"Categorical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... must have been great; he could not understand these dilatory measures, these expressions of affection which never led to a categorical approbation. It seemed to him that he had said all that he had to say. For new arguments ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... the English Government presented to the world by the king and his ministers. Let us now hear what the personages so heartily reviled by them had to say for themselves. The Rev. C.P. Meehan has brought to light the categorical narratives, which the earls dictated, and which had lain unpublished among the 'old historic rolls,' in the Public Record Office, London. These documents are of great historic interest, as are many other state-papers now first published in his valuable work.[1] O'Neill's ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... skeleton of belief such as the Apostles' Creed was capable of no such reconstruction. One either believed it, or one did not. Unless—Did anybody ever believe any one thing in its unmodified entirety? Did anybody ever give a categorical denial to any clause of any creed? That was the worst of the whole matter. Half-doubts and half-beliefs crisscrossed and interlaced at every point. One day's doctrine was the next day's error. It was well-nigh impossible to draw a straight line, no matter how short, ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... keystone of an ethical system; it varies from man to man: or it is 'subjective,' and therefore gives no absolute or independent ground for morality. A morality of 'eudaemonism' must be an 'empirical' morality, and we can never extort from it that 'categorical imperative,' without which we have instead of a true morality a simple system of 'expediency.' From Bentham's point of view the criticism must be retorted. He regards 'happiness' as precisely the least equivocal ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... far as to let this be understood, perhaps to warn friend or foe, or in cheerful confidence and self-ridicule. The spectacle of the Tartuffery of old Kant, equally stiff and decent, with which he entices us into the dialectic by-ways that lead (more correctly mislead) to his "categorical imperative"—makes us fastidious ones smile, we who find no small amusement in spying out the subtle tricks of old moralists and ethical preachers. Or, still more so, the hocus-pocus in mathematical form, by means of which Spinoza has, as it were, clad his philosophy in mail and mask—in ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... objectively as possible, avoiding metaphysical cobwebs and giving the ego and non-ego a wide berth. I shall content myself in most cases with merely pointing out the doctrine apparently preached by Goethe (reminding you now and then that even his own seemingly categorical dogmas were to him merely temporary forms of thought) and shall prefer to let much justify its existence as an integral part of the living whole rather than to expel the life by dissection and to examine the dead parts through the spectacles of ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... that men's views of happiness and utility were uniform and clear, and that all that was wanted was to show them the means by which their ends could be reached."[212] And Kant supposed that every man would find the "categorical imperative" in his consciousness, when he came to sober reflexion, and that all would have the same qualifications to follow it. But if continual variations, great or small, are going on in human nature, it ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... shall serve these three without any reservation. It requires of its secular practitioners the holy virtues of an active piety, a modified chastity, and an unqualified obedience, at all events, to the categorical imperative. The obligation of poverty it omits, for the code arose at a time when the spiritual snobbery of the meek and lowly was not pressing the simile about the camel and the eye of the needle. It leads to charming manners and to delicate amenities. It is the opposite of the code of Gallantry, ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... unite himself to Bailly, and that they should reside at Versailles, and have an apartment in common between them. It is difficult to avoid a smile when one compares the conduct of the eloquent and impetuous Abbe with the categorical declarations, so distinct and so progressive, of the ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... believe," he wrote, "that her Majesty's government will press for a categorical answer upon what appears to him to be only a partial record, in the making up of which he has been allowed no part. He is reluctant to volunteer his view of the case, with no assurance that her Majesty's government will consent to hear him; ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... princes of the Rhine, the emperor, the king of Russia, the king of Sardinia, and Spain, to recognise or oppose the constitutional king of France. But whilst these official envoys demanded from the various courts prompt and categorical replies, the secret agents of Dumouriez insinuated themselves into the cabinets of princes, and compelled some states to detach themselves from the coalition that was forming. They pointed out to them the advantages of neutrality for their aggrandisement: they promised them the patronage of France ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the paper published the famous letter, so precise and categorical in its conclusions, in which Arsene Lupin furnished the solution of the problem. ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... on January 5, 1917, the Neue Freie Presse acknowledged that Austria provoked the war with the intention of crushing Serbia. It is a formal and categorical confession. And it obliges us to consider seriously the thesis put forward by Jules Chopin in Le Complot de Sarajevo (Paris, 1918), according to which the plot was hatched at Konopi[vs]t[ve] between the German Kaiser and the man to ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... hour: King turned directly upon business; wishes to have 'Categorical Answers' as to Three Points already submitted to his Britannic Majesty's consideration. Clear footing indispensable between us. What you want of me? say it, and be plain. What I want of you is, These ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in regard to the second and more important factor that failure waits most insistently on the librarian. What are the public's needs, as distinguished from its desires? What ought it to read? Here steps in the "categorical imperative" with a vengeance. The librarian, when he thinks of his duty along this line, begins to shudder as he realizes his responsibility as an educator, as a mentor, as a trainer of literary taste. Probably in some instances he takes himself too seriously. But, no matter ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... and the Divinity of Christ." "Destroy these and they think the world will become vulgar and materialized, losing not only the surest sanction of morals, but ... the spiritual aspiration and tendencies," &c. [7] "To these gloomy forebodings I venture to return a positive and categorical denial ... Scepticism has been the great sweetener of modern life." [8] How he justifies his denial by maintaining that morality can hold its own when reduced to a physical science; that the "result of advancing civilization" and of the materialistic ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... would be encouraged by the reflection, that if his opposition should prevail, it would embark in it a very respectable proportion of the legislative body, whose influence would be united with his in supporting the propriety of his conduct in the public opinion. A direct and categorical negative has something in the appearance of it more harsh, and more apt to irritate, than the mere suggestion of argumentative objections to be approved or disapproved by those to whom they are addressed. In proportion as it would ...
— The Federalist Papers
... Yes, no.—Although not may be considered to be an adverb, nor a conjunction, and none a noun, these two words, the direct categorical affirmative, and the direct categorical negative, are referable to none of the current parts of speech. Accurate grammar places them ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... corn-fields and meadows, not pretermitting phatie-fields in full blossom—a part of rural landscape which, to my utter astonishment, has escaped the pen of poet, and the brush of painter; although I will risk my reputation as a man of pure and categorical taste, if a finer ingredient in the composition of a landscape could be found than a field of Cork-fed phaties or Moroky blacks in full bloom, allowing a man to judge by the pleasure they confer upon the eye, and therefore to the ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... made no categorical reply. They glanced at the wrecked pantry window, and they looked with more intentness at the long sliding footprints which led away, down the half-bare sand-slope. Then they ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... remarking to you how direct this Empire literature is, going to the point without any details, a characteristic, as it seems to me, of a primitive time. The literature of that period holds a place between the summaries of chapters in Telemaque and the categorical reports of a public office. It had ideas, but refrained from expressing them, it was so scornful! It was observant, but would not communicate its observations to any one, it was so miserly! Nobody but Fouche ever mentioned ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... This will be best explained by an instance or example. That I am conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me; in other words a categorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative; that the maxim (regula maxima, or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising therefrom, will to be the law of all moral and rational beings. This, I ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Lee's, but Byron's, and the "conveyance" of incidents occasional and insignificant. Much, too, was imported into the play (e.g. almost the whole of the fourth act), of which there is neither hint nor suggestion in the story. Maginn's categorical statement (see "O'Doherty on Werner," Miscellanies, 1885, i. 189) that "here Lord Byron has invented nothing—absolutely, positively, undeniably NOTHING;" that "there is not one incident in his play, not even the most trivial, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... vocal parts entirely to your care. I would merely remind you that my two compatriots Bignio and Fraulein Rabatinsky (now in Vienna) sang splendidly in the parts of the Landgrave Ludwig and the spiteful Landgravine Sophie, at the first performances of the Oratorio in Pest. Hence, if no categorical objections are raised against them by the worthy theatrical potentates, it would seem advisable and well to secure these singers for parts for which they have ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... French and Italian literature too; but the philosophy of Kant and the writings of Goethe and Schiller roused him to greater enthusiasm. From Kant he learnt that the guiding principle of conduct was not happiness, but the 'categorical imperative' of duty; from Goethe he drew such hopefulness as gleams occasionally through his despondent utterances on the progress of the human race. He translated Goethe's novel, Wilhelm Meister, in 1823, and followed it up with the Life of Schiller. There was no considerable ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... probably continue to do so while the world lasts. The legalist—with his conception of God as the righteous Judge dispensing rewards and punishments, the "Great Taskmaster" in whose vineyard we are ordered to labour; of the Gospel as "the new law," and of the sanction of duty as a "categorical imperative"—will never find it easy to sympathise with those whose favourite words are St. John's triad—light, life, and love, and who find these the most suitable names to express what they know of the nature of God. But those to whom the Fourth Gospel is the ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... physiological nature of men and women. She enters marriage unprepared for the realities of conjugal life, and hence incapable of understanding either herself or her husband. When pregnancy comes to such a wife, the old seclusion taboos fall upon her like a categorical imperative. She is overwhelmed with embarrassment at a normal and natural biological process which can hardly be classified as "romantic." Such an attitude is neither conducive to the eugenic choice of a male nor to the ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... inconvenience. I have forgotten or lost my spectacles. Now, in this twilight, with the very poor eyesight that years of labor have left me, it will be absolutely impossible for me to read this most important letter—and an immediate answer is expected—most simple and categorical—a yes or a no. Times presses; it is really most annoying. If," added Rodin, laying great stress on his words, without looking at Djalma, but so as the prince might remark it; "if only some one would render me the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... Emperor, Omniscient and omnipotent, I ne'er give way to temper, or If now and then I run a-muck in a Malay-like fashion, As there's method in my madness, so there's purpose in my passion. 'Tis my aim to manage everything in order categorical— My fame as Cosmos-maker I intend shall be historical. I know they call me Paul Pry, say I'm fussy and pragmatical— But that's because sheer moonshine always hates the mathematical. I'm not content to "play the King" with an imperial pose in it— ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... the same formal, argumentative manner. But Mr. Allgood was getting jaded; the stretch of attention required by the reasoning of Mr. Goose was telling upon his patience; so he slided away to talk with one who spoke in less categorical style: not so ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... has been created in the public mind as to whether there really are dark cells in the Atlanta Penitentiary, or, if there be, whether their use has not been long discontinued. I never heard any categorical statement in denial of it from any of the officials, though I have read something to that effect in local newspapers. Visitors never see them, and I know of no prison inspectors who have done so; they are shown instead ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... thoughtfully, "you have described the exact sort of intolerant piety, which tempts one to admire brilliant wickedness. You can't accept another's belief unless it's your own. That is one of Life's categorical ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the value of this feminine worldliness in judging the Germans. This effeminate categorical imperative of etiquette has not influenced them greatly as yet. But on the other hand, one must claim for the amenities of life that they have their value, that they are, after all, the external decorations of an inward discipline. It is not necessarily a fine disdain of material things, ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... visual organs had deceived me, but with as little success. On looking to the other side of the road, I observed a mason at work repairing the opposite wall with some very suspicious-looking stones, and I immediately crossed over, and commenced a categorical examination of the supposed delinquent. I inquired whether he could explain to me the cause of the removal of the ancient cross, which used to be in the field exactly opposite to where we were then standing; ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... that he was not welcome. They sat opposite each other, trying to talk. Suddenly he besought her not to throw him over.... She had to refuse to kiss him, and that was convincing, he said. Once a woman was not greedy for kisses, the end was near. And his questions were to the point, and irritatingly categorical. Had she ever been unfaithful to him? Did she love Ulick Dean? Not content with a simple denial, he took her by both hands, and looking her straight in the face, asked her to give him her word of honour that Ulick Dean ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... be for categorical interrogations. Never having an idea of spontaneously telling the whole truth, the sense that he was undertaking a narrative gave him such emotions as a bad swimmer upon deep seas may have; while, on the other hand, his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... that name clung to him. Another of my questions was about the so-called spurious books; had he written them or not? He said that they were all genuine: so I now knew what to think of the critics Zenodotus and Aristarchus and all their lucubrations. Having got a categorical answer on that point, I tried him next on his reason for starting the "Iliad" with the wrath of Achilles. He said he had no exquisite reason; it just came into his head ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... by a chemical process. In every rule relating to the physical forces, theory must present to the mind at the same time the share which the moral powers will have in it, if it would not be led to categorical propositions, at one time too timid and contracted, at another too dogmatical and wide. Even the most matter-of-fact theories have, without knowing it, strayed over into this moral kingdom; for, as an example, the effects of a victory cannot in any way ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... lady, "is this language to a clergyman? Mr Supple is a man of sense, and gives you the best advice; and the whole world, I believe, will concur in his opinion; but I must tell you I expect an immediate answer to my categorical proposals. Either cede your daughter to my disposal, or take her wholly to your own surprizing discretion, and then I here, before Mr Supple, evacuate the garrison, and renounce you ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... that some thoughtful intuitionists, dissatisfied with a considerable number of independent moral principles, should aim at a further simplification. Such a simplification Kant finds in the Categorical Imperative, or unconditional command of the Practical Reason: "Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law." [Footnote: Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, Sec 2.] And Henry Sidgwick, refusing ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... refusal, except under certain conditions, to announce to Mrs. Prettyman her coming ejection from the cottage at Wittisham, was unprofessional enough, as he himself felt; but it was final and categorical. Conveying as it did a sort of tacit remonstrance, this refusal had an unfortunate effect, for it only served to rouse Mrs. de Tracy's formidable obstinacy. She had seized upon one point only in their ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... absented himself from the capital, but the Russian Minister at Vienna, as already stated, succeeded in submitting this most reasonable request verbally to the Acting Foreign Minister, who simply said that he would submit it to Count Berchtold, but that he could predict with assurance a categorical refusal. Later on that day (July 25) Russia was definitely advised that no ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... am the very model of a modern Major-General, I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical; I'm very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical, I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical, About binomial theorem I'm teeming with a lot o' news, With many cheerful facts about the square ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... expressions of their wrath, in the sending of prodigies and portents. They did indeed consult the gods by watching the flight of birds or studying the entrails of the sacrifice, but it was merely to obtain a "yes or no" answer to a categorical question as to whether a certain act was pleasing to the gods. Otherwise all about them lay mystery, and at the point where sight failed, since neither imagination nor faith carried them any further, superstition stepped in, and the more they thought of the gods the ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for the old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their passions. Now how many answers have not the sauntering artists heard to the categorical question which is ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... position as her chief adviser. There was a general feeling of dislike in the minds of the English public to the German influences that were supposed to be brought to bear on the Queen; and Lord Melbourne found it necessary to make a public and categorical denial of the statement that Stockmar was acting as the Queen's private secretary. But the statement, if not technically, was virtually true. Stockmar lived at Court, had interviews with the Queen and her Ministers, and though he industriously endeavoured ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... be. Neither did Kant when he devised the Categorical Imperative. You have thrown aside a creed, but you have preserved the ethic which was based upon it. To all intents you are a Christian still, and if there is a God in Heaven you will undoubtedly receive your reward. The Almighty can hardly be such a fool as the churches make ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... with the accounts in any one of the Four, he will find that it gives the fullest list of our Lord's appearances which has come down to us, and this, be it remembered, forming part of the most categorical declaration of what the Gospel is, to be found in ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... would avail aught with the old autocrat. But he had not yet ventured upon this. There was nothing certain about Mrs. Mivane but her uncertainty. She never gave a positive opinion. Her attitude of mind was only to be divined by inference. She never gave a categorical answer. And indeed he would not have been encouraged to learn that Richard Mivane himself had already consulted his daughter-in-law, as in this highhanded evasion of any decision he felt the need ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... pleasure caused by the play of personality, and secondly the rational gratification caused by the idea of adaptation to an end, Schiller takes up the questions of moral beauty and of the ideal of character. He deprecates Kant's strenuous insistence upon the categorical imperative of duty. A man, he urges, must be free; and the slavery of duty is no better than any other slavery. Virtue is inclination to duty, and the ideal is to be found in the perfect equipoise of the sensuous and the rational nature; in other words, when 'thou shalt' and ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... evident that a large proportion of the Assistant Inquisitors were inclined to jib at the word "responsible"; but the young Captain insisted upon each man giving a categorical reply to the question; and in the end, stimulated further by the stern looks of the Grand Inquisitor, they all ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... said that women weren't beautiful), for I hate to be thought an ignorant duffer—and I have never come across in them anything worth knowing, thinking, or doing that I was not taught at my mother's knee. And as for her, dear, simple soul, if you had asked her what was the Categorical Imperative (having explained beforehand the meaning of the words), she would have said, "The Sermon ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... teachings, but this agreement is restricted to some principles of vital significance in their doctrine, which have reference almost exclusively to a definite practice; probably to a complete setting to work of the consciousness of duty, which is what Kant claims to do with his categorical imperative: "An unreasoning, though not unreasonable, obedience to an experienced, imperious sense of duty, leaving the result to God; and this I am ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... my thoughts to the subject of idolatry, which was severely censured at the missionary meeting. I cross- examined my Father very closely as to the nature of this sin, and pinned him down to the categorical statement that idolatry consisted in praying to anyone or anything but God himself. Wood and stone, in the words of the hymn, were peculiarly liable to be bowed down to by the heathen in their blindness. I pressed my Father further on this subject, and he assured me that God would be very angry, ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... Herbert thought to himself, placidly. 'This girl's quite too unreservedly categorical! She eliminates modality with a vengeance!' 'Well, Selah,' he said in his calmest and most deliberate manner, 'we must take a great many points into consideration before deciding on that matter.' And then he went on to tell her what seemed to him the pros and ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... merely in reference to the effect and the means of attaining it; or they determine the will only, whether it is adequate to the effect or not. The former would be hypothetical imperatives, and contain mere precepts of skill; the latter, on the contrary, would be categorical, and would alone be practical laws. Thus maxims are principles, but not imperatives. Imperatives themselves, however, when they are conditional (i.e., do not determine the will simply as will, but only in respect to a desired effect, ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... more rigid principles enacted into the spoken and printed law, but they have also become closely connected with religion and theological elements. Especially is this true in the ethics of barbarous and savage peoples, who accredit the "categorical imperative" to some supernatural power, as we are to see in a later section. The one point that comes out clearly is that the systems of conduct and duties have evolved so as to be very different among various races, and that ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... 1866 with the fourth edition. This was the most categorical claim to the theory of descent with modification in the "Origin of Species." The "my" here is the only one that was taken out before 1869. I suppose Mr. Darwin thought that with the removal of this "my" he had ceased to claim the theory of descent with modification. Nothing, however, ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... Atlantic as to the stellar composition of some conspicuous objects of this class (notably the Orion and "Dumb-bell" nebulae) was delusive; but the spectroscope alone was capable of meeting it with a categorical denial. Meanwhile there seemed good ground for the persuasion, which now, for the last time, gained the upper hand, that nebulae are, without exception, true "island-universes," or ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... humanitarianism, dangerous perhaps in its implications. And yet it could hardly have been more perilous than the Roman orthodox religion which insisted only upon formal correctness, seldom upon ethical decorum, or than Stoicism with its categorical imperative, which could restrain only those who were already convinced. The Stoic pretence of appealing to a natural law could be proved illogical at first examination, when driven to admit that "nature" must be explained by a question-begging definition ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... changeable? You are mistaken. I will go with you to find crabs to-night. Is that categorical? Must you consult my mother to know what ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... giving a categorical answer occurred, as I have been assured, in regard to a more profound question. A party travelling on a railway got into deep discussion on theological questions. Like Milton's spirits in ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... This categorical denunciation of the principle which he was then asked, and which he peremptorily refused to sanction, was not enough for Mr. Gladstone, for the records of debate show he went farther, but enough has been cited to show that never was prophecy more fully fulfilled. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... This time he behaved more creditably, told "Belinda" that it was necessary for him to go to England, explained the inevitable delays and told how he should conduct himself until his return. He says that he asked no questions which would admit of a categorical answer—there was something of the lawyer in this wooing! He assured Miss Rebecca that such a question would one day be asked. In this letter she is called "Adinleb" and spoken of ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... rightly remember, but we could spare her very well from us. Poll is a stupid slut. I had some hopes of her at first; but when I talked to her tightly and closely, I could make nothing of her; she was wiggle waggle, and I could never persuade her to be categorical."' Mme. ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... knowledge in the same sense as the naturalist's asseveration, that myriads of living things might co-exist on the point of a needle? That the Earth is to be burned by fire, is, if true, as large a fact as that huge monsters once played amid its depths; that Antichrist is to come, is as categorical a heading to a chapter of history, as that Nero or Julian was Emperor of Rome; that a divine influence moves the will, is a subject of thought not more mysterious than the result of volition on our muscles, which we admit as a fact ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... is the value of categorical assertions of this kind in presence of the fragments of pottery found at different levels in Kent's Hole? One of these fragments was so rotten that when placed in water it formed a black liquid ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... is to prepare oneself for a consideration in some measure of a combination of the charms of both, woven into one fabric. Nowhere, at least in no provincial town of France, are to be found such a categorical display of ecclesiastical ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... intellectualists is that truth means essentially an inert static relation. When you've got your true idea of anything, there's an end of the matter. You're in possession; you KNOW; you have fulfilled your thinking destiny. You are where you ought to be mentally; you have obeyed your categorical imperative; and nothing more need follow on that climax of your rational destiny. Epistemologically you are ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... system could neither oppose nor support common opinion, for its grounds were not in the conception of any one. I speak especially of two others, who fought like cat and dog: one was dogmatical, the other categorical. The first was Hamilton himself—Sir William Hamilton of Edinburgh, the metaphysician, not Sir William Rowan Hamilton[709] of Dublin, the mathematician, a combination of peculiar genius with unprecedented ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... "collective conscience," whatever that may be, does not exist in Nature, teste the farmyard and the fowl-run; and again, whatever force is connoted by those words must have been set agoing—by what? By Nature? Oh, most emphatically No! Nature has no law against immorality; there is no Categorical Imperative in Nature commanding us to be chaste or kindly or considerate or even just. We must go elsewhere if we are to look for teaching in the virtues. That is the fact that we must keep clearly before our minds when endeavouring ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... loves collusiveness: nothing short of the categorical will satisfy us! What I said to Mr. Purdy evidently appeased him, for he seized my hand and shook ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... witnesses. Nothing was written or read. The conversation, although earnest and free, was calm and courteous and kind on both sides. The Richmond party approached the subject rather indirectly, and at no time did they either make categorical demands or tender formal stipulations or absolute refusals. Nevertheless, during the conference, which lasted four hours, the several points at issue between the Government and the insurgents were distinctly raised and discussed, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... tell my old friend Hillhouse what you say '; and he told him. 'Well,' says Goodhue, 'I repeat, that I would rather the old ship should go down, if we are to be always kept pumping so.' 'Mr. Hillhouse,' says Baldwin, 'you remember when we were learning logic together at school, there was the case categorical and the case hypothetical. Mr. Goodhue stated it to me first as the case categorical. I am glad to see that he now changes it to the case hypothetical, by adding, 'if we are always to be kept pumping so.' Baldwin went on then to remind Goodhue what an advocate he had ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... when, so it had seemed to him, Wilhelmine had avoided a categorical denial of his accusation regarding her liaison with Captain Brocq, the frantic lover had flown to Juve and had poured out his soul to the ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... incident to your calling, he is inevitably led into taking "sides." He is surrounded by circumstances that are to him entirely strange. He is more or less annoyed and flurried by his surroundings, and then comes the necessity of making a categorical answer to questions that are put to him more especially upon the cross-examination, which cannot be correctly answered categorically. Unfortunately in a profession like ours, in a science of art like ours, it often is absolutely impossible to answer a question categorically ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... exaggerated position they once held and that to which they were degraded by the inevitable reaction of total indifference or actual hostility which followed. Asceticism and chastity are not rigid categorical imperatives; they are useful means to desirable ends; they are wise and beautiful arts. They demand our estimation, but not our over-estimation. For in over-estimating them, it is too often forgotten, we over-estimate the sexual instinct. The instinct of sex is indeed extremely important. ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... condition, or concomitant, or consequence of the same. This will be best explained by an instance or example. That I am conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me;—in other words, a categorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative;—that the maxim ('regula maxima' or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising therefrom, will to be the law of all moral and rational beings;—this, I say, is a ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... to make her talk about herself, but in this she had little skill. She seemed to him so much older, so much more pliant to social uses than when he had seen her at home, that he had a desire to draw from her some categorical account of her occupation and thoughts. He told her his desire and what suggested it. "It appears, then," she said, "that, after all, one can ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... seems difficult it is due to our clumsy way of stating it. Thought, like melodies, should run on the line of the least resistance. In the following pages I have eschewed all mystifying polysyllabic verbiage, and as Mark Twain once said, have "confined myself to a categorical statement of facts unincumbered by an obscuring accumulation ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... and he resolved to be reconciled, in appearance, to a Church whose truth, once acknowledged by him, convicted him of sacrilege and of dishonour. This ticklish job could best be performed, not by a staid priest of the old Gallican school, who might have insisted upon a categorical retractation of errors, upon his making amends and upon his doing penance; not by a young Ultramontane of the new school, against whom M. de Talleyrand would at once have been very prejudiced, but by a priest who was a man of the world, ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... the same house today, and I have pledged myself to give him a categorical reply at that time, and to ensure its publication ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... Lord Suckfist in manner as followeth. My lord, and you my masters, if the iniquity of men were as easily seen in categorical judgment as we can discern flies in a milkpot, the world's four oxen had not been so eaten up with rats, nor had so many ears upon the earth been nibbled away so scurvily. For although all that my adversary hath spoken be of a very soft and downy truth, in so much ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... to this day the question who is the chief discoverer of the law of the conservation of energy is not susceptible of a categorical answer that would satisfy all philosophers. It is generally held that the first choice lies between Joule and Mayer. Professor Tyndall has expressed the belief that in future each of these men will be equally remembered ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... been asked if Chinese is, or is not, a difficult language to learn. To this question it is quite impossible to give a categorical answer, for the simple reason that Chinese consists of at least two languages, one colloquial and the other written, which for all practical purposes are about as distinct as they ...
— China and the Chinese • Herbert Allen Giles
... demanded which is necessary to convince the examiner that the party examined is acquainted with what he ought to know, to entitle him to the appellation of a Brother. Nothing is to be taken for granted—categorical answers must be required to all that it is deemed important to be asked. No forgetfulness is to be excused, nor is the want of memory to be accepted as a valid excuse for the want of knowledge. The Mason, who is so unmindful of his duties as to have forgotten the instructions he has received, ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... refutations are very amusing. It is astonishing to see how crank-proof sundry minds are. Everything seems to them on a dead level of categorical proposition. They walk up to every statue with their measuring-line of Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferioque Prioris, and measure them off with equal solemnity, telling you severely that this nose is far longer than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... Schleiermacher was bred among the devoted followers of Zinzendorf. Even the radicalism of Kant retained from the teaching of his pietistic youth the stringency of its ethic, the sense of the radical evil of human nature and of the categorical imperative of duty. It would be hard to find anything to surpass his testimony to the purity of character and spirit of his parents, or the beauty of the home life in which he was bred. Such facts as these made themselves felt both in the philosophy and in the poetry ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... upon the inhospitable shores of the Red Sea an army sufficiently large to meet the Negus. In fact, this was almost categorically the collective demand of the three Powers which reached Eden Vale the same day. As categorical, however, was the rejection of the proposal, accompanied by the declaration that the Eden Vale government intended to carry on alone the war with Abyssinia which now seemed inevitable. Moreover, the allies ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... difficulty; it is admitted to be direct and immediate. The problem, therefore, exclusively regards the intuitive perception of the qualities of matter. Now, says Hamilton, "if we interrogate consciousness concerning the point in question, the response is categorical and clear. In the simplest act of perception I am conscious of myself as a perceiving subject, and of an external reality as the object perceived; and I am conscious of both existences in the ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... his passion and emotional state, produces nothing but an unlimited desire and an absolute want. The first fruits, therefore, that he reaps in the world of spirits, are cares and fear—both operations of the reason; not of sensuousness, but of a reason that mistakes its object and applies its categorical imperative to matter. All unconditional systems of happiness are fruits of this tree, whether they have for their object the present day or the whole of life, or what does not make them any more respectable, the whole of eternity, for their object. An unlimited duration ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... built up the case against the accused man, classifying the points of evidence against him in categorical order for the benefit of the jury. The most important witness for the prosecution was a man known as James Hill, who had been in Sir Horace Fewbanks's employ as a butler. Hill's connection with the prisoner was in some aspects unfortunate, ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... with it is not knowledge of it, since whatever we can find out about it is based on the Criticism exercised by Pure Reason and not on experience; and the information which Pure Reason gives us about the soul is not categorical but antinomial; and by the time medicine gets into these transcendental regions, consciously or unconsciously, it ceases to be of much practical use in curing 'pernicious anaemia' or ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... precedents, and the council to report upon the petition. The case was too plain for argument or dogmatism, but the attempt was made to take refuge in obscurity. The answer of the council was hesitating and equivocal. The Duchess insisted upon a distinct and categorical answer to the four cities. Thus pressed, the council of Brabant declared roundly that no inquisition of any kind had ever existed, in the provinces. It was impossible that any other answer could be given, but Viglius, with his associates in the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that the Delegate of the United States, Commander SAMPSON, puts a question which seems to be somewhat categorical. ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... our wishes to the will of another. The criterion of the power of a religion is its ability to command this sacrifice; the criterion of the excellence of a religion is the extent to which its commands coincide with the good of the race, with the lofty standard of the "categorical imperative." ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... the "Voice of God" in the human soul—is identified by these with "conscience," so that to base morality on Intuition is equivalent to basing it on conscience, and making the dictate of conscience the categorical imperative, the inner voice which declares authoritatively "Thou shalt," ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... something upon its mind that made it sullenly thoughtful; but the stars are coming out one after another overhead, and the sky will be all awake soon. A strange thing the life that goes on all night, is it not? The life of owlets, and mice, and beasts of prey, and bats, and stars," I said, with no very categorical arrangement, "and dreams, and flowers that don't go to sleep like the rest, but send out their scent all night long. Only those are gone now. There are no scents abroad, not even of the earth in such a frost ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... master has managed for years and years to cultivate the farm of La Haye and to bring up my godson in the fear of the Lord and the practice of land surveying is a proof that the late Mr. Matthew Arnold was hopelessly wrong in his categorical declaration ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... To this precise and categorical question, a kind of ultimatum, Juanito did not know what to reply and his coat offered no suggestions. In vain he made signs to Placido, but Placido himself was in doubt. Juanito then took advantage of a ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... performances, and on one occasion at least, Elizaveta Petrovna improved upon the Scripture parable; when an insufficient number of spectators presented themselves at the French comedy, she forthwith dispatched mounted messengers to numerous persons of rank and distinction, with a categorical demand to know why they had absented themselves, and a warning that henceforth a fine of fifty rubles would be exacted ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... not a categorical answer," I remarked. "Come, Emily, tell me, is there no one for whom you have more regard than for those unhappy gentlemen whom you refused?" I saw a gentle blush rise to her cheek. "Well," I said, "I shall ask Oliver Farwell to come and stay here. He keeps away far more than there ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... confessed that he did not know what the first book printed was. Pardo de Tavera maintained his old intransigence, when in the introduction to his bibliography for the Library of Congress in 1903 he wrote that Medina's affirmation that printing took place in 1593 "loses all validity in the face of the categorical statement of F. Alonso Fernandez." [51] Medina did not comment further in his Adiciones y Ampliaciones [52] of 1904, yet when the same year Perez and Gueemes [53] published their additions to ...
— Doctrina Christiana • Anonymous
... us is, To what extent has Edison added to the wealth of the world by his inventions and his energy and perseverance? It will be noted from the foregoing that no categorical answer can be offered to such a question, but sufficient material can be gathered from a statistical review of the commercial arts directly influenced to afford an approximate idea of the increase in national wealth that has been affected by or has come ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... showing: for if that critical portal of pure reason had indeed been sufficient, as it gave itself out to be, for all the purposes of a human philosophy, what need was there of the "practical back-door" which, at the categorical command of conscience, was afterwards laid open to all men in the "Metaphysic of Ethics?" As little will you allow your philosophical need to be satisfied with any thing you can get from SCHELLING; for however well it ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... there in time, I have telegraphed him our proposal to extend the delay of the ultimatum, and I have repeated it verbally to Baron Macchio. This latter promised me to communicate it in time to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, but added that he could predict with assurance a categorical refusal.[18] ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... simple,—hence, we speak of the Giri we owe to parents, to superiors, to inferiors, to society at large, and so forth. In these instances Giri is duty; for what else is duty than what Right Reason demands and commands us to do. Should not Right Reason be our categorical imperative? ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... and in the same sense, in which the position was understood by Hartley and Condillac: and then what Hume had demonstratively deduced from this concession concerning cause and effect, will apply with equal and crushing force to all the other eleven categorical forms [27], and the logical functions corresponding to them. How can we make bricks without straw;—or build without cement? We learn all things indeed by occasion of experience; but the very facts so learned force us inward on the antecedents, that must ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... they agree with my own, or not. I do admit, that there always appeared to me something of affectation in Mr Harris's manner of writing; something of a habit of clothing plain thoughts in analytick and categorical formality. But all his writings are imbued with learning; and all breathe that philanthropy and amiable disposition, which distinguished him as a man. [Footnote: This gentleman, though devoted to the study of grammar and dialecticks, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... conscience and taste establish these ideals; to make a judgment is virtually to establish an ideal, and all ideals are absolute and eternal for the judgment that involves them, because in finding and declaring a thing good or beautiful, our sentence is categorical, and the standard evoked by our judgment is for that case intrinsic and ultimate. But at the next moment, when the mind is on another footing, a new ideal is evoked, no less absolute for the present judgment than the old ideal was for the previous one. If we are ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... alone in the desolate best sitting-room, laid her head upon her arms and laughed and laughed. She had made one cautious descent to the ground floor in search of diversion, and meeting Jimmie, she found it. After a conversation strictly categorical upon his side and widely misleading upon hers, she had gone up stairs again and halted in the upper hall just long enough to ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... all this, following the Palestinian Exemplar, he had from accurate copies furnished his own work with the Twelve Verses in dispute;—which is a categorical refutation of the statement frequently met with that the work of Victor of Antioch is ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... freely elected representatives, firmly convinced of the ultimate success of its highest ideals of full independence and liberty. Our silenced and oppressed nation has no other answer to all attempts at a change of the constitution than a cool and categorical refusal, because we know that these attempts are nothing except products of an ever-increasing strain, helplessness and ruin. We do not believe to-day in any more promises given and not kept, for experience has taught us to judge them on their merits. The most far-reaching promises cannot ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... vague and unsubstantial rumour, which Paterson had not even taken the trouble to report officially to the Governor when he heard it, was the only incident with which Baudin was connected that gave King any cause to doubt his perfect good faith; and Baudin's categorical denial of the allegation is fully confirmed by his diary and correspondence—now available for study—which contain no particle of evidence to suggest that the planting of a settlement, or the choice of a site for one, was a purpose of ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... stowed somewhere below the belt. (In Mrs Pengelly's shop you may purchase trousers that have as many as four pockets. They cost anything from eleven-and-sixpence to fifteen shillings, and you ask Mrs Pengelly for them under the categorical name of "non-plush unmentionables"—"non-plush" being short ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... take a phrase from Professor Dewey, reason, for Spinoza, is reconstructive not constitutive. The power of the intellect is not some underived, original, independent power which can impose or, better, superimpose its categorical imperatives upon human conduct. The power of the intellect is wholly derivative, dependent upon the nature of the ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... that Religion [he meant] Natural Religion, which is presupposed to Revelation, and is a Test by which Reveal'd Religion is to be tried, is a Bottom on which it must stand, and is a Rule to understand it by."[13] Categorical in tone, the statement frustrated the Anglican clergy by its very slipperiness; its generalities left little opportunity for decisive rebuttal. It provided no definition of natural religion beyond the predication ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... set out to make a categorical list of the things that existed or were made for our amusement in Palestine, it would, I think, consist of no more than four items, viz.: sea-bathing, military sports, sight-seeing, and concert parties; and I am not sure that the last-named ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... later the Foreign Minister, Pokrovsky, visited the Duma and announced that Russia would reject the offer. The Duma immediately passed a resolution declaring that "the Duma unanimously favors a categorical refusal by the Allied governments to enter, under present conditions, into any peace negotiations whatever." On the 19th a similar resolution was adopted by the Imperial Council, which continued to follow the leadership of the Duma. Before adjourning ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... hunt; we shall learn what arms they use—the painter will describe them as well as a pencil may describe—the harness of the horses he must know and understand; through dealing with so much novelty it becomes obligatory for the travelling painter to become explanatory and categorical. And as the attraction of the unknown corresponds in most people to the immoral instinct of curiosity, the painter will find himself forced to attempt to do with paint and canvas what he could do much better ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... beginning to suspect how the matter stood. Only he asked himself whether the man was mad, or some heedless rattle pate? He was beginning to explain the case in a categorical manner, when Lord Glenarvan and his party came up on the poop. The stranger caught sight of them directly, ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... authority to form, even in my inmost conscience, a categorical judgment on so complex a phenomenon as the French Revolution. To-day I find it even more difficult to form a brief judgement. Causes, facts, and consequences seem to me to ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... "I did not ask you for a categorical explanation of your movements, Mr. Lorimer," she says lightly—"I'm sure I hope you ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Mrs. J. G. Phelps Stokes for having said, at Barnard College, that the present government would probably be overturned by the ballot. In answer to this, the Federation's organ said, "Mrs. Stokes is a woman of intelligence and doubtless knows that States are not overturned by ballots." Here is a categorical denial on the part of an organ representing the most powerful privileged element in the country, of the possibility of peaceful political revolution, which can only mean that if a majority desires such a peaceful revolutionary ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... treasures of literary and artistic interest it is impossible to give categorical details. Perhaps the library prizes most the magnificent elephant folio edition, in four volumes, of Audubon's "Birds and Quadrupeds of North America," with its colored plates, heavy paper, and general air of sumptuousness. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... demand more than your training gives you a right to expect. Often, instead of the direct categorical question as to guilt, we must gradually draw out a narrative of the events in question; we must patiently help the child to state the facts and to see the values of exactitudes. Without preaching or posing we must bring the events into the light of larger areas ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... that his grandfather intended his great building to be adorned with mosaic work, and that one of his numerous disappointments was his inability, thanks to the ignorant opposition of the Commission, to carry out this intention. The categorical statement of the grandson is corroborated by (a) the text of various Acts of Parliaments, (b) other Renaissance Churches and notably St. Peter's, (c) the use of material softer than Portland stone for various surfaces.[103] Bishop Newton, who was Dean a hundred ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... they conceive affability as a concession. At any rate, it is not unusual to find a hostess busying herself with attempts to agree with all that is said, with the idea that she is thereby doing homage to the effeminate categorical imperative of etiquette, when in reality nothing becomes more quickly tiresome than incessant affirmatives, no matter how pleasantly they are modulated. Nor can one avoid one of two conclusions when one's talk ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... most people, had left him alone with me in my bedchamber, observing, that he must neither have great confidence in his virtue, or a very bad opinion of him otherwise. In short, I found means to defer the categorical answer till next day, and invited the duke and his lordship to dine with me to-morrow. My wise yoke-fellow seemed to doubt the sincerity of this invitation, and was very much disposed to keep possession of my house. But, by the persuasion of his grace, and ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett |
