"Moot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... oak was cut down at the close of the last century, or was preserved, carefully fenced in and labeled, in an utterly leafless and shattered state, to our generation, is a moot point. Certain it is that the most ardent Shakespearean must abandon the hope of securing for a bookmark to his Merry Wives of Windsor one of the leaves that rustled, while "Windsor bell struck twelve," over the head of fat Jack. He has the satisfaction, however, of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... overlooked during the Crimean war, when there was an overwhelming national feeling on the contrary side, and might yet very properly lead to their rejection by the electors at the time of the Chinese quarrel (though in itself a more doubtful question), because it was then for some time a moot point whether their view of the case ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... of japanning be more simple and produces a less durable, a less costly coating than the Japanese method, yet its practice is not so injurious to the health. Indeed, it is a moot point in how far the Japanese themselves now utilize their classical process, as the coat of natural japan on all the articles exhibited at the recent Vienna exhibition as being coated with the natural lacquer, ...
— Handbook on Japanning: 2nd Edition - For Ironware, Tinware, Wood, Etc. With Sections on Tinplating and - Galvanizing • William N. Brown
... machinery, moved from place to place as lightly as feathers by use of the gravity discs, those heavily charged plates whose emanations counteracted the earth's attraction. In one busy laboratory they saw an immense television apparatus and heard scientists discussing moot questions with inhabitants of Venus, whose images were depicted on the screen. They witnessed a severe electrical storm in the huge cavern arch over one of the cities, a storm that condensed moisture from the artificially ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... that the victualling arrangements had not been neglected, and that there was no refusal to sanction increased expenditure to improve them. It is a great thing to have Mr. Oppenheim's high authority for this, because he is not generally favourable to the Queen, though even he admits that it 'is a moot point' how far ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... manoeuvred against his wife to send him downstairs at the lady's heels. The fellow was a perfect riddle, hard to read as the zebra lines on the skin of a wild jackass—if Providence intended any meaning when she traced them! and it's a moot point: as it is whether some of our poets have meaning and are not composers of zebra. 'No one knows but them above!' he said ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... heavily across the floor, and Will mechanically pushed down his spectacles and dipped a pen in ink, slewing the register round for the guest's signature. He says he knew at a glance that The Mysterious Stranger was no travelling man, but this is a moot point, Tracey's memory being minutely accurate and at variance with ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... silent during the first part of the drive. She appeared absorbed in her own thoughts, and from the expression of her face one might have hazarded a guess that she was inwardly debating some moot point. All at once she seemed ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... the District for acts committed in violation of District law were transported to Virginia-alien territory-to serve their terms. It was a moot point whether prisoners were so treated with sufficient warrant in law. Eminent jurists held that the District had no right to convict a person under its laws and commit that person to confinement in another state. They contended ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... are not used, the wort being run direct from the hop back to the refrigerator. There is much to be said for this procedure, as the exposure of hot wort in the cooler is attended with much danger of bacterial and wild yeast infection, but it is still a moot point whether the cooler or its equivalent can be entirely dispensed with for all classes of beers. A rational alteration would appear to be to place the cooler in an air-tight chamber supplied with purified and sterilized air. This principle has already been applied to the refrigerator, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... once moot the question whether Fleda should not join Marion at her convent. But his wife looked very grave and said that she was too tender and delicate a little thing to be trusted to the hands of strangers; Hugh pleaded, and argued that ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... of opinion among scholars, Elijah was usually questioned as to how the moot point was interpreted in the heavenly academy. (79) Once, when the scholars were not unanimous in their views as to Esther's intentions when she invited Haman to her banquets with the king, Elijah, asked ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... long, somewhat narrow parallelogram, enclosed on its longer side by old gabled houses; shut in on its western end by the massive bulk of the great parish church of St. Hathelswide, Virgin and Martyr, and at its eastern by the ancient walls and high roofs of its mediaeval Moot Hall. The inner surface of this space is paved with cobble-stones, worn smooth by centuries of usage: it is only of late years that the conservative spirit of the old borough has so far accommodated itself to modern requirements as to ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... Gumming believed his own prophecies is a moot point. It is said that he bought the lease of a house, which expired about twenty-five years after his date for the day ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... to state facts, rather than to moot theories, I leave this debatable ground to others, and here close a narrative, compiled with much care, of this interesting and instructive case. I was the rather disposed to examine it critically and report it in detail, because ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... recently politicians thought that they had discovered a new plan for carrying on the internal affairs of the country, and the idea was to leave each district to manage its own affairs. This is only a return to the original Saxon plan. In every village there was a moot-hill, or sacred tree, where the freemen met to make their own laws and arrange their agricultural affairs. Here disputes were settled, plough lands and meadow lands shared in due lot among ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... policy of our arming slaves, is, in my opinion a moot point, unless the enemy set the example. For, should we begin to form battallions of them, I have not the smallest doubt, if the war is to be prosecuted, of their following us in it, and justifying the measure upon our own ground. The contest then must be, who can arm ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... has Europe or Asia in his backyard, nor a lifetime of leisure for research, for special learning, on the moot questions of church-scholarship. Progress consists in each man's doing his best to advance the interests of the kingdom of God in his own special sphere. From others he must take something for granted. The ear of the Church ought always ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... this is a square enclosure for the vestrymen, whose names are written on the north side of the building. The reader, if acquainted with Virginia pedigrees, will recognize in them some of the oldest and most honorable names of the State—Thomas Fitzhugh, John Lee, Peter Hedgman, Moot Doniphan, John Mercer, Henry Tyler, William Mountjoy, John Fitzhugh, John Peyton. On the north hall are four large tablets containing Scriptural quotations. Directly beneath is a broad flagstone, on which is engraved with ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... subconsciousness of the medium; or whether it is a sort of compound consciousness, made up of the collected minds of those forming the circle at the time; or whether some other interpretation is open to us—this is all a moot question, which is referred to here, merely to draw attention to the fact of ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... during which we fixed up a good many moot points, went on to see General d'Amade. Unluckily he had just left to go on to the Flagship to see me. I did not like to visit the French front in his absence, so took notes of the Turkish defences on "V" and had a second and a ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... abject slave and a young lady who is getting fairly tamed, though at times she still rebels. Both of these young women exercise authority over me all day long until the ownership of my own soul has become a moot question. When my leg is properly spliced again I shall take that freak Susie to New York and exhibit her as the greatest natural curiosity I have been able to find on ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... the law of the town, with the right to elect its magistrates. "The old reeve or bailiff was supplanted by mayor and aldermen, and the practice of sending the reeve and four men as the representatives of the township to the shire-moot widened into the practice of sending four discreet men as representatives of the county to confer with the king in his great council touching the affairs of the kingdom." "In 1376," says Taylor, "the Commons, intent ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... are to be charged with the duty of translating the whole public life of mankind, so that every adult can arrive at an opinion on every moot topic, they fail, they are bound to fail, in any future one can conceive they will continue to fail. It is not possible to assume that a world, carried on by division of labor and distribution of authority, can be governed ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... of the Prologues of these plays has long been a moot question. The tendency of the more recent investigators has been to hold that all were, at least in ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... others of a very pressing nature on his mind. His saddler had to be seen,—and threatened,—on a certain matter touching the horses' backs. A draught of hounds were being sent down to a friend in Scotland. And there was a Committee of Masters to sit on a moot question concerning a neutral covert in the XXX country, of which Committee he was one. But the desire to punish Slide was almost as strong in his indignant mind as those other matters referring more especially to the profession of his life. "Phineas," he ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... attorney-general in 1864. A fearless and upright leader, and a good orator, he did much for the moulding of a united Canada. He is also famed as a writer of French lyrics, which were published in 1875, two years after his death. Whether the stamps ever got beyond the proposal stage is a moot point but at any rate a list of ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... strange that her thoughts went fondly to Pitt, who had taken care of her and helped her and been good to her. Was it all over? and no more such kindly ministry and delightful sympathy to be ever hoped for any more? Had Pitt forgotten her? It gave Esther pain, that nobody guessed, to be obliged to moot this question; and it busied her a good deal. Sometimes her thoughts went longingly back beyond Pitt Dallas to another face that had always been loving to her; soft eyes and a tender hand that were ever sure to bring sympathy and ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... It was a moot question whether Mr. Harrihan resembled his dog, or whether his dog resembled him. That there was a marked similarity admitted of no discussion. If Corp's nose had been encouraged and his lower jaw suppressed, if his intensely emotional nature had been under better control, and his sentimentality ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... have had more written about them than the bustard, much is unsettled with regard to its economy. A moot point, which will most likely always remain undecided, is whether the British race was migratory or not, though that such is the habit of the species in most parts of the European continent is beyond ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... with, it seems a moot point whether a balloon caught in a thunderstorm is, or is not, in any special danger of being struck. It has been argued that immunity under such circumstances must depend upon whether a sufficiently long time has elapsed since ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... indignant that he had allowed to exist for so long a time the privilege of the monastery. And these exceptions, with a hint of some foul murder committed at the castle, reached the nobles roundabout and stirred up a general demur. Beside, it was whispered in the shire-moot that the woman about to be espoused by him was a rank Papist and had already placed popish pictures about the Chapel that was contiguous to the castle. This was all that possibly could be said against her, as she was known to be most gracious to the poor Protestants ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... Commons have a 'double representation,' that is to say, have as many members as the Noblesse and Clergy united? Shall the States-General, when once assembled, vote and deliberate, in one body, or in three separate bodies; 'vote by head, or vote by class,'—ordre as they call it? These are the moot-points now filling all France with jargon, logic and eleutheromania. To terminate which, Necker bethinks him, Might not a second Convocation of the Notables be fittest? Such second Convocation is ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... philosophy of chairs. One may retain convictions in furniture which is palpably vertebrate; lapped in billowing upholstery it is a moot question; and like many a caller's before him, Shelby's brain tissue became a jelly of flattered complacency. It sufficed merely to simmer in a sense of equality with the silver-haired gentleman at the desk. The Boss! He had heard that the great man loathed the ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... appear in any analysis, they must be assumed to consist almost entirely of that substance generally in the form of common salt, and be valued accordingly. Sulphate of lime and organic matter though abundant constituents of most manures, add but little to their value, and it is a moot point whether they ought to be taken into consideration, although most persons allow a small value for them. Carbonate of lime, sand, or siliceous matter, and water, of course, are ...
— Elements of Agricultural Chemistry • Thomas Anderson
... each other. In Bowles, the clerical and the poetical characters were on the whole well attuned and harmonised. In Churchill, they came to an open rupture. In Parnell, they were neither ruptured nor reconciled, but maintained an ambiguous relation, till his premature death settled the moot point for ever. ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... magistrates; and these were the working members of these Parliaments, which were in general merely courts of justice for civil and criminal causes. The nobles only attended on occasions of unusual interest. Moreover, a law or edict of the King became valid on being registered by a Parliament. It was a moot question whether the Parliament had the power to baffle the King by refusing to register an edict, and Henry IV. had avoided a refusal from the Parliament of Paris, by getting his edict of toleration for the ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... anybody; except art Parasitically clinging on to the effortless close of a life Private possession underlay everything worth having Purpose of marriage was children, not mere sinful happiness Question so moot that it was not mooted Quiet tenacity with which he had converted a mediocre talent Spoiled their rods, spared their children Take himself seriously, yet never bore others Tarred with cynicism, realism, and immorality like the French The young have such cheap, ...
— Quotations from the Works of John Galsworthy • David Widger
... myself discerned no evidence to convict her; but the populace cried out, in universal frenzy, that she was guilty, that she should die; and that the barbarians, when they heard of the punishment inflicted on their secret adherent, would retire in dismay from Rome. This also was a moot point of argument, on which I vainly endeavoured to decide; but the Senate and the people were wiser than I; and Serena was condemned to be strangled to-morrow by the public executioner. She was a woman of good report before this time, and is the adopted mother of the Emperor. It is now doubted ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... answering, viz.—What was the 'objective material reality' here? We do not know enough about what constitutes 'objective material reality,' nor about what are the laws of prophetic ecstasy and vision, to discuss such a question as that. Nor is there any need to moot it. It does not matter one rush whether bystanders would have seen anything or not. It does not matter in the least whether there was any actual excitation of auditory or visual nerves. It does not matter whether there was anything which people are contented to call material—a word which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... self has; and yet it has been taken for Tarracino and Taranto. I have a project to joyn Sicily to my lands on the continent, that when I have a mind to go into Africa, I may sail by my own coasts. But prithee Agamemnon tell me what moot-point was it you argued to day; for tho' I plead no causes my self, yet I have had a share of letters in my time; and that you may not think me sick of them now, have three libraries, the one Greek, the ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... Jock, Trap, and Tartar—he claims descent; and, thanks to the Fox-terrier Club and the great care taken in compiling their stud-books, he can be brought down to to-day. Of these three dogs Old Jock was undoubtedly more of a terrier than the others. It is a moot point whether he was bred, as stated in most records of the time, by Captain Percy Williams, master of the Rufford, or by Jack Morgan, huntsman to the Grove; it seems, however, well established that the former owned his sire, also called Jock, ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... well-established rule has been overthrown, another, believed to be quite as wrong and perhaps not so well fortified by time and subsequent cases, may share the same fate. Shall counsel risk advising his client not to prosecute his claim or defence, when another bolder than he, may moot the point and conduct another cause resting upon the same question to a successful termination? The very foundations of confidence and security are shaken. The law becomes a lottery, in which every man feels disposed to try his chance. Another cause of this uncertainty is more particular. ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... subject, subject matter; matter, theme, [Grk], topic, what it is about, thesis, text, business, affair, matter in hand, argument; motion, resolution; head, chapter; case, point; proposition, theorem; field of inquiry; moot point, problem &c. (question) 461. V. float in the mind , pass in the mind &c. 451. Adj. thought of; uppermost in the mind; in petto. Adv. under consideration; in question, in the mind; on foot, on the carpet, on the docket, on the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... and recalls the wonders of old-time. It will be our endeavour to tell of the old country houses that Time has spared, the cottages that grace the village green, the stern grey walls that still guard some few of our towns, the old moot halls and public buildings. We shall see the old-time farmers and rustics gathering together at fair and market, their games and sports and merry-makings, and whatever relics of old English life have been left for an artist and scribe of the ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... her a bad name. She got up, nivver said a wadd, but walked straight out of the front door. They din't take much notiz at fust, but when she din't come back, they got scared, and looked for her all about; and at last they found her in the moot, at ...
— Two Suffolk Friends • Francis Hindes Groome
... control, will undoubtedly fail to meet the case. The multiplication of irresponsible boards must be stopped, and to what extent anything, save economies in expenditure, can be effected without far larger changes remains a moot point. Of one thing, at any rate, one may be certain—the present Liberal Government when in Opposition joined forces with the Irish members in driving home the tremendous admissions of the Royal Commissioners, and it is impossible ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... other people had whispered, in the long intervals of the organ. She had removed him from the church before the collection for the Red Cross, and when they had eaten a sort of dinner she had borne him away to the Russian dancers in the Moot Hall. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... that he WAS Charolais," said Guerchard. "It is quite a moot point. On the whole, I'm inclined to think that he was not. The theft of the motor-cars was a job for a subordinate. He would hardly bother ...
— Arsene Lupin • Edgar Jepson
... its place above the letter are matters on which men hold warring opinions. We have not even raised the question of laid or wove paper, nor of the intermixture of different series or sizes of types. In short, every phase of the subject bristles with moot points, the settlement of one of which in a given way may determine the settlement ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... that it does not lie so much in hostile critics or feeble health, as in a careless habit of writing, and a peevish vanity which causes him to shut his eyes to his faults. The question of original capacity I will not moot; one may think very highly of the honorable baronet's talent, without rating it quite so high as he seems disposed ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... an occasional reference to the opinions of modern scholars. Such being the object of the explanations, the reader will not be surprised at the absence of critical and lengthened discussions on many of those moot points of Mythology and early history which have occupied, with no very positive result, the attention of Niebuhr, Lobeck, Mueller, Buttmann, and many other ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... than that in L.U., and the lost opening of L.U. may have been fuller. The author of the Glenn Masain version kept nearer to the old story, adding, however, more modern touches. Where the new character of Bricriu comes from is a moot point; I incline to the belief that the idea of Bricriu as a mere buffoon is a later development. But in neither version is the story, as we have it, a pre-Christian one. The original pre-Christian idea of ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... to make for the Garth. They were, however, in front, where he would sooner have them than behind, and he set off down the valley for Hexham. He found the old Border town, clustering round the tall dark mass of the abbey, strangely picturesque; the ancient Moot Hall and market square invited his interest, but he shrank from wandering about the streets in the dark. Now he had Graham's checks, he must be careful; moreover his knapsack and leggings made him conspicuous, and he went to a ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... the institutions which freemen have always and everywhere held fundamental. For a long time there has been no sufficient opportunity of counsel among the people; no place and method of talk, of exchange of opinion, of parley. Communities have outgrown the folk-moot and the town-meeting. Congress, in accordance with the genius of the land, which asks for action and is impatient of words,—Congress has become an institution which does its work in the privacy of committee rooms and not on the floor ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... on the acorns of the forest: but a small portion of the soil was ploughed and sown; and this portion also was distributed to the villagers for tillage by annual arrangement. The hall of the chief rose in the midst of the lesser houses, open to all comers. The village moot, or assembly of freemen, met in the open air, under some sacred tree, or beside some old monumental stone, often a relic of the older aboriginal race, marking the tomb of a dead chieftain, but worshipped as a god by the English immigrants. At these ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... the king was supreme. But in peace his power was narrowly bounded by the customs of his people and the rede of his wise men. Justice was not as yet the king's justice, it was the justice of village and hundred and folk in town-moot and hundred-moot and folk-moot. It was only with the assent of the wise men that the king could make laws and declare war and assign public lands and name public officers. Above all, should his will be to break through the free customs of his people, he was without ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... saddles, here it is a moot question which is the better, yours or ours, for buck-jumpers. Carver's boys rode in their own saddles against our Victorians in theirs, all on Australian buckers, and honors seemed easy. Each was good in his own style, but the horses were not what ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... equinoctial line, and reveal to the knowledge of civilized man the great river, afterwards called the Amazon, and the country of Brazil. The fleet in which Vespucci took passage left Spain in the month of May, 1499, that commanded by Pinzon left in December; and it is still a moot question whether the first or the second was the first to arrive on the coast of Brazil. But Pinzon sailed beyond Vespucci on that voyage, though he was to be surpassed, the next year, in the generous rivalry that existed ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... arming slaves is in my opinion a moot point, unless the enemy set the example. For, should we begin to form Battalions of them, I have not the smallest doubt, if the war is to be prosecuted, of their following us in it, and justifying the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... moot point whether Tom-all-Alone's be uglier by day or by night, but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the more shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imagination is at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day carries it. The ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... regarding the interchange of mammalian life between America and Asia during the early Pleistocene period, before Meeteetse Ed, Old Man Rulison, Tubbs, and others, in the same language in which he would have argued moot questions with colleagues engaged in similar research. The language of learning was as natural to McArthur as the vernacular of the West was to Tubbs, and in moments of excitement he lapsed into it as a foreigner does into his native ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... to the Welsh refiners, while some of it is sent to the Continent. Of the remaining works, 16 refine the crude oil only. There are altogether 3804 retorts in operation, both vertical and horizontal. It is a moot point, which is now engaging the attention of those in the trade, whether vertical or horizontal retorts are the best suited for the purposes in view. At Mr. Young's works, which are the largest and most important in Scotland, nothing but vertical retorts are used, ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... of age at twelve. A king of seven years of age has twelve Regents chosen in the Moot, in one case by lot, to bring him up and rule for him till his majority. Regents are all appointed in Denmark, in one case for lack of royal blood, one to Scania, one to Zealand, one to Funen, two to Jutland. Underkings and Earls are appointed by kings, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... am in earnest; and I will try. There are some preliminaries to settle. first: the uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology is in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it still remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of Nature, A. D. , Linnaeus declares, I hereby separate the whales from the fish. But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year , sharks ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the slightest guarantee for life, liberty, or property. It is time, that, in their majesty, the people of the United States should make known to the world that this Government, in its dignity and power, is something more than a moot court, and that the citizen who makes war upon it is a traitor, not only in theory but in fact, and should have meted out to him a traitor's doom. The country wants no bloody sacrifice, but it must and will have peace, cost what it may. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Mr. Rossitur did once moot the question, whether Fleda should not join Marion at her convent. But his wife looked very grave, and said that she was too tender and delicate a little thing to be trusted to the hands of strangers. Hugh pleaded, and argued that she might share all his lessons; and ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... —The moot point is did he forget it, J. J. O'Molloy said quietly, turning a horseshoe paperweight. Saving princes is a thank ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... had as intimate associates both Edward Alleyn and Richard Burbage; two young men of about his own age, who were already winning a good share of the notice and appreciation that later established them as the leading actors of the age. Which of them was the greater was one of the moot questions of the day eight to ten years later, when they had become the star actors of rival companies, and those the foremost two ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... the Three Estates'—Monarch, namely, Barons, and Clergy. It is made up in nearly three equal parts of ingenuity, wit, and grossness. It is a drama, and was acted several times—first, in 1535, at Cupar-Fife, on a large green mound called Moot-hill; then, in 1539, in an open park near Linlithgow, by the express desire of the king, who with all the ladies of the Court attended the representation; then in the amphitheatre of St Johnston in Perth; and in 1554, at Edinburgh, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... as small of stature, in Celtic countries the fay proper, as distinct from the brownie and such goblins, is of average mortal height, and this would seem to be the case in Brittany. Whether the gorics and courils of Brittany, who seem sufficiently small, are fairies or otherwise is a moot point. They seem to be more of the field spirit type, and are perhaps classed more correctly with the gnome race; we thus deal with them in our chapter on sprites and demons. It would seem, too, as if there ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... and pleasant corner cell, whence he might solace himself by a view of the street and the courthouse park. Further, the deputy ministered to Mr. Johnson's hurts with water and court-plaster, and a beefsteak applied to a bruised and swollen eye. He volunteered his good offices as a witness in the moot matter of intoxication and in all ways gave him treatment befitting ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... Legislature had the right to rescind a land grant made by a preceding Legislature. On any of three grounds Marshall might easily have disposed of this case before coming to the principal question. In the first place, it was palpably a moot case; that is to say, it was to the interest of the opposing parties to have the rescinding act set aside. The Court would not today take jurisdiction of such a case, but Marshall does not even suggest such a solution of the question, though ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... clear about that," said Lord Valentine; "that is the very point at issue. I do not think the great majority are the best judges of their own interests. At all events, gentlemen, the respective advantages of aristocracy and democracy are a moot point. Well then, finding the question practically settled in this country, you will excuse me for not wishing to agitate it. I give you complete credit for the sincerity of your convictions; extend the same confidence to me. You are democrats; I am an aristocrat. My ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... institution in Biggleswick which deserves mention. On the south of the common, near the station, stood a red-brick building called the Moot Hall, which was a kind of church for the very undevout population. Undevout in the ordinary sense, I mean, for I had already counted twenty-seven varieties of religious conviction, including three Buddhists, a Celestial Hierarch, five Latter-day ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... dress, flitting like a dark, graceful ghost through the city streets, and the sight sent his heart plunging against his side like an inward sledge-hammer. Would one pulse in her heart stir ever so faintly at sight of him? Just as he asked himself the question, and was stepping forward to moot her, feeling very like the country swain in love—"hot and dry like, with a pain in his side like"—he suddenly stopped. Another figure came forth from the shadow of an opposite house, and softly pronounced her name. It was a short ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... would be well to emphasize that it is important to avoid the too free use of condiments and stimulating foods. We have used salt so long that our bodies seem adapted to it, and it is usually considered essential to the welfare of domestic stock; therefore it is a moot question as to whether it is advisable for human beings to avoid it altogether. Yet the excessive use of it to which we are prone is certainly harmful. How is this to be avoided? If we eat our food in a hand, I have found that the longer you are without it the more you ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... be attributed by any one, who has traced the development of Roman literature in its connection, to an author of the age of the Hannibalic war; and even Latin annals from that age appear problematical, although it must remain a moot question whether there has been a confusion of the earlier with a later annalist, Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus (consul in 612), or whether there existed an old Latin edition of the Greek Annals of Fabius as well ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... maintained whilst political institutions have ceased to exist. The freemen of the township met to settle small questions between themselves, under the presidency of their reeve or headman. More important cases were brought before the hundred-moot, or meeting of the hundred, a district which had been inhabited, or was supposed to have been inhabited, either by a hundred kindred groups of the original settlers or by the families of a hundred warriors. This hundred-moot was held once a month, ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... recorded in the Stud Book, their money joined to land. Whether this was a little late in the day, and those rewards of the possessive instinct, lands and money, destined for the melting-pot—was still a question so moot that it was not mooted. After all, Timothy had said Consols were goin' up. Timothy, the last, the missing link; Timothy, in extremis on the Bayswater Road—so Francie had reported. It was whispered, too, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... air "The Ash Grove" is but another version of the same tune; but whether the Welsh derived the air from England or vice versa is a moot point. The matter is discussed, at some length, in Chappell's "Popular Music of the Olden Time," p. 665, to which ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... out at me under my own signature—and in an article espousing the side of France in the Alsace-Lorraine controversy? Perhaps not—unless you understand the feeling of the actual possessor and the aspirant to possession of border and other moot territories. "By their spelling ye shall know them!" is their cry. Later, I happened to be in America when that dear good faithful copy-reader changed my Bizerte to the dictionary's Bizerta in an article on Tunis, and was able to go to the mat with him. I explained that the spelling was an essential ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... regards the ensemble of violin and piano will be recalled by all who have enjoyed the 'Sonata Recitals' he has given together with Mrs. Mannes. And as an interpreting solo artist his views regarding the moot question of gut versus wire strings are ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... moot question whether or not the weight of the water which lay in this vast sink, before the eruption, was not needed, and is not needed right now, for the balancing of this tiny planet we are living on. Nature adjusts herself to every change more quickly ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... priors, monks, and canons, that were in all the cells in England, and all who had the care and superintendence of christianity, that they should all come to London at Michaelmas, and there should speak of all God's rights. When they came thither, then began the moot on Monday, and continued without intermission to the Friday. When it all came forth, then was it all found to be about archdeacons' wives, and about priests' wives; that they should forgo them by St. Andrew's mass; and he who would not do that, should forgo his church, and his house, and his ...
— The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle • Unknown
... involving the handling and direction of modern systems and appliances. The Chinaman is at present content to supply labour, but whether in time he will be capable of also supplying the versatile, directing brain is a moot question. Anyhow, it will not be for long years and until he has lived under a modernised ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... country like America, the very best and most approved methods of cultivation are followed, hence the old system of sowing seed by hand is discarded, and seed-planting machines are now coming into general use. The distance apart which the seeds (about five or six in one hole) should be set, is still a moot question, but it is generally admitted to be unsafe to plant at greater distances than 12 inches. When sown, a light covering is put over, and in a few days—about twelve generally—the tiny plants make their appearance. Two or three days after, ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... that rings us, ness and bay, The nation's old sea-soul beats blithe and strong; The black foam-breasters taste Biscayan spray, And where 'neath Polar dawns the narwhals throng:— Free hands, free hearts, for labour and for glee, Or village-moot, when thane with churl unites Beneath the sacred tree; While wisdom tempers force, and bravery leads, Till spears beat Aye! on shields, and words at once ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... announced that she disapproved of modern methods, had no wish to enter the public arena, and was anxious to abandon a course of dangerous cram. Her favourite subject was composition, and here and here alone, she and Susan ran an even race, it being a moot point each week which would gain the highest marks. Susan's essays were more thoughtful, and were written with an apt and dainty choice of words which was a delight to Miss Drake's literary taste, but a certain primness and conventionality still remained to ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... settled before I go," Benjulia proceeded. "Here are some papers, which I have received from your lawyer, Mr. Moot. They relate to a slander, which your wife ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... There were points also connected with the process of their elaboration which had given me an undefinable uneasiness in the refreshment rooms of a hundred railway stations. I was determined to settle these moot points once for all. So I entered the establishment with an eye of as keen a speculation as an exciseman's searching a building for illicit distillery, and I came out of it a more charitable and contented man. All was above board, ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... might be trusted to bring out all these doubtful points, had been delayed in anticipation of Mr. Fairbrother's return. His testimony could not but prove valuable, if not in fixing the criminal, at least in settling the moot point as to whether the stone, which the estranged wife had carried away with her on leaving the house, had been the genuine one returned to him from Tiffany's or the well-known imitation now in the hands of the police. He had been located somewhere in the mountains of lower Colorado, but, ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... found in the presence of the edible frog of the Continent at Foulmire, on the edge of the Cambridge Fans. It is a moot point still with some, whether he was not put there by man. It is a still stronger argument against his being indigenous, that he is never mentioned as an article of food by the mediaeval monks, who would have known—Frenchmen, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... of Egypt and Ireland, and much else, had these innovations been compatible with his own special object. But they were not. He was apparently minded to test the matter by announcing his resolve to moot the problem of the freedom of the seas, but when admonished by the British government that it would not even brook its mention, he at once gave it up and, presumably drawing the obvious inference from this ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... words, had time allowed—and of course there was no knowing what effect the resistance of Dublin might have on the country—it may be a moot point whether it might not have been advisable to separate the two questions of the sentence of death and the actual executions, and one can well imagine the conciliatory effect of a Royal Act of Clemency in the event ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... general deliberately measured the endurance of Rome against that of Hannibals's isolated army, because it seemed to him that the latter was more likely to suffer from a long campaign in a strange country. But it is quite a moot question whether his tactics would have proved successful in the long run. Their reversal it is true, led to Cannae; but this only establishes a negative presumption ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... pure comedy—the prose comedy of manners—and classical tragedy admitted no comic intermixture. Whether tragedy should be in rhyme, after the French manner, or in blank verse, after the precedent of the old English stage, was a moot point. Dryden at first argued for rhyme and used it in his "heroic plays"; and it is significant that he defended its use on the ground that it would act as a check upon the poet's fancy. But afterward he grew "weary of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... [190] We moot a higher question: Is he fit for the pulpit,—for that great conservative power by which religion, and morals, and freedom, must be maintained among us? "I do not believe," he declares, in one of his sermons, "the miraculous origin of the Hebrew church, or the Buddhist church, ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... neither cattle nor sheep to be seen; and if, as they strongly suspected, the blockhouses in sight accommodated a few men, none of their occupants revealed their presence nor made the slightest attempt to interfere with the uninvited visitors. It was a moot point between Dick and Grosvenor whether they should not take the bull by the horns, as it were, by riding up to the nearest blockhouse and attempting to get into communication with its occupants at once; but Grosvenor was very strongly opposed to any such step, upon ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... space prevents me from trying to touch upon the numerous other moot points in divorce, so I will only plead that, when each person has come to a definite and common-sense conclusion, unclouded by sentiment or prejudice, he or she may not hesitate to proclaim his or her conviction ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... to have been evolved, evolution seems to me a noble and beautiful and true theory. But a careful search has not shown me a single instance in which such proof as would stand the first shot of a boy lawyer in a moot court, has been brought forward in support of an actual case ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims |
