"Hard-and-fast" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... public exhibitions and prize-givings; all the arts, not one only, are to be taught; great prominence is to be given to the minor arts; at first there will be no fees; above all and before all, the great College of ours is not to be made a Government department, to be tied and bound by the hard-and-fast rules and red tape which are the curse of every department, nor is it to be under the direction of any School Board, but, like most things in this country that are of any use, it is to be ...
— As We Are and As We May Be • Sir Walter Besant
... different character, compass, and quality of tone; so surely in making additions (and, so far as certain ornaments are concerned, alterations) these things ought to be taken into consideration. A certain latitude should, therefore, be allowed to the transcriber; hard-and-fast rules in such a delicate task are impossible. The late Dr. Buelow edited six of Emanuel Bach's sonatas,[67] and though he was well acquainted with the composer's style of writing, his anxious desire to present the music in the most favourable light sometimes led him to make changes of which even ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... Morselli, of Bottazzi and Foa, have opened new vistas in human nature? These 'supernormal powers' may chance to be of immense value to the race, quite aside from their bearing upon the problem of death. Furthermore, these reports come at a time when a hard-and-fast literalism of interpretation is the fashion among scientists like Miller. Perhaps they and the art of the day will alike be offered new inspiration by these mystifying enlargements of human faculty. I for one feel profoundly indebted to these brave and clear-brained Italian scientists. ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... better than that," remarked Jarwin, producing a paper of no great size, "this is her will. She wanted to make a deed of gift, and probably would have done so had she lived. But luckily she made the will—and a hard-and-fast one it is—for I drew it up myself," ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... you have drawn out this hard-and-fast line of life for yourself, and think you will be happy in stifling all your natural ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... sold at auction for firewood and for such bits of their metal as weren't rusted to pieces. He read the catalog. Then he telegraphed to me to wire him a loan of one hundred dollars. For the catalog gave the date of one schooner's building as 1804. He knew it used to be a hard-and-fast custom of ship-builders to put a silver dollar under the mainmast of every vessel they built, a dollar of that particular year. He bought the schooner for $70. He spent ten dollars in hiring men to rip out her mast. Under it was an 1804 dollar. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... every quarter the reporters hastened to verify the fact at first-hand, and then to submit it to the keeper of every other eminent inn or eating-house in the city and learn his usage and opinion. These to a man disavowed any such hard-and-fast rule. Though their paying guests were ordinarily gentlemen of such polite habits as to be incapable of dining in anything but a dress-coat or a Tuxedo, yet their inns and eating-houses were not barred against those who chose to dine in ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... from what I have said that no hard-and-fast rules as to where to plant one's trees can be laid down, because of the wide difference of conditions under which the planting must be made. Each home-owner must decide this matter for himself, but I would urge that ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... down any hard-and-fast rule governing the formation and conduct of the operations of a patrol. Each situation will have to be worked out by itself. The patrol should assume the general formation of a column of troops on the march; that is, it will have an advance guard, a main body, flankers ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... another important consideration to be taken into account. In the case of extremely loose and sandy soils, it is scarcely to be recommended as the most suitable form in which to apply nitrogen. If applied to such soils, especial care ought to be taken to minimise risk of loss. No hard-and-fast rules can be laid down as to the quantity in which it ought to be applied. This must be regulated very much by the crop, the nature of the soil, and the quantity of other manures employed. From 1 to 1-1/4 cwt. may be recommended ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... the child under the mother's heart, that she may learn that for a long time to come her heart must be its home. And yet—there are mothers cruelly slighted, mothers whose sublime, pathetic tenderness meets only a harsh return, a hideous ingratitude which shows how difficult it is to lay down hard-and-fast rules ...
— La Grenadiere • Honore de Balzac
... the Calvinistic or Puritan type shows little consciousness of the distinction we are insisting upon. It is disposed to draw a hard-and-fast line between the "converted" and the reprobate. Those who are not religious-minded, or who do not take a serious turn, are scarcely recognized as "saved" although they may not be convicted of any very flagrant or definite breach of the divine law. Their morality or their "good works" ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... did not in every instance follow the hard-and-fast lines here laid down. Under stress of circumstance each was liable to become merged in the other; or both, perhaps, had to be abandoned in favour of fresh tactics rendered necessary by the accident or the exigency ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... as we have seen, depended upon a skillful manipulation of apparently hard-and-fast principles. The Declarations explained away the Constitutions; and an infinite number of minute exceptions and distinctions volatilized vows and obligations into ether. Transferring the same method to the sphere of ethics, they so wrought upon the precepts of the moral law, whether expressed ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... be no hard-and-fast rule; our Lord did not do it, and how can we? It is odious to me as much as to any one. But what would you have him do? He cannot take that wretched ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... met a girl in any way like her—one who wanted so much and would give so little in return for it, who had an eel-like way of dodging hard-and-fast facts and who had made up her mind with all the zest and thoughtlessness of youth to mold life, when finally she could prove how much alive she was, into no other shape than the one which most appealed to her. She surprised and delighted him with ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... brief manual is convinced that no hard-and-fast rules can be laid down for the use of a textbook in history. He believes that every teacher will naturally pursue a system of his own, and that by so doing he will get better results than if he attempt to follow a rigid mechanical ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... of young and enthusiastic artists, eager to overturn barriers, are found painting more or less together, it is not so easy to unravel the tangle of influences and draw hard-and-fast lines everywhere, one or two modern examples much nearer to our own time may roughly serve to illustrate. Take, for instance, the friendship that developed itself between the youthful Bonington and the youthful Delacroix while they copied together in the ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... added, 'and will never do anything in decent style.' This was in allusion to Beethoven's wilfulness in persistently transgressing certain established rules of composition. The old teacher failed to see that Beethoven's refusal to be bound by hard-and-fast rules arose, not from mere caprice, but from the force of a genius which would not submit to be trammelled by any kind of artificial limitations. The wisdom of Beethoven is, however, shown by the fact that he wrote out his exercises with the most ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... not democracy; it is revolution." She was thinking of those Old World hard-and-fast divisions of society into royalty, aristocracy, ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... exception of petitions for spiritual blessings—for a deeper faith, for a more complete obedience, for a humbler heart, for a wider sympathy—such as can never be out of place, it is impossible to draw a hard-and-fast line; there is, indeed, a whole vast category of possible objects of prayer which one cannot a priori pronounce legitimate or otherwise. We can only humbly confess that "we know not how to pray as we ought," nor what things it is in our best ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... before-the-war Democrats had gone with the Confederacy. The party in power called itself Democratic, but was in fact a body of reactionary nondescripts claiming to be Unionists and clinging, or pretending to cling, to the hard-and-fast ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... House, its accommodations for spectators limited, there were no hard-and-fast rules regulating admission to the floor. Harlan Thornton had a chair placed in the aisle beside his seat, and entertained Madeleine Presson there. He had anticipated Linton, who came with a similar invitation. Harlan was still enough of ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... organized. Mammals are more plastic, more adaptable, and at the same time less sure; and this is notably true of man. It would be a mistake to suppose that man has few instinctive tendencies; perhaps he has more than any other creature. But his instinctive behavior has not the hard-and-fast, ready-made character that we see in the insects. Man is by all odds the most pottering, hem-and-hawing of animals. Instinct does not lead him straight to his goal, but makes him seek this way and that till he finds it. His powers of observation, memory and thought are ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... riding in front of Mat's wagon, of which we had elected ourselves the special guardians, Rex Krane came up alongside Bill Banney's team in front of us. The young men were no such hard-and-fast friends as Beverly and I. For some reason they had little to say ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... sharply, "don't say that! I can't have made the case clear. You are too big, too comprehending, Mr. Hodder, to have a hard-and-fast rule. There must be times—extenuating circumstances—and I believe the canons make it optional for a clergyman to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... too far along before we get started; I'm not saying it now," was the sober protest. "You forget that you've just been telling me that you don't intend to comply with the one hard-and-fast condition to such an arrangement as the one ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... that the needs of the government shall be amply provided for. The harmonizing of these needs in the laws of taxation requires a high degree of wisdom, of foresight, and of integrity in the legislator and in the citizen. No hard-and-fast rule for the apportioning of taxes can be laid down. The decision must be made in each generation by the public opinion as to what is most expedient ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... as part of the Middle Ages.[1] We intend, however, to treat of economic teaching up to the end of the fifteenth century. The best modern judges are agreed that the term Middle Ages must not be given a hard-and-fast meaning, but that it is capable of bearing a very elastic interpretation. The definition given in the Catholic Encyclopaedia is: 'a term commonly used to designate that period of European history between the Fall ...
— An Essay on Mediaeval Economic Teaching • George O'Brien |
