"Nugatory" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and which, according to my scheme, every Christian born in Church-membership ought to bring with him to the study of the sacred Scriptures as the master-key of interpretation. Whatever the doctrine of infallible dictation may be in itself, in THEIR hands it is to the last degree nugatory, and to be paralleled only by the Romish tenet of Infallibility—in the existence of which all agree, but where, and in whom, it exists stat adhuc sub lite. Every sentence found in a canonical Book, rightly interpreted, contains the dictum of an infallible ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... great anxiety lest the account of the gale we encountered may reach England before that of our safety shall arrive, and give you some uneasiness; but the experience you have had how nugatory all such fears are, will, I hope, make you banish them ...
— Memoirs and Correspondence of Admiral Lord de Saumarez, Vol. I • Sir John Ross
... commonly fancied; and, when real, are technical and nugatory, not to be rejected, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... want of all legal knowledge would allow me to decide, I could perceive nothing in the will itself which would admit of a lawyer's successful cavil: my reasons for suspicion, so conclusive to myself, would seem nugatory to a judge. My uncle was known as a humourist; and prove that a man differs from others in one thing, and the world will believe that he differs from them in a thousand. His favour to me would be, ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... subject of Indian affairs without again recommending to your consideration the expediency of more adequate provision for giving energy to the laws throughout our interior frontier and for restraining the commission of outrages upon the Indians, without which all pacific plans must prove nugatory. To enable, by competent rewards, the employment of qualified and trusty persons to reside among them as agents would also contribute to the preservation of peace and good neighborhood. If in addition to these expedients an eligible plan could be devised for ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... what the defence is to be until the defendant himself takes the stand, and, by "waiving further examination" in the police court, the astute criminal attorney may select at his leisure the defence best suited to fit in with and render nugatory the prosecution's evidence. ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... "Testimonies of Authors," some straggle of real documents, which, now that I find it again, sets the matter into clear light and sequence:—and shall here, for removal of idle stumbling-blocks and nugatory guessings from the path of every reader, be reprinted as it stood. ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... built on a scarped mound about thirty-five feet high, flanked by numerous towers, and surrounded by a fausse brayze and a wet ditch, whilst the height of the citadel covered the interior from the commanding fire of the hills from the north, rendering it nugatory. In addition to this, screen walls had been built before the gates, the ditch was filled with water, and unfordable, and an outwork built on the right bank of the river so as to command the bed ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... island, and fertile land, like that of the plains of Meath, is to be seen growing, not corn for men, but grass for cattle. The success of the country in stock-raising may very easily be rendered nugatory if the exclusion of Argentine and Canadian cattle from the English market be ended by the passing of an Act giving the Board of Agriculture a discretionary power to maintain or remove the embargo on their importation, according as the danger of ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... that Lord Brougham's counsel to the Glasgow students is not only bad counsel,—and bad counsel for the result, as well as for the grounds, which are either capricious or nugatory,—but also that, in the exact proportion in which the range of thought expands, it is an impossible counsel, an impracticable counsel—a counsel having for its purpose to embarrass and lay the mind in fetters, where even its utmost freedom and its largest resources ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... usually results in nothing but litigation. You see for yourself how absurd it would be to treat a paper drawn or executed after a will was made as part of it, for that would render the requirements of the statute nugatory." ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... beauty of language. Can then sublimity of versification, the harmony of numbers, reconcile man to the idea that the puny offspring of natural causes is adequate for a single instant to dispute the commands, to thwart the desires, to render nugatory the decrees of a Being whose wisdom is of the most polished perfection; whose goodness is boundless; whose power must be more capacious than the human mind ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... second article. If any inference beyond this can be drawn from their resolution, it is that they regarded the proviso annexed by the First Consul to his declaration of acceptance as foreign to the subject, as nugatory, or as without consequence or effect. Notwithstanding this proviso, they considered the ratification as full. If the new proviso made any change in the previous import of the convention, then it was not ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... protesting with an injured air that he was not so young as he was, and that, if I wanted him to survive the summer, I had better keep my ears open, while, to judge from his behaviour, the reflection that his recent output of vigour had been rendered nugatory by my unreadiness was hurrying Mr. Dunkelsbaum into the valley of insanity. Purple in the face from the unwonted violence of his physical and mental exercise, streaming with perspiration and shaking with passion, the fellow stormed ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... assigned unto it the inquiry of formal and final causes; which assignation, as to the former of them, may seem to be nugatory and void, because of the received and inveterate opinion, that the inquisition of man is not competent to find out essential forms or true differences; of which opinion we will take this hold, that the invention of forms is ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... assisted by their male friends and acquaintances to drive a good bargain; nor does their career of debauchery finish with their unmarried state; the vows of fidelity which they make at the altar, are like the vows and oaths made upon too many other occasions, only considered as nugatory forms, which law has obliged them to take, but custom absolved them from performing. They even claim and enjoy greater liberties after marriage than before; every married woman has a cicisbey, or gallant, who attends her to all public places, hands her ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... Severn intended finally to quit East Lynne. The necessary preparations for departure were in progress, but when Thursday morning dawned, it appeared a question whether they would not once more be rendered nugatory. The house was roused betimes, and Mr. Wainwright, the surgeon from West Lynne, summoned to the earl's bedside; he had experienced another and a violent attack. The peer was exceedingly annoyed ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... title of a French admiral. By the treaty of San Ildefonso an offensive alliance against Great Britain was concluded, her commerce to be excluded from Portugal; Louisiana and Florida going to France. All the clauses except this last were nugatory because of Spanish weakness, but Bonaparte put in the plea for compensation to the Spanish Bourbons by some grant of Italian territory to the house of Parma. As we have elsewhere indicated, their attack on ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... in spite of Bismarck's opposition. Bismarck, however, secretly continued his opposition, and tried to persuade Switzerland to persevere with its idea of an International Labour Conference. The attempt was rendered nugatory by the loyal attitude of the Swiss Minister in Berlin, Roth. At the very same time Bismarck was trying to influence ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... night, certainly after ten o'clock, Gen'l Darrington was murdered. His vault was forced open, money was stolen, and most significant of all, the WILL was abstracted. Criminal jurisprudence holds that the absence of motive renders nugatory much weighty testimony. In this melancholy cause, could a more powerful motive be imagined than that which goaded the prisoner to dip her fair hands in her grandfather's blood, in order to possess and destroy that ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... ego and the non ego, that with them there will soon be as little of the non ego left as there is of the ego with their opponents. Both, however, are so far agreed as that we know not where to draw the line between the two, and this renders nugatory any system which is founded upon a distinction ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... immediate inference does not really express any new judgment; the fact expressed by it is either the same as its evidence, or is even less significant. If from No men are gods we prove that No gods are men, this is nugatory; if we prove from it that Some men are not gods, this is to emasculate the sense, to waste valuable information, to lose the commanding sweep ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... hustle of daily life, with a good basis of common sense and some capacity for adaptation, could, with a few month's experience, undertake to good advantage the direction of soldiers, and that the West Point preceding 1861 had an influence rather nugatory in bringing about success. It is perhaps sufficient answer to arguments of this kind that while during our Civil War there was a most relentless sifting of men for high positions, little regard being paid to the education and ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... acknowledgment that the sovereignty vests in the French people as the French state; but the imperial constitution, which is the constitution of the government, not of the state, studies, while acknowledging the sovereignty of the people, to render it nugatory, by transferring it, under various subtle disguises, to the government, and practically to the emperor as chief of the government. The senate, the council of state, the legislative body, and the emperor, are all creatures of the French state, and have properly no political functions, and to give ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... Greek sages, Democritus, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, and Epicurus, as the fountain-heads of soul-delivering culture, he reserves his most magnificent periods of panegyric. Yet when he would fain persuade his readers that the fear of death is nugatory, and that the future will be to them even as the past, it is the shock of Rome with Carthage that he dwells upon as the critical event of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... massed in rear of the infantry and rendered inert. Sheridan with his ten thousand troopers was held idle and inactive while Warren, Sedgwick and Burnside were given the task of defeating Lee's veteran army without Sheridan's help. All his plans were rendered nugatory. He became satisfied that his efforts were useless. About noon he went to Meade's headquarters and they had an interview which is one of the famous historical episodes of the civil war. He told Meade that, inasmuch as his plans were to be interfered with, his orders ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... reason in the abstract, you are attempting to settle an account by pure arithmetic without reference to the units upon which your operation is performed. Two pounds and two pounds will make four pounds whatever a pound may be; but till I know what it is, the result is nugatory. Somewhere I must come upon a basis of fact, if my ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... agreement these ear-marking additions are of little practical use. It is, however, interesting to point out that, while complying with the regulations of the governments, margarine manufacturers of the countries named have found an easy way of rendering the regulations quite nugatory: they add methyl-orange, a colouring matter which itself produces a red colour with acid and quite obscures the real colour obtained by the official ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... propositions founded on supposed discontents, &c.; that the judicature was given up, as far as related to appeals, by the repeal of the Declaratory Act; that writs of error were prohibited by the Irish Act; however, a Bill might be necessary to prevent here the exercise of a nugatory jurisdiction; but that if the preamble of that Bill was, as had been stated by Fitzpatrick and Lord Beauchamp, as a case to be approved of, to declare the intention, he did not conceive how it would alter the question at all, for if the repeal ...
— Memoirs of the Courts and Cabinets of George the Third - From the Original Family Documents, Volume 1 (of 2) • The Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... in earnest in the desire for knowledge and wisdom: he grasped with avidity at a popular objection, or a sceptical argument, without desiring to understand or master the principles which rendered them nugatory; and he was ignorant and untaught enough to fancy that the very foundations of religion were shaken if he could attack the authenticity of some Jewish miracle, or impugn the genuineness of ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... legatine powers over the whole of Scotland, instead of over his own province of the archdiocese, so as to render nugatory the exemption granted to the king's old tutor and favourite prelate the Archbishop ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... preparations showing the cilia, and the discovery that these motile organs are not formed on all substrata, or are only developed during short periods of activity while the organism is young and vigorous, render this character almost nugatory. For instance, B. megatherium and B. subtilis pass in a few hours after commencement of growth from a motile stage with peritrichous cilia, into one of filamentous growth preceded by casting of the cilia. (2) By ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... point, as it would be cutting off the future and its consequences from those whose real hopes and fears ought to be mainly concentrated in the life that is to come, it would seem to be presuming to suppose that principles like these ever can be nugatory in the control even of ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... a friend, that "after the inflammatory character of the oratory of the Carlton Club, it is quite supererogatory for me to state (it being notorious) that all conciliatory measures will be rendered nugatory," he thus expressed himself:—"After the inflammawhig character of the orawhig of the nominees of the Carlton Club, it is quite supererogawhig for me to state (it being nowhigous) that all conciliawhig measures will be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... powerful at sea, they could have henceforth but little influence in European affairs. It is singular that the revival of Britain's activity began under a Government which was one of the most incapable that ever controlled the affairs of the country. Had their deliberate purpose been to render nugatory the expedition which—after innumerable vacillations and changes of purpose—they despatched to Portugal, they could hardly have acted otherwise ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... desirable appendage. Sometimes indeed, by sheer perseverance, of which he had a great deal in a roundabout way, Ralph would achieve something, but, when this happened, something else, not foreseen by him, had always happened first, which rendered that accomplishment nugatory and left it expensive on his hands. Nevertheless they retained their faith that some day they would get ahead of Providence and ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... to this is, in the first place, that such a subject does not belong to the treaty-making power; and any such arrangement would have been nugatory. And, in the second place, by no admissible construction can the guaranty be carried further than the protection of property in slaves at that time in the ceded territory. And this has been complied with. ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard
... was attempted then and failed would certainly fail today if it were possible to repeat the self same experiment. The repetition of such an attempt, however, being wholly outside of the range of the probable in American politics makes all speculation as to what might be its fate therefore nugatory. ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke
... him hinge therefore on the evidence of Pompilia's guilt or innocence as established by the previous enquiry; and as we have seen, the formal result of this enquiry was unfavourable to her. The Count obtained his verdict, though the subsequent treatment of the offenders made it almost nugatory; and de Archangelis rings the changes on the stock arguments of his client's outraged honour, and his natural if not legal right ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... attention. He little thought that there were about five hundred orders from the admiralty tacked on to them, which, like the numerous codicils of some wills, contained the most important matter, and to a certain degree make the will nugatory. ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... communications only maintained and represented by the wearying flight of the camel across the desert, treachery and hostility to his plans, if not his person, among his colleagues—all these difficulties and dangers overcome and rendered nugatory by the earnestness and energy of one man alone. Well might his indignation find vent in such a ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... the most modern, because the notion that the bad religion of A cannot impair, here or hereafter, the welfare of B, is, strange to say, a modern idea. And the help of 'science,' at that stage of thought, is still more nugatory. Physical science, as we conceive it—that is, the systematic investigation of external nature in detail—did not then exist. A few isolated observations on surface things—a half-correct calendar, secrets mainly of priestly invention, and in priestly custody—were all ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... King Scylas, and the agitation created at Athens by the destruction of the Mercuries. Hence the obstinacy of the Roman statesmen of old, and of the British constituency now, against the Catholic Church; and the feeling is so far justified, that projected innovations often turn out, if not simply nugatory, nothing short of destructive; and though there is a great notion just now that the British Constitution admits of being fitted upon every people under heaven, from the Blacks to the Italians, I do not know what has occurred to give plausibility to the anticipation. England herself once ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... nugatory by the bridge over the second canal being commanded from the heights, the guns on which opened upon our columns with shrapnel, while the gunners were completely protected by their epaulements. And a further attempt by Gibbon to cross the canal by the bridge near Falmouth, was anticipated ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... However, I am also convinced that if such persons reflect on the matter, and duly weigh in their minds our series of propositions, they will reject such freedom as they now attribute to God, not only as nugatory, but also as a great impediment to organized knowledge. There is no need for me to repeat what I have said in the note to Prop. xvii. But, for the sake of my opponents, I will show further, that although it be granted that will pertains to the essence ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... a man who had been confined for breaking open his master's desk and running away with five or six thousand rix-dollars, was only sentenced to forty days' confinement on bread and water; and this slight punishment his relations rendered nugatory by supplying him ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... were all, the scheme of the mover of this bill, the scheme of his learned friend, and his own scheme of reformation, (if he has any,) are all equally needless. There are, and must be, abuses in all governments. It amounts to no more than a nugatory proposition. But before I consider of what nature these abuses are, of which the gentleman speaks so very lightly, permit me to recall to your recollection the map of the country which this abused chartered right affects. This ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... commerce, soldiers, and tax-gatherers for the tax-gatherers, soldiers, commerce, and language of their neighbours; and no means is thought illegitimate, be it fraud in policy or bloodshed in war, to secure this absolutely nugatory end. Is not one country as much a country as another? Is it not as dear to its inhabitants? What then is gained by oppressing its genius or by seeking ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... authority to liberate those persons, and it was for the judiciary to do it, if they thought fit. Workman added, that he had heard that Wilkinson intended to ship off his prisoners, and if this was permitted, writs of habeas corpus would prove nugatory. ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... voyage of the life of Dee was "bound in shallows and in miseries." Queen Elizabeth we may suppose soon found that her dreams of immense wealth to be obtained through his intervention were nugatory. Yet would she not desert the favourite of her former years. He presently began to complain of poverty and difficulties. He represented that the revenue of two livings he held in the church had been withheld from him from the time of his going abroad. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... abolished. Let even those States which have enfranchised the black man, and which now, in accordance with the deep Machiavellian principle, brazenly revealed by our American, dishonestly render his vote nugatory by a reliable inaccuracy in the counting, withdraw their spurious Christianity. A double standard of morals subtly infects the whole core of the nation. Corruption cannot be localised; it creeps ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... toiling among the sugar canes of Barbadoes. He affected even to sympathize with the kindness which the English Puritans felt for their foreign brethren. A second and a third proclamation were published at Edinburgh, which greatly extended the nugatory toleration granted to the Presbyterians by the edict of February. [242] The banished Huguenots, on whom the King had frowned during many months, and whom he had defrauded of the alms contributed by the nation, were now relieved and caressed. An Order in Council was issued, appealing ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... particular mind which performs it. Rapid Induction has always been a distinguishing mark of Genius the certainty produced by it is Subjective and not Objective. It may be useful to exhibit it Syllogistically, but the Syllogism which exhibits it is either nugatory, or contains a premiss literally false. It will be found useful to compare on the subject of Induction as the term is used by Aristotle, Analytica Prior. II 25 26 Analytica Post. I. 1, 3, and I. ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... seem as if this arrangement rendered nugatory the attempt to take advantage of the rise and fall of the buoy; but it is not so when the relations of the four buoys to one another are considered. Although the frame is free to move up and down upon the uprising ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... justice, while the evidence of the slave continued inadmissible." But perhaps councils of protection, and guardians of the slaves, might be appointed. This again was an expedient, which sounded well; but which would be nugatory and absurd. What person would risk the comfort of his life by the exercise of so invidious an interference? But supposing that one or two individuals could be found, who would sacrifice all their time, and the friendship ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... most disagreeable office to give opinions on MSS.; one reads them at a moment when one has other things in one's head—then one is obliged to fatigue the brain with thinking; but if I can occasionally hinder you from publishing nugatory works, I do not grudge the pains. At the same time I surely need not add, how very confidential ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... cold-blooded egotism which extinguished every spark of Confucian altruism. Even the pretended disciples of Confucius confused the precepts of the Master, and by stripping them of their narrow significance rendered them nugatory. It was at this point that Mang-tsze, "Mang the philosopher," arose. He was sturdy in bodily frame, vigorous in mind, profound in political sagacity and utterly fearless in denouncing the errors of his countrymen. He had been brought up among the disciples of Confucius, in ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... your answer is that he does not respect oaths. Then why subject him to the test of oaths? The oaths keep him out of Parliament; why, then, he respects them. Turn which way you will, either your laws are nugatory, or the Catholic is bound by religious obligations as you are; but no eel in the well-sanded fist of a cook-maid, upon the eve of being skinned, ever twisted and writhed as an orthodox parson does when he is compelled by the gripe of reason to admit anything ...
— English Satires • Various
... public directors or the abuses practiced by the corporation for its private ends and in violation of its duty to the public? The power of displacing the public directors and that of issuing a scire facias and of removing the deposits were not intended to be idle and nugatory provisions without the means of enforcement. Yet they must be wholly inoperative and useless unless there be some means by which the official conduct of the public directors and the abuses of power on the part of the corporation may be brought ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson
... King, which I thought at the time a particularly nugatory and even schoolboy step, and only consented to because I had held the reins so tight over my little band before, has raised a deuce of a row—new proclamation, no one is to interview the sacred puppet without consuls' ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ratification as a necessary and lawful exercise of their highest function. If they were not States, or were States out of the Union, their consent to a change in the fundamental law of the Union would have been nugatory, and Congress in asking it committed a political absurdity. The judiciary has also given the solemn sanction of its authority to the same view of the case. The judges of the Supreme Court have included the Southern States in their circuits, and they are constantly, in banc ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson
... libens subscripsi, sicut eam auctor ipse interpretatus est." (C. R. 37, 148.) According to his own confession, therefore, Calvin's subscription to the Augustana, at least as far as the article of the Lord's Supper is concerned, was insincere and nugatory. In fact Calvin must be regarded as the real originator of the second controversy on the Lord's Supper between the Lutherans and the Reformed, even as the first conflict on this question was begun, not by Luther, but by his opponents, Carlstadt, Zwingli, and Oecolampadius. For ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... might safely be made in respect to them. This work was written with great liberality, was much applauded by those, who were desirous of a coalition: they were too soon convinced that every attempt of this kind was nugatory. Cassander presented it to the Emperors Ferdinand I. and Maximilian II. They received it favourably; the former invited Cassander to Vienna, but his infirmities prevented his ...
— The Life of Hugo Grotius • Charles Butler
... perhaps tell us they mean to say no more than that some of the king's predecessors have been called to the throne by some sort of choice, and therefore he owes his crown to the choice of his people. Thus, by a miserable subterfuge, they hope to render their proposition safe by rendering it nugatory. They are welcome to the asylum they seek for their offence, since they take refuge in their folly. For, if you admit this interpretation, how does their idea of election differ from our idea of inheritance? And how does the settlement of the crown in the Brunswick line, derived ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... baron, a viscount, or an earl." It was strange that, in the very act of conferring a title, the minister should have excused himself for not having conferred a higher one, by representing all titles, on such an occasion, as nugatory and superfluous. True, indeed, whatever title had been bestowed, whether viscount, earl, marquis, duke, or prince, if our laws had so permitted, he who received it would have been Nelson still. That name he had ennobled ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... failure. Much was expected of it. The shadow-path ran overland from Leipsic to the Japanese sea, so that the solar appurtenances would, it was hoped, be disclosed to observers echeloned along a line of 6,000 miles. But the incalculable element of weather rendered all forecasts nugatory. The clouds never parted, during the critical three minutes, over Central Russia, where many parties were stationed, and Professor D. P. Todd was equally unfortunate in Japan. Some good photographs were, nevertheless, secured by Professor Arai, Director of the Tokio Observatory, as well ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... in this or any country; and an ocean of sand, yellower than up to that time had been attained in art or nature; and that once, when the audience, late in the evening, had suddenly demanded a popular song from Mr. Nokes, he (Triplet), seeing the orchestra thinned by desertion, and nugatory by intoxication, had started from the pit, resuscitated with the whole contents of his snuff-box the bass fiddle, snatched the leader's violin, and carried Mr. Nokes triumphantly through; that thunders of applause ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... measure as this should be adopted, many valuable works will be either totally suppressed or grievously mutilated. I can prove that this danger is not chimerical; and I am quite certain that, if the danger be real, the safeguards which my honourable and learned friend has devised are altogether nugatory. That the danger is not chimerical may easily be shown. Most of us, I am sure, have known persons who, very erroneously as I think, but from the best motives, would not choose to reprint Fielding's novels, or Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... other group at present known, all misgivings are at an end. Implicit trust in the immutability of species is then restored, and the more insensible the shades from one extreme to the other, in a word, the more complete the evidence of transition, the more nugatory does the argument derived from it appear. It then simply resolves itself into one of those exceptional instances of what is called ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... the same sequence of syllables, except that the exact prosodist will find the line of SWIFTNESS by one time longer than that of TARDINESS. Beauties of this kind are commonly fancied, and, when real, are technical and nugatory, not to he rejected ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... good traits of the Burman character are almost rendered nugatory by their religion, and the oppressive nature of their government. The latter is an absolute despotism. The king has a nominal council with whom he may advise, but whose advice he may, if he chooses, treat with ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... serve him savoury things, and Mrs. Choate looked discontentedly at Mary bending over his plate, all hospitality, with the greater solicitude because he was helping Alston out. Mrs. Choate wished the nugatory Esther were out of the way, and she could marry Mary off to Jeff. Mary, pale, yet wholesome, fair-haired, with the definite Choate profile, and dressed in her favourite smoke colour and pale violet, ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... democracies the number of men who might be bought is by no means smaller, but buyers are rarely to be met with; and, besides, it would be necessary to buy so many persons at once, that the attempt is rendered nugatory. ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... by the prospect of a regency, and it was generally expected that a change of ministry would be its immediate consequence. Private communications had, in fact, passed between the prince and the whig lords, Grenville and Grey, but they were rendered nugatory by the dictatorial tone assumed by those lords and by the unwillingness of the prince to dispense with the advice of Moira and Sheridan. The two whig lords had by the prince's desire prepared a reply to the address from the houses of parliament, preparatory to the regency ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... entreat his Majesty, as yet the only mediatory power between the several states of the British empire, to recommend to his Parliament of Great Britain, the total revocation of these acts, which, however nugatory they be, may yet prove the cause of further discontents and jealousies ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson |
