"Immutable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all but the Celts, without much variety; the minor differences need not be here considered. And this dialect, called Inglis (as we have seen) by the Lowlanders themselves, had no rival, as the difference between it and the Erse or Gaelic was obvious and immutable. ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... outward circumstances, which is not swept away by the torrent of events, which is not the creature of accidental impulse, but which bends events to its own improvement, and acts from an inward spring, from immutable principles which it has deliberately espoused. I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man's, ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... immutable; Before, and after all, the first, and last: That moving all is yet immoveable; Great without quantity, in whose forecast, Things past are present, things to come are past; Swift without motion, to whose open eye The hearts of wicked men unbreasted lie; ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... A miracle expresses, not the beliefs of the human mind, but the law of God, infinite mind, and makes that law conceivable to the human mentality. God's laws are never set aside, for by very definition a law is immutable, else it ceases to be law. But when the human mind grows out of itself sufficiently to perceive those laws and to express them to its fellow-minds, the result is called a miracle. Moreover, the ability to perform miracles is but a function of spirituality. A miracle is a sign ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... explanation from the doctrine of the occasional retrograde motions of some branches of the lymphatic system: for how can matter, absorbed and mixed with the whole mass of blood, be so hastily collected again in any one part? and is it not an immutable law, in animal bodies, that each gland can secrete no other, but its own proper fluid? which is, in part, fabricated in the very gland by an animal process, which it there undergoes: of these purulent translations innumerable and ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. I - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... covenant made long ago 'Twixt Godhood and thought, when, abating its flow, The sea of eternity brought into sight Time's far distant mountains, and safe on their height There rested, by God to humanity brought, The Ark of eternal, immutable Thought! ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... therefore, truly, no SELF,—since the true self is the principle of identity and immutability,—the distinction between that 'private' nature when it is developed instinctively as 'selfishness,' and that rational immutable self which is constitutionally present though latent, in all men, and one in them all; that noble special human form which embraces and reconciles in its intention, the private good with the good of that worthier whole whereof we are individually parts and members; 'this is the distinction ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... steps of stone through iron doors I entered that red room and saw the rack, And round the walls I saw them sit in black, The immutable and urgent councillors. My heart was clotted with an old remorse, Despair a vulture fast upon my back. I saw my body like an empty sack Tossed ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet
... 1834, leaving George Sand with Pagello in Venice. The sentimental exaggeration continued, as we see from the letters exchanged between Musset and George Sand. When crossing the Simplon the immutable grandeur of the Alps struck Alusset with admiration, and he thought of his two "great friends." His head was evidently turned by the heights from which he looked at things. George Sand wrote to ...
— George Sand, Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings • Rene Doumic
... upon the float; for I will not conceal it that he was fishing in that ancient manner with a float shaped like a sea-buoy and stuck through with a quill. So fish the yeomen to this day in Northern France and in Holland. Upon such immutable customs does an ancient State repose, which, if they are disturbed, there is danger of ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... objects in discussion, must be my apology. It is, however, neither my wish nor expectation that the preceding observations should claim any regard, except so far as they shall appear to be dictated by a good intention, consonant to the immutable rules of justice, calculated to produce a liberal system of policy, and founded on whatever experience may have been acquired by a long and close attention to public business. Here I might speak with more confidence, from my actual observations; ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... disposition, he was more like Shakespeare than any other Englishman whom I can think of; but in Coleridge the poet soon disappeared, and a little later the philosopher in him faded into the visionary and sophist; he became an upholder of the English Church and found reasons in the immutable constitution of the universe for aprons and shovel-hats. Shakespeare, on the other hand, though similarly endowed, was far more richly endowed: he had stronger passions and greater depth of feeling; the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... an exact, definite statement of principles, absolute and apparently immutable. When a man on the street walks up to another and wantonly insults him, the law is, that the insulted party must turn and walk away. If the matter came before a jury they would never convict him for knocking the ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... looked, and felt her heart soften to think what this would mean to Eugenia, an inner wave of resolution reached the surface of the other woman's face, and there was Eugenia as she always had been, something of loveliness immutable. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... the philosophers of the eighteenth century responded unequivocally in the negative. Scientists, of whom the period was full, had done much to exalt the notions that the universe is run in accordance with immutable laws of nature and that man must forever utilize his reasoning faculties. It was not long before the philosophers were applying the scientists' notions to social conditions. "Is this reasonable?" they asked, or, ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... the pyramid of Cheops, whose immutable base we had to skirt on our way hither. In the moonlight we could see the separate blocks, so enormous, so regular, so even in their layers, which lie one above the other to infinity, getting ever smaller and smaller, and mounting, mounting in diminishing perspective, until ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... perfectly well that "it" was the most urgent errand a man could have, next to his duty to his country, that had brought the young sailor to his house. Twenty-four hours ago he would not have noticed such a trifle: but it was no trifle now; for to his clearer vision it was a sin, an evasion of the immutable laws of Truth, utterly unworthy of the companion of Nitocris the Queen in that other existence ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... supreme master. There were riots—fierce conflicts extending over days—then dreary sentences of lengthy imprisonments, with gaol tragedies; but still this strange, dry, inarticulate, obstinate figure remained immutable, always invisible, unapproachable, obdurate, spectral. Even the Tory leaders were disgusted and wearied, and Mr. Balfour was careful, in the very crisis and agony of his fight with the National League, to disavow all sympathy with ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... his words, spoke of the part which Mr. Macaulay played in one only of his numerous enterprises,—the suppression of slavery and the slave-trade. "That God had called him into being to wage war with this gigantic evil became his immutable conviction. During forty successive years he was ever burdened with this thought. It was the subject of his visions by day and of his dreams by night. To give them reality he laboured as men labour for the honours of a profession or for ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... according to both, is the religion which best brings out the individual's noblest faculties. As Mendelssohn wrote, there are certain eternal truths which God implants in all men alike, but "Judaism boasts of no exclusive revelation of immutable ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... mind singularly characteristic of our perfervid Scotsman. If we may indulge our conceit we would paraphrase it thus. His eloquence was like a flooded Scottish river,—it had its origin in some exalted region—in some mountain-truth—some high, immutable reality; it did not rise in a plain, and quietly drain its waters to the sea,—it came sheer down from above. He laid hold of some simple truth—the love of God, the Divine method of justification, the unchangeableness of human nature, the supremacy ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the skill of a foreigner whose education has grown to suit the work, we must silently sit by and willingly receive the work when handed out for use by the producer. At this point I will say that an intelligent Osteopath is willing to be governed by the immutable laws of nature, and feel that he is justified to pass the fluid on from place to ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... Granville said "so many of us" with an indescribably bitter emphasis. Suddenly his gentleness seemed changed to gall. It was the terrible protest of one of the herd who goes along with the rest, yet realizes it, and looks ever out from his common mass with fierce eyes of individual dissent at the immutable conditions of things. Immediately, when Granville saw the other young man, this gentleman in his light summer clothes, who bore about him no stain nor odor of toil, he felt that here was Ellen's mate; that he was left behind. He looked at him, not missing a detail of his superiority, and ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that the wisdom and providence with which we have clothed him, are in fact erroneous, by entreating him to alter in our favour his eternal laws? Shall we give him to understand our wisdom exceeds his own, by asking, him for our pleasure to change the properties of bodies—to annihilate his immutable decrees—to trace back the invariable course of things—to make beings act in opposition to the essences with which he has thought it right to invest them? Will he at our intercession prevent a body ponderous and hard by its nature, such as a stone, for example, ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... deep wrinkle seared, as it would seem, into the sallow flesh from either nostril downward. His mouth, grimly compressed, and his jaws, for the most part, firmly clinched together, spoke volumes of immutable and iron resolution; while all his under lip was scarred, in many places, with the trace of wounds, inflicted beyond doubt, in some dread paroxysm, by the ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... of Freedom. I used to call it "the American Idea;" that was when I was younger than I am to-day. It is derived from human nature; it rests on the immutable Laws of God; it is part of the natural religion of mankind. It demands a government after natural Justice, which is the point common between the conscience of God and the conscience of mankind; it is the point common also between the interests of one ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... calculated for the land and the table of giants, compared with the Lilliputian objects, of the bucoline species, which were straying, in thin flocks, through the luxuriant pastures of Normandy. That triumphant and immutable maxim of "small bone and large carcase" seems, alas! to be unknown in ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... drives us to search for the key to escape from this labyrinth; and when this key is found, it further discovers that which we did not seek but yet had need of, namely, a view into a higher and an immutable order of things, in which we even now are, and in which we are thereby enabled by definite precepts to continue to live according to the ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... spiritual or political courage has made up his mind to a prospect of immutable mutability; but even in a "transformation" there is something catastrophic in the removal of the back scene. It is a truism to say of the wise and noble lady who is gone from us that we shall always ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... it"—words which put forth a great mystery, perhaps a warning. Plainly, in all that a man could bring to the world, or take from it, there was vanity and death; but many things were vain merely because they were not eternal, and many things perished because where life is, change must be. Immutable, permanent possessions were the gifts of God to men. But the gifts of men to God would always be imperfect—whether they offered the sacrifice of their wills or their imagined earthly happiness. Yet if this imperfection were a mean one, something ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... mare settle down to work. But her flying hoofs made little apparent progress against the space and silence of the desert. Five, ten, fifteen miles and the curving shoulder of the mountain, that she must cross, still mocked in the distance. Only the sun moved in that vast world of seemingly immutable forces. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... That fixed decree at silent work which wills Evolve the dark to light, the dead to life, To fulness void, to form the yet unformed, Good unto better, better unto best, By wordless edict; having none to bid, None to forbid; for this is past all gods Immutable, unspeakable, supreme, A Power which builds, unbuilds, and builds again, Ruling all things accordant to the rule Of virtue, which is beauty, truth, and use. So that all things do well which serve the Power, And ill which ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... buried his father, and entrusted to the immutable Glafira Petrovna the management of the farming and the oversight over the clerks, young Lavretzky betook himself to Moscow, whither he was drawn by an obscure but powerful sentiment. He recognised the defects of his education, and intended to repair omissions, so far as possible. During the last ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... to hear from that earnest woman, Susan B. Anthony, inspired by the immutable abstract truths of justice and equity. Reports say that she has the air of a Catholic devotee. She said that in defiance of "the powers that be" she took a place on that platform in Independence square, and at the proper time delivered ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... Brass-bound Man commissioned first for sea His fragile raft, Poseidon laughed, and 'Mariner,' said he, 'Behold, a Law immutable I lay on thee and thine, That never shall ye act or tell a falsehood ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... acclamation of the multitudes, yet all these are but secondary and insignificant to my mind, when compared with that other great ambition of my life—the recognition by the medical world of the fact that there is an immutable law of God for our guidance in the selection of the remedy for the sick. And my daily prayer now is that my Father will keep me humble, so that he can use me to this end. For I tell you, friends," and the Doctor struck ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... may cling, and in all His weakness be sure that it will never give nor break. Mercy might be transient and arbitrary, but when you braid in 'faithfulness' along with it, it becomes fixed as the pillars of heaven, and immutable as the throne of God. Only when we are sure of God's faithfulness can we lift up thankful voices to Him, 'because His mercy endureth for ever.' A despotic monarch may be all full of tenderness at this moment, and all full of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... it be the great, the magnificent thing to go home without coming in, trusting to Peppino to let it be widely known what had turned her back from the door? There was a good deal to be said for that, for it would be living up to her own high and immutable standards. On the other hand she particularly wanted to see what standard of entertaining Olga was initiating. The "silly evening" was quite a new type of party, for since she had directed and controlled the social side of things there had been no "silly evenings" of any kind in Riseholme, ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... said Whymper, "that I have ever known your father late; and to you belongs the honor of having caused him to transgress his own immutable rule." ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... father's turn were coming round!" exclaimed Agathe, to whom this immutable provincial custom recalled ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... had suddenly ceased to be on her side, had, as it were, shut off his sympathy and left her groping and alone. It was not like him to treat her thus. It hurt her subtly, wounding her as she had never expected to be wounded, shaking her faith in what she had ever believed to be immutable. And then she remembered the physical weakness with which he had wrestled so long, and a great pity flooded her heart. She would not let herself be hurt any longer. Was he not reserving his strength for her sake? And could she not, for his, face ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... world; that the sweep of prairie, knowing no resentment, was fruitful to the weakest touch; that the forests fell without complaint; that the desert, hopeless, aged, contemptuous of the aspirations of this day, was of immutable bitterness, seeking some love long lost to it nor ever to be found again; but that the sea was as it had been when God poured it forth—young and lusty and passionate—the only thing in all the fleeting world immune from age and ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... of antiquity became commonplace in his contemplation: kings were his people; nations were his outposts; and he disposed of courts, and crowns, and camps, and churches, and cabinets, as if they were the titular dignitaries of the chessboard! Amid all these changes, he stood immutable as adamant. It mattered little whether in the field, or in the drawing-room; with the mob, or the levee; wearing the Jacobin bonnet, or the iron crown; banishing a Braganza, or espousing a Hapsburg; dictating peace on a raft to the Czar of Russia, or contemplating ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... peradventure of a doubt, but also the scion of a noble family.[181] However, the princes of Pharaoh were not silenced, they continued to give utterance to their opposition to Joseph, saying: "Dost thou not remember the immutable law of the Egyptians, that none may serve as king or as viceroy unless he speaks all the languages of men? And this Hebrew knows none but his own tongue, and how were it possible that a man should rule over us who cannot even speak the language of our land? Send and ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... the world, that self is the great concern,—that if one would find success, greatness, happiness, he must give all attention to self, and to self alone. This has been the great mistake, this the fatal error, this the direct opposite of the right, the true as set forth in the great immutable law that—we find our own lives in losing them in the service of others, in longer form—the more of our lives we give to others, the fuller and the richer, the greater and the grander, the more beautiful and the more happy our own lives become. It is as that great and sweet soul ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... precautions absolutely essential, and through years of the closest observation it will be seen that the vegetative and vital processes generally, of the very simplest and lowliest life forms, are as much directed and controlled by immutable laws as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 643, April 28, 1888 • Various
... this creation or divine ordinance in man is a natural right, jurists have accordingly said wisely and correctly that the union of male and female belongs to natural right. But since natural right is immutable, the right to contract marriage must always remain. For where nature does not change, that ordinance also with which God has endowed nature does not change, and cannot be removed by human laws. Therefore it is ridiculous for the adversaries to prate that marriage was commanded ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... me, banish me or even take my life, you shall not deprive me of my Lord Jesus Christ—of God's grace and mercy." So faith taught them and confirmed to them that such suffering was God's purpose and immutable will concerning themselves, which, whatever attitude towards them he might assume, he could not alter, even as he could not in the case of Christ himself. This discipline and experience of faith strengthened the martyrs ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... or withhold it; your "yea" and your "nay" Are immutable, heedless of outcry of ours: But life IS worth living, and here we would stay For a house full of books, ...
— Ballads in Blue China and Verses and Translations • Andrew Lang
... all potentiality in God obliges Him to be IMMUTABLE. He is actuality, through and through. Were there anything potential about Him, He would either lose or gain by its actualization, and either loss or gain would contradict his perfection. He cannot, therefore, change. Furthermore, He is IMMENSE, BOUNDLESS; for could He be outlined ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Korust and his brother, others to the presence of Mademoiselle Sophie Celaire in her wonderful danse des apaches. The violinist that night had a great reception. Three times he was called before the curtain; three times he was obliged to reiterate his grateful but immutable resolve never to yield to the nightly storm which demanded more from a man who has given of his best. Slim, with the worn face and hollow eyes of a genius, he stood and bowed his thanks, but when he thought the time had arrived, he disappeared, and though ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... better for the visits of friends, it was injurious as a general rule to give even friends admittance, and that it ought to be left discretionary with the physician, when to admit, and whom. Cleanliness, good fare, a garden, and the suppression of all violence—these have become immutable canons for the conduct of such institutions, and fortunately demand little more than ordinary good feeling and intelligence in the superintendent. But we could not fail to observe a sad want of suitable inducement to occupation, which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... and, when he came to London, declared my intention of separating from my lord; in which, seeing me obstinate and determined, he at length acquiesced, and a formal separation accordingly ensued, which at that time I thought binding and immutable. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... of miracle, by their very nature, absolutely evade the argument of Hume. The incommunicability disappears altogether. The value of—x absolutely vanishes and becomes 0. The human reason being immutable, suggests to every age, renews and regenerates for ever, the necessary inference of a miraculous state antecedent to the natural state. And, for the miracles of prophecy, these require no evidence and depend upon none: they carry their own evidence ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... these laws were not ordained of Zeus, And she who sits enthroned with gods below, Justice, enacted not these human laws. Nor did I deem that thou, a mortal man, Could'st by a breath annul and override The immutable unwritten laws of Heaven. They were not born today nor yesterday; They die not; and none knoweth whence they sprang. I was not like, who feared no mortal's frown, To disobey these laws and so provoke The wrath of Heaven. I knew that I must die, E'en hadst thou not proclaimed it; and ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... government by anybody's economic philosophy, though it was supposed to be controlled by immutable laws of political economy that must in the end produce harmony. It produced many splendid things, but enough sordid and terrible ones to start counter-currents. One of these was the trust, which established a kind of Roman peace within industry, and a Roman predatory imperialism outside. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... principle is what even children learn to appreciate and revere. The law of obedience and of reverence for the Sabbath was constraining so equally on the young and the old, that its claims came to be regarded like those immutable laws of nature, which no one thinks of being out of patience with, though they sometimes bear hard on personal convenience. The effect of the system was to ingrain into our character a veneration for the Sabbath which no friction of after life would ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... art, I know thy doubt; And gladly will I loose the knot, wherein Thy subtle thoughts have bound thee. From this realm Excluded, chalice no entrance here may find, No more shall hunger, thirst, or sorrow can. A law immutable hath establish'd all; Nor is there aught thou seest, that doth not fit, Exactly, as the finger to the ring. It is not therefore without cause, that these, O'erspeedy comers to immortal life, Are different in their shares of excellence. Our Sovran Lord—that ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... second person of the incomprehensible Trinity, was sanctified, or set apart to become the Saviour of law-condemned sinners, to take their nature upon him, comply with the requisitions of the eternal immutable law of God, and become their surety. Man is a rebel, it is put to his account: a penalty is incurred—He, as their surety, is made liable. Are they again to be made heirs of eternal life? Perfect obedience is the condition—and ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... contains the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the doom of sinners, and the happiness of believers. Its doctrines are holy, its precepts are binding, its histories are true, and its decisions are immutable. ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... here suggested for consulting the history of Protestant institutions, when I am going to speak of the object and nature of University Education. It will serve to remind you, Gentlemen, that I am concerned with questions, not simply of immutable truth, but of practice and expedience. It would ill have become me to undertake a subject, on which points of dispute have arisen among persons so far above me in authority and name, in relation to a state of society, about which I have so much ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... important piece of criticism; subtle, ingenious, and exquisitely analytical. But he holds out the fetter of authority, and he decides as a judge who expounds laws; not the best decision, when new laws are required to abrogate obsolete ones. And what laws invented by man can be immutable? D'Avenant was thus tried by the laws of a country, that of Greece or Rome, of which, it is said, he was not even ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... regard to times and circumstances; let it then never be invoked upon a general question, without examination. Though this is the true way of arguing the question, let freedom of trade be taken in another way; let it be considered as a general principle, it will then be immutable, and cannot be changed. {216} The present corn-laws must on that principle be done away, and no bounty allowed for exportation or for importation, which indeed would be the best way; but, at all events, let us have one weight and one measure for both parties, and not invoke freedom of trade to ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... about the military mistakes made remained unknown. He reviewed a series of blunders that had been made in the war, and quoted the opinion of an eminent foreign strategist to the effect that "the mistakes which had been made were mistakes on immutable and permanent principles." Thus, there was a doubt whether the army had been properly trained for war in the past and was being properly trained at that moment. He asked for a full ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... when he created matter, and endued it with a principle of mobility, established certain rules for the perpetual direction of that motion; so, when he created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... of practice found their earliest illustration in ancient Egypt. Magic, the first of these, represented the attitude of primitive man to nature, and really was his religion. He had no idea of immutable laws, but regarded the world about him as changeable and fickle like himself, and "to make life go as he wished, he must be able to please and propitiate or to coerce these ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... several years, without making any change in them, and that the public tolerated the practice. Now every scientific work needs to be continually recast, revised, brought up to date. Scientific workers do not claim to give their works an immutable form, they do not expect to be read by posterity or to achieve personal immortality; it is enough for them if the results of their researches, corrected, it may be, and possibly transformed by subsequent ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... the material senses, Science declares God to be the Soul of all being, the only Mind and intelligence in the universe. There is but one God, one Soul, or Mind, and that one is infinite, supplying all that is absolutely immutable and eternal,—Truth, ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... are unchanged amid all the changes that have passed over the troubled and bewildered land. The cities have sunken into dust: the trees of the forest have fallen: the nations have dissolved. But the mountains keep their immutable outline: the liquid stars shine with the same light, move on the same pathways: and between the mountains and the stars, two other changeless things, frail and imperishable,—the flowers that flood the earth in every ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... whose good taste has been universally applauded. This obvious consideration has disposed them to pause; they have endeavoured to discover the original of taste, and have found that there is not only a stable and immutable beauty, as there is a common understanding in all times and places, which is never obsolete; but there is another kind of beauty, such as we are now treating, which depends upon times and places, and is, therefore, changeable. Such is the imperfection of every ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... "Reciprocity" article seems to have produced a slight effect on the Spectator, though it did snub me at first, but it is perfectly sickening to read the stuff spoken and written, in Parliament and in all the newspapers, about the subject, all treating our present practice as something holy and immutable, whatever bad effects it may produce, and though it is not in any way "free trade" and would I believe have been given up both by Adam Smith ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... presence whose name was Fire-Tongue might have paused, might have hesitated, might even have changed his plans, which, in a certain part of the world, were counted immutable, had he known the manner of man whom he had summoned to ...
— Fire-Tongue • Sax Rohmer
... of Calvinism is a foundation principle of Pantheism, Socialism, Stoicism, and Mahometanism, Calvinists may well question whether they have not been building upon the sand, instead of the eternal rock of immutable truth. ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... life means growth and growth change. So far as it lay in the power of the French critics the new dignity that came to their language in the seventeenth century was made to involve a pedantic and sterile immobility. The meaning, the spelling, the arrangement, of words was to be regulated by immutable law, and all who disobeyed were to be punished as lawless and insolent rebels. Johnson knew better. Both his melancholy and his common sense taught him that "language is the work of man, of a being from whom permanence and stability cannot be derived." He knew that words coming from human ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... himself, erring and weak, who made himself perfect, and that even as his teacher has done, so, too, may he if he do but observe the everlasting laws of life which the Buddha has shown to the world. These laws are as immutable as Newton's laws, and come, like his, ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... Anastasia, his refusal, and now that event for which the bells were ringing! How quickly the scenes changed! What a creature of an hour was he, was every man, in face of these grim walls that had stood enduring, immutable, for generation after generation, for age after age! And then he smiled as he thought that these eternal realities of stone were all created by ephemeral man; that he, ephemeral man, was even now busied with schemes for their support, with ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... admiration of martial achievements, and of indignation at foreign influence, or domestic perfidy, (under which head the conduct of Talleyrand and of Marmont was included); and more especially, when the success, and glory, and eternal, immutable, untarnished honour of France, were the theme of declamation. The applause at passages of this last description seemed sometimes ludicrous enough, when the theatres were guarded by Russian grenadiers, and nearly ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... join our shout with the victors; but in spirit we may even now. There is but an interval of time between us and the success at which we aim. In all other respects the links of the chain are complete. Identifying ourselves with immortal and immutable principles, we share both their immortality and immutability. The vow which unites us with truth makes futurity present with us. Our being resolves itself into an everlasting now. It is not so correct to say that we shall be victorious as that we are so. When we ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... this heat. I wish to know whether a day's labor at the time of the English Revolution bore the same value as a hundred years after at the time of the French Revolution; and, if not the same value, whether a higher or a lower. For this purpose, if I believe that there is any commodity which is immutable in value, I shall naturally compare a day's labor with that commodity at each period. Some, for instance, have imagined that corn is of invariable value; and, supposing one to adopt so false a notion, we should ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... but they speak not: Yet something in the certainty of faith To their disciples saith: "Believe on me and vengeance I will wreak not." The word that conquers death— The immutable and boundless gift of grace— Dwells in that stony face, And every supplication answereth. Mouths have they, but they speak not; Yet one supernal will that shapes to suit A great decree that can not be belied Utters from voiceless lips those creeds that guide The tribes that ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... that the ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment, and not authority; she is teaching it to estimate the value of evidence; she is creating a firm and living faith in the existence of immutable moral and physical laws, perfect obedience to which is the highest possible aim of ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... finials: religion dominating life: offering to man the end and the way of living,—image of a thought altogether Spanish. Place this scene upon the bosom of the Mediterranean beneath an ardent sky; plant it with palms whose waving fronds mingle their green life with the sculptured leafage of the immutable architecture; look at the white fringes of the sea as it runs up the reef and they sparkle upon the sapphire of its wave; see the galleries and the terraces built upon the roofs of houses, where the inhabitants come at eve to breathe ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... and somber faces, and a slow wrath grew within him. Then he caught a glimpse of Waggoner. The steel-blue, piercing intensity of the Mormon's gaze impressed him at a moment when all that older generation of Mormons looked as hard and immutable as iron. Either Shefford was over-excited and mistaken or the hour had become fraught with greater suspense. The secret, the mystery, the power, the hate, the religion of a strange people were thick and tangible ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... antipodes"; "darkness cannot come out of light"—all these, and a dozen other similar propositions, formerly admitted without hesitation as axioms, were, even at the period of which I speak, seen to be untenable. How absurd in these people, then, to persist in putting faith in "axioms" as immutable bases of Truth! But even out of the mouths of their soundest reasoners it is easy to demonstrate the futility, the impalpability of their axioms in general. Who was the soundest of their logicians? Let me see! I will go and ask Pundit and be back in a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... God's plan to work through simple, natural means, so that we may not be looking and waiting for the supernatural. And yet it would seem that many are so irrational that, when they find mere feeling passing away, they give up their hope and all relationship to Christ, acting as if the immutable love of God were ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... are unwilling to let the thrifty reap the rewards of their savings and abstinence," lectured the Political Economist of the standard school. "The law of wages and capital is immutable. More science ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... The immutable fact remained that he was married to Felicity. Though he had ceased to attend his own church from the days of his boyhood, the Catholic doctrine of the indissolubility of marriage remained as one of his ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... word, is this: they assume certain general principles, which they 'maintain to be the necessary deductions of reason from an extended and unprejudiced contemplation of the natural and moral order of things, and to be in themselves immutable and universal. Consequently anything which, on however good authority, may be advanced in apparent opposition to them must either be rejected as unworthy of rational belief, or at least explained away, till it is made to accord with the assumed principles,—and the truth or falsehood of all ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... admiration. Her efforts were not unnoticed by him: I frequently saw him smiling to himself at her artful manoeuvres: but, to his praise be it spoken, her shafts fell powerless by his side. Her most bewitching smiles, her haughtiest frowns were ever received with the same immutable, careless good-humour; till, finding he was indeed impenetrable, she suddenly remitted her efforts, and became, to all appearance, as perfectly indifferent as himself. Nor have I since witnessed any symptom of pique on his part, or renewed attempts ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... which is soundless, touchless, formless, undecaying; also tasteless, odorless, and eternal; beginningless, endless and immutable; beyond the Unmanifested: (knowing That) man escapes from the mouth ...
— The Upanishads • Swami Paramananda
... Master!" he murmured. "We knew not that the immutable Soul was speaking from within you, calling one among us towards the Light!" He glanced quickly over his shoulder to where the massive form and agitated face of Bale-Corphew was framed in ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... had left off his discourse about truth, and the multitude had cried out aloud that he had spoken the most wisely, and that it was truth alone that had immutable strength, and such as never would wax old, the king commanded that he should ask for somewhat over and above what he had promised, for that he would give it him because of his wisdom, and that prudence wherein he exceeded the ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... thought that, on the 4th of March, at the very hour when Mr. Lincoln, in taking possession of the Presidency at Washington, signified to the attentive world the will of a great republic, determined to arrest the conquests of slavery, the generous head of a great empire signified to his ministers his immutable resolve to prepare for the emancipation of the serfs. In such coincidences, who does not recognize the finger of God. I am, therefore, tranquil: Russian opposition has failed, American opposition will fail. ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... the RIGHT does not exist to enslave the barbarian; that to assert such right is fatal to the principle of human equality. To which I answer, that barbarity is not humanity, but its opposite, and the right of the one to control the other is supported by law, founded upon the immutable principles of justice. The experience of mankind has demonstrated, and the judgment of mankind has decided, that certain acts are wrong in themselves; that to kill is an act abhorrent to the soul of man, and as it is also a ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... of Infinite Life and Power behind all which is the source of all. This Infinite Power is creating, working, ruling through the agency of great immutable laws and forces that run through all the universe, that surround us on every side. Every act of our every-day lives is governed by these same great laws and forces. Every flower that blooms by the wayside, springs up, grows, ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... change since then, inasmuch as he was no longer disposed to ridicule or condemn religious sentiment, though he was nearly as far from actually believing in Religion itself as ever. The attitude of his mind was still distinctly skeptical—the immutable pride of what he considered his own firmly rooted convictions was only very slightly shaken—and he now even viewed the prospect of his journey to the "field of Ardath" as a mere fantastic whim—a caprice of his own fancy ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... was then and as it had been from time immemorial; the notion always being—and the farther back you go and the more simple the people are, the more they have that notion—that their free laws and customs were something which came from the beginning of the world, which they always held, which were immutable, no more to be changed than the forces of nature; and that no parliament, under the free Anglo-Saxon government, or later under the Norman kings, who tried to make them unfree, no king, could ever make a ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... flirtation to fraternal regard; possibly—Oh, confound it! I don't know what to think, and don't much care. She is trying to become a woman! Who can fathom some women's whims and fancies? She thinks her immature ideas, imbibed in an out-of-the-way corner of the world, the immutable laws of nature. Of one thing at least she is absolutely certain—she can get on without me. I must be kept at too great ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... times, in those sublime descriptions, where they have exhausted all the powers of language, and surpassed all the other exertions, even of their own eloquence, in the display of the beauty and majesty of this sovereign and immutable law. It is of this law that Cicero has spoken in so many parts of his writings, not only with all the splendour and copiousness of eloquence, but with the sensibility of a man of virtue; and with the gravity and comprehension ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... and means by which its effects are sustained, and under the operation of which they are beginning to combine into a habit of holiness. He rejoices in the hope of its duration to the end of life, solely he would say from the confidence he has in the immutable love and faithfulness of the Holy Being, who has wrought so great a work in him. And let philosophers cavil and doubt, if they must; but this man's example is a refutation in fact of a thousand of their sceptical theories. He ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... imperfect, prejudiced, liable to error, changeable, headstrong, ignorant, and limited; in short, it possesses nothing but what is borrowed. The other is common to all men, and superior to them. It is perfect, eternal, immutable, ever ready to communicate itself in all places, and to rectify all minds that err and mistake; in short, incapable of ever being either exhausted or divided, although it communicates itself ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... precious book of Allah and dost thou know its cancelling and cancelled parts and hast thou meditated its versets and its letters?" "Yes," answered she. "Then," said he, "I will proceed to question thee of the obligations and the immutable ordinances: so tell me of these, O damsel, and who is thy Lord, who thy prophet, who thy Guide, what is thy point of fronting in prayer, and who be thy brethren? Also what thy spiritual path and what thy highway?" Whereto ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... backwoodsman ceased. Both men rose and stood facing each other. Zane's bronzed face was hard and tense, expressive of an indomitable will; Wetzel's was coldly dark, with fateful resolve, as if his decree of vengeance, once given, was as immutable as destiny. The big, horny hands gripped in a viselike clasp born of fierce passion, ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... and on Sundays, I dare say, he goes, like Cezanne, to lean on M. le Cure, who leans on Rome, while his concierge receives the pure gospel of Syndicalism, which, also, is based on absolute truths, immutable, and above criticism. ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... the resistance should be too feeble to permit them to glut themselves with blood. The creatures of caste, the emigrants could not conceive of man as a variable animal, or of the birth of a race of warriors under their eyes. To them human nature remained constant. Such, they believed, was the immutable will ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams
... immutable immortal laws Impress'd on Nature by the GREAT FIRST CAUSE, Say, MUSE! how rose from elemental strife Organic forms, and kindled into life; How Love and Sympathy with potent charm Warm the cold heart, the lifted hand disarm; Allure with pleasures, ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... universe; and, amidst the endless and complicated fluctuations of our system, seem placed by its Creator as guides and records, not merely to elevate our minds by the contemplation of what is vast, but to teach us to direct our actions by reference to what is immutable in His works. It is, indeed, hardly possible to over-appreciate their value in this point of view. Every well-determined star, from the moment its place is registered, becomes to the astronomer, the geographer, the navigator, the surveyor, a point of ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... thoughtful blue eyes; he felt, with his fine, instinctive tact, that the soul within was infolded in some crystalline sphere of protection, transparent, but adamantine, so that he could not touch it. What was that secret poise, that calm, immutable centre on which she rested, that made her, in her rustic simplicity, so unapproachable and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... peculiar to the individual. Experience alone has taught man morals; pain and pleasure are the forms of its admonitions; and each generation sees more clearly that the principles of ethics are based on immutable physical laws. Moreover, it has been shown to be dangerous to rest morality on the doctrine of a future life; for apart from the small effect the terrors of a hereafter have on many sinners, as that doctrine is frequently rejected, social interests ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... you claim as your slaves, are in a state of probation; our great business is to serve God under His righteous moral government. Master and slave are the subjects of that government, bound by its immutable requirements, and liable to its sanctions in the next world, though enjoying its forbearance in this. You will pardon me then for pressing this point in earnest good faith. You should, at this stage, review your life without political bias, or adherence ...
— The Fugitive Blacksmith - or, Events in the History of James W. C. Pennington • James W. C. Pennington
... their ideas more from Aristotle, and especially from Seneca, than from any intimate acquaintance with the Greek models themselves. Three of the most celebrated of the French tragic poets, Corneille, Racine, and Voltaire, have given, it would seem, an immutable shape to the tragic stage of France by adopting this system, which has been considered by the French critics universally as alone entitled to any authority, and who have viewed every deviation from it as a sin against good taste. The treatise ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... deepening in Karen. She saw guile on Mrs. Talcott's storm-beaten and immutable face; and she heard specious reassurance in her voice. Mrs. Talcott was dangerous. She had set her heart on this last desire of her passionless, impersonal life and had determined that she and Gregory should come together ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... that they should pay the expenses of the war. Number three was, however, usually inserted in order that, by conceding it subsequently, after much contestation, he might appear conciliatory. It was a vehicle of magnanimity towards men grown insolent with temporary success. Numbers one and two were immutable. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... weak then, in reality, must be the boasted filial affection of the Chinese for their parents, when they scruple not to become the murderers of their own children, towards whom, according to the immutable laws of nature, the force of affection will ever be stronger than for those whom the laws of China, in preference, have commanded to be protected and supported when rendered incapable of assisting themselves. The truth of this observation, which I believe few will call in question, is a strong ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... And sought for something to assuage its grief. Some surcease and relief From sorrow, in pursuit of mortal joys. It drowned God's stillness in a sea of noise; It lost God's presence in a blur of forms; Till, bruised and bleeding with life's brutal storms, Unto immutable and speechless space The World lifts up its face, Its haggard, tear-drenched face, And cries aloud for faith's supreme reward, The promised ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... temptation. Laying aside the authority of Christianity, and contemplating the subject in the light of mere expediency, it seemed a plain duty for Napoleon and Josephine to separate. But gloriously does it illustrate the immutable truth of God's word, that even in such an exigence as this, the path which the Bible pointed out was the only path of safety and of peace. "In separating myself from Josephine," said Napoleon afterward, "and in marrying ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... of mind which would turn an instrument of life into an immutable law of its existence—that habit is always with us. We may outgrow our adoration of the Constitution or Private Property only to establish some new totem pole. In the arts we call this inveterate tendency ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... it were only the Duke—Ah!" She stopped, a new alarm in her eyes. She searched my face eagerly. Of deliberate purpose I set it to an immutable stolidity. ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... we may be allow'd the Expression, of his own Being, and even of Babylon itself. His capacious Soul now soar'd into Infinity, and he contemplated, with the same Freedom, as if she was disencumber'd from her earthly Partner, on the immutable Order of the Universe. But as soon as she cower'd her Wings, and resumed her native Seat, he began to consider that Astarte might possibly have lost her Life for his Sake; upon which, his Thoughts of the Universe vanish'd all at once, and ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... been waiting and watching for two days, with the patience of a determined man of set and immutable purpose, to get an opportunity for a private interview with you. The opportunity has now rewarded my vigilance. Meet me at once, in the house or out ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... that virtue, morality, the ethical evolution, cannot be an end in itself, but must be a means to some other end. Effort directed toward other, altruism in any form, must have its final measurement of value in terms of self; otherwise the immutable principles of justice are attacked. I cannot enlarge upon this point, and will content myself with a reference to Prof. Steinthal's admirable essay on "The Idea of ethical Perfection," published some ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton
... need to look deep to know that they were men of force, men of the same kind as they who have left an equally deep impress upon so large a part of our Western States; men and women who had formed their own lives according to certain fixed and immutable rules, who knew no better country than New England, nor any better ways than New England ways, and to whom it never occurred to think that what was good and sufficient in Massachusetts was not equally ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff
... a Providence, without sacrilegious presumption. The laws for which he contends must have had no author to establish, and can have no superior will to control them; they had no beginning, and can have no end; they cannot be reversed, suspended, or interfered with; they are necessary, immutable, and eternal, not subordinate to God, but independent of Him; they are, in short, nothing less than Destiny or Fate, the same that Cudworth describes as the Democritic, Physiological, or Atheistic Fate, which consists in "the ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... consider the appeal—the needy and unfortunate have no right to implore the assistance of their more fortunate neighbors: and all are at liberty to turn a deaf ear to the cry of distress. The eternal and immutable principles of justice and humanity, proclaimed by Jehovah, and impressed by him on the conscience of man, have no binding force on the legislature of Ohio, unless expressly adopted and enforced by the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... the moral impurities of the popular conception. AEschylus represents him as supreme and in general as just, though not wholly free from human weaknesses. A real unity of the world is set forth by Sophocles: there is a divinely ordered control by immutable law, and the will of Zeus is unquestioned. The unitary conception is found also in Euripides notwithstanding his skeptical attitude toward the current mythology. The sense of symmetry potent in the poets forced them to this unitary conception ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... consists of the words from our own mouths. We speak as our fathers spoke; and they did but follow the generations before. Occasional pronunciations have altered, new words have been added, and old ones forgotten; but some basal sounds of names, some root-thoughts of the heart, have proved as immutable as the superficial elegancies are changeful. "Father" and "mother" mean what they have meant ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... efficacy of religions sanctions than the extravagant attempts that are frequently made to impose them in cases which they never originally contemplated, or to read into "ordinances," evidently "imposed for a time"—[Greek: dikaiomata mechri kairou] (Heb. ix. 10)—a law of eternal and immutable obligation. Just as we are told (D) not to expect to find in the Bible a scheme of physical science, so I do not expect to find there a scheme of political economy. What I do expect to find, in relation to my duty to my neighbor, are those unalterable principles of equity, ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... the efficacy of my system, beyond other systems of medicine, vouches for the validity of that statement. Sin and disease are not scientific, because they embody not the idea of divine Principle, and are not the phenomena of the immutable laws of God; and they do not arise from the divine consciousness and true ...
— No and Yes • Mary Baker Eddy |
