form the judgments; nor will there be any difference, whether the question be concerning an apple or a kingdom, or whether the error be avoidable or unavoidable. For as the very essence of morality is supposed to consist in an agreement or disagreement to reason, the other circumstances are entirely arbitrary, and can never either bestow on any action the character of virtuous or vicious, or deprive it of that ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... coffee, will complacently absorb all the news of the day, so many hundred thousand men killed, wounded, or diseased in the course of the Balkan campaigns, so much ugly and hopeless misery all over the earth, and all avoidable, all caused, in the last analysis, by the incompetence, obstinacy, blindness, or greed of some highly placed official whose death at an earlier stage would have made for the salvation ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... a May-game for men: in all times the lot of the dumb millions born to toil was defaced with manifold sufferings, injustices, heavy burdens, avoidable and unavoidable; not play at all, but hard work that made the sinews sore and the heart sore. As bond-slaves, villani, bordarii, sochemanni, nay indeed as dukes, earls and kings, men were oftentimes made weary of their life; and had to say, in the sweat of their brow and of their soul, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... might have been redeemed at a less price; but still the war taught a lesson, which, if avoidable at that instant, was certainly blamable; but it had its use in enforcing on other nations the conviction that England washed out insult with retribution, and for every drop of blood wantonly spilt demanded an ocean in return. Perhaps ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... years ago caused. Boston's fine system of medical inspection in the schools is the outcome of a diphtheria scare. Smallpox is a splendid stimulator of vaccination; so much so that some of the country's leading sanitarians now advocate the abolition of pest-houses for this avoidable ailment, and dependence upon the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... anti-imperialist, I naturally disapproved of many acts of his administration, of the administration of his predecessor, and of his party in general. I disapproved, and still do, of the McKinley and Payne-Aldrich tariffs; of the Spanish war—most avoidable of wars—with its sequel, the conquest of the Philippines; above all, of the seizure ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... come to the conclusion that more than half the disease which embitters the latter half of life is due to avoidable errors in diet, and that more mischief in the form of actual disease, of impaired vigour, and of shortened life, accrues to civilized man in England and throughout Central Europe from erroneous habits of eating than from the habitual use of alcoholic drink, ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... was a more serious hardship, especially as it appeared avoidable. Owing, presumably, to the thinness with which the line was held, and to the lack of potential reinforcements behind, we were not allowed to sleep in the wood. Every night we made our way either to the lower or higher breastworks. The former were just off ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... instruction is avoidable or even undesirable; but it is so common that it has a very important ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... work, and the others served with me on the Murmansk front. The mobile columns there had exactly the same clothing, equipment, and sledging food as we had on the Expedition. No expense was spared to obtain the best of everything for them, and as a result not a single case of avoidable frost-bite ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... is avoidable. It is just as much a mistake to allow water to run away when it might be grinding pulp, as it is to drive sulphur into the air instead of catching and selling it. You pollute the air, you kill the trees, you spend a lot of money, and you waste ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... That subjugation which is a vital condition to the Normal Social Life does not seem to be necessary to the Great State. It may or it may not be necessary. And here we enter upon the most difficult of all our problems. The whole spirit of the Great State is against any avoidable subjugation; but the whole spirit of that science which will animate the Great State forbids us to ignore woman's functional and temperamental differences. A new status has still to be invented for women, a Feminine Citizenship differing in certain respects ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... essential, and impressive truth in the works of two or three of our leading modern landscape painters, than in those of all the old masters put together, and of truth too, nearly unmixed with definite or avoidable falsehood; while the unimportant and feeble truths of the old masters are choked with a mass of perpetual defiance of the most authoritative ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... home, and bring up healthy children, will do more work, and better work, than the workman who lives in a damp, dark, ill-ventilated tenement, and who goes to his day's work with a heart sullen and broken because of avoidable illness and sorrow in his poor little home. Five thousand employees who have a night-school, luncheon-rooms, little houses and gardens, a savings-bank, and a library of books and pictures are worth more than those who are given no such advantages of happiness, growth, and ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... pointing toward the French coast, that Captain Leicester fully realised his situation. In less than ten minutes his ship had been taken from him, and himself confined in his own cabin, a prisoner. Had he not been on deck at the time of the occurrence, he would certainly have considered it an avoidable misfortune, to be accounted for only by the most gross carelessness; but as it was, he was fully able to understand that it was entirely due to the extreme darkness of the night, and the circumstance ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... sometimes on the more sordid calculation that bachelor life is less comfortable and more expensive, since a wife pays for her status with domestic service as well as with the other services expected of her. Now that children are avoidable, this calculation is becoming more common and conscious than it was: a result which is regarded as "a steady improvement ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw |
