"Inconsistency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rallied him on his inconsistency, he gravely replied: "An Irish gentleman is an Irish gentleman the world over, no matter where you find him, in court, camp, or wilderness; it's all one to him. Why do you think I brought that mirror you ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... them, but not seldom he gave glimpses of appalling depths of character. He seemed to delight in scourging the upper classes of society with the lash of his tongue, to take pleasure in convicting it of inconsistency, in mocking at law and order with some grim jest worthy of Juvenal, as if some grudge against the social system rankled in him, as if there were some mystery carefully hidden away in ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... who seems to be a man of observation and intelligence, I gather that the inconsistency of Farquhard Campbell's conduct * * * has proceeded as much from jealousy of the Superior consequence of this Gentleman and his father in law with the Highlanders here as from any other motive. This schism is to be lamented from whatsoever cause arising, but ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... instantly from having any the smallest knowledge of John's proceedings, and Colonel Goldsworthy soon recovered all his spirits and good humour, when he was satisfied he had not designedly been treated with such strange and unmeaning inconsistency. He rejoiced exceedingly that he had spoke out, and I thanked him for his frankness, and the evening concluded very amicably. . ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... choruses would not only have been more consonant with his own feelings, but doubtless more acceptable to the world? She had not yet learned what it often takes the wisest man a lifetime to discover—that every inconsistency of conduct is not hypocrisy, but that it is one of the most common idiosyncrasies of the mind to write and believe one thing, and as self-approvingly to ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... vacillation of undisciplined enchantment, and left the lustre of its edifices to wither like a startling dream, whose beauty we may indeed feel, and whose instruction we may receive, but must smile at its inconsistency, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... barbarians. I emphasize this point because several of my critics have accused me of a lack of knowledge and thought and logic because I attributed some of the elements of romantic love to animals and denied them to primitive human beings. But there is no inconsistency in this. We shall see later on that there are other things in which animals are superior not only to savages but to some civilized peoples as high ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... certain inconsistency as between the first and last lines of this. I tried, with bent brows, to resolve the discord. But I did not take my failure as wholly incompatible with a meaning in Soames's mind. Might it not rather indicate the depth of his meaning? As for the craftsmanship, ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... the present system of nomenclature confusedly edified, because it introduces,—without, apparently, any consciousness of the inconsistency, and certainly with no apology for it,—names founded sometimes on the history of plants, sometimes on their qualities, sometimes on their forms, sometimes on their products, and sometimes on ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... a band of chosen youths of noble birth, on chargers, dressed in splendid uniforms and armed with lances and spears. This pomp and splendour increased the confidence of his followers, who, too young to see the inconsistency of his conduct, listened to his words as to those of God, and regarded ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... With a woman's fateful persistency—a persistency which I humbly suggest might, on occasion, be honorably copied by our more politic sex—she went on to say what was in her, even if she were obliged, with a woman's honorable inconsistency, to unsay it an hour or two later; an inconsistency which I also humbly protest might be as honorably imitated ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte
... that the man had never divined about the matter, and said that he had done so only to complete the process of seduction. The critics dwell on the inconsistency of divination being resorted to in such a case:—'Divination is proper only if used in reference to what is ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... the circumstance of the ladies wearing masks lessen the inconsistency pointed out ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... or speedily diverts it to some worldly subject. She is one of those persons with whom you might live in the same house for weeks and months, and yet never discover that she was a disciple of Christ. The other lady, on the contrary, is as eminent for godliness as her husband is for inconsistency. Her heart is in the cause; she prays with and for her children, and whatever example they have in their father, in her they have a fine model of active, fervent, humble piety, seated in the heart and flowing out into ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... example of inconsistency in the rubrics of our Communion Office referred to in the comment on the last rubric, and which is caused by successive attempts at patching (instead of revoking) the alterations made at the ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... he loved you as his own soul, and his soul were knit with yours—to use the words of Scripture—he would not demand this consistency, because each man must know and feel his own immeasurable vacillation and inconsistency; and if he had complete sympathy with another, he would not be greatly surprised or vexed at ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 423, New Series. February 7th, 1852 • Various
... of the problem to a transcendental world; he speaks of what in modern language might be termed 'impossibilities in the nature of things,' hindering God from continuing immanent in the world. But there is some inconsistency; for the 'letting go' is spoken of as a divine act, and is at the same time attributed to the necessary imperfection of matter; there is also a numerical necessity for the successive births of ...
— Statesman • Plato
... arrogate to himself a freedom so unlimited that it might often trench on the just liberty of his neighbours. I rapidly ran over these thoughts, and then I laughed a low and involuntary laugh, moved thereto by a slight inward revelation of the inconsistency of man. It was as I thought: Hunsden had expected me to take with calm his incorrect and offensive surmises, his bitter and haughty taunts; and himself was chafed by a laugh, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... between "veracity" and "truth," "observation" and "observance." Show the inconsistency between "allude" ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... of Hamilton is a modification of that of Kant, intended to obviate these consequences, and to relieve the Kantian doctrine itself from the inconsistency which gave rise to them. So long as the reason is regarded as a separate faculty from the understanding, and things in themselves as ideas of the reason, so long the apparent contradictions, which encumber the attempt to conceive the unconditioned, must ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... during the next three months depends the whole debatable question of her character. According to the professed champions of that character, this conduct was a tissue of such dastardly imbecility, such heartless irresolution, and such brainless inconsistency as forever to dispose of her time-honored claim to the credit of intelligence and courage. It is certain that just three months and six days after the murder of her husband she became the wife of her husband's murderer. On February 11th she wrote to the Bishop of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... of ridicule, of severity, such as the same book received from so many quarters? Nothing of the sort; nothing more than a thoroughly candid and discriminating judgment, never over-stepping the bounds of courtesy, never exaggerating a defect or concealing a beauty. A talk might be raised about the inconsistency with a former tone; but if the fact was made apparent that the later effusions of a tender and melodious, but shallow Muse, were but dilutions, ever more watery and insipid, of the first sweet and abundant flow, was the critic or the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... catch the Commissioners in a verbal inconsistency. The inconsistency is real, out of a deep-seated confusion of mind. Lust will seek an expression, they say, until "the hearts of men are changed." All particular expressions are evil and must be constantly ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... firmly from the doctor, who drank at Oxford to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies. Accordingly he stands stoutly by the planters and the feudal scheme of subordination, whose annihilation he maintains would 'shut the gates of mercy on mankind.' For his apparent inconsistency Burke is attacked:— ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... to cast away experience, and to treat knowledge as of no account. The man who prides himself on his consistency means that facts are nothing compared to his superior sense of intellectual virtue. But to attack consistency is quite a different thing from elevating inconsistency to the rank of an ideal. The man who was proud of being inconsistent, not from necessity but from choice, would be as much of a fool as his opposite. Life, in a word, can never be lived ...
— Success (Second Edition) • Max Aitken Beaverbrook
... only one revelation is the oldest and seems the best established; that which accepts three is the newest and seems the most consistent; that which accepts two revelations and rejects the third may perhaps be the best, but prejudice is certainly against it; its inconsistency is glaring. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... himself under normal conditions of back-country life. Urbane address, faultless syntax, even that good part which shall not be taken away, namely, the calm consciousness of inherent superiority, are of little use here. And yet your Australian novelist finds no inconsistency in placing the bookish student, or the city dandy, many degrees above the bushman, or the digger, or the pioneer, in vocations which have been the life-work of the latter. O, the wearisome nonsense of ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... and merrily, detecting the inconsistency of her mother's argument, as she always did, "if it's such ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... had some suspicion of the inconsistency himself," said Bernard, "to judge from his attempt to obviate the difficulty, by ascribing a magic change in his hero, to the application of the child's hand to the head, instead of as before, to the heart. This part of the tale is slightly ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... see that anything which has fallen from the distinguished Senator has convicted Mrs. Clara Leonard of inconsistency or has added anything to the argument upon his side of the question. I have never said or intimated that there were women who were not credible witnesses. I have never thought or intimated that there were not women who were competent to administer the affairs of State ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... husband for Aglaya; and during the ensuing night she made a vow that never while she lived should he marry Aglaya. With this resolve firmly impressed upon her mind, she awoke next day; but during the morning, after her early lunch, she fell into a condition of remarkable inconsistency. ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... wrong. It is not always to be blamed. But it is always to be watched with vigilance; always to be challenged and put upon its trial.'[133] To this challenge in his own case—and no man of his day was half so often put upon his trial for inconsistency—he was always most easily provoked to make a vehement reply. In that process Mr. Gladstone's natural habit of resort to qualifying words, and his skill in showing that a new attitude could be reconciled by strict reasoning ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... (16) This element of inconsistency has been the cause of many terrible wars and revolutions; for, as Curtius well says (lib. iv. chap. 10): "The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition," and is easily led, on the plea of religion, ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... until now in the first person, change here to the third person, in spite of the kind of engagement taken in the first page to continue them in the former manner. We are ignorant of the cause of the inconsistency thus offered by the manuscript, which is, however, completely written in the ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette
... knew what he had just reported, nor Macbeth what he had just done. This seems not to be one of the faults that are to be imputed to the transcribers, since, though the inconsistency of Rosse and Angus might be removed, by supposing that their names are erroneously inserted, and that only Rosse brought the account of the battle, and only Angus was sent to compliment Macbeth, yet the forgetfulness of Macbeth cannot be palliated, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... daring; adapted alike for arms and for factions, full of expedients, wonderfully ready, and, in difficult positions, versed in the art of stooping to conquer. It is true that his great qualities were weakened by defects; he was rash, flighty, full of inconsistency of thought and action, owing to his continual thirst for movement and machination. But his great defect was the total absence of a political conviction. In times of revolution, nothing can be done for liberty or power by him who is not decidedly of one party or another, and when he is ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... however, an inconsistency in Plato's manner of conceiving the soul of man; he cannot get rid of the element of necessity which is allowed to enter. He does not, like Kant, attempt to vindicate for men a freedom out of space and time; but he acknowledges ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... yield, and Catharine went. Mrs. Bellamy poured forth the pent-up tale of three months—gossip we may call it if we wish to be contemptuous; but what is gossip? A couple of neighbours stand at the garden gate on a summer's evening and tell the news of the parish. They discuss the inconsistency of the parson, the stony-heartedness of the farmer, the behaviour of this young woman and that young man; and what better could they do? They certainly deal with what they understand—something genuinely within their own circle and experience; and there is nothing to them in politics, ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... is a very erroneous impression that despotism is manly. For our part we believe that despotism is inhuman, satanic, and that wherever it is found—as much in the bosom of a family, as on the throne of a kingdom. We cannot bring ourselves to tolerate the inconsistency with which some men will inveigh against some absolute sovereign, and straight-way enact the pettiest airs of absolutism in their little empire at home. We have no private intimacy with "the autocrat of all the Russias," ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... Chi once offered thee a present and thou declinedst it, but didst accept gifts offered at Sung and at Hsieh. Why this inconsistency? If it were right to refuse in the first case it was equally right to refuse in the other two. If it were right to accept in the latter two cases, it was equally right to accept in the first case." The philosopher answered, "I acted rightly and ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... matron—"Know, youth, that a mother knows not hunger till that of her child is satisfied." And with affectionate inconsistency, totally different from her usual manner, she added, "Roland, you must not fast; you have dispensation; you are young, and to youth food and sleep are necessaries not to be dispensed with. Husband your strength, my child,—your sovereign, your religion, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... perhaps every verse has been altered, interpolated, or retrenched in some copy or other—and then add in the same breath that the book is nevertheless to be received, as containing the uncorrupted doctrines of the founders of Christianity? If we did not know the inconsistency, and blindness of prejudice, one might be tempted to suspect that these learned men ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... shall send to-morrow, for the publisher is out and I dare not touch his "plant": il m'en cuirait. The work in question I think a huge lark, but still droller is the author's attitude. Not one incident holds with another from beginning to end; and whenever I discover a new inconsistency, Sam is the first to laugh—with a kind of humorous pride at the thing ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the perfectly stable to the utterly fugitive, and because each one is liable to influence by every condition of time, place, and circumstance, that the chemist's theory is opposed as often to the painter's practice as the experience of artists themselves varies. This may explain the charges of inconsistency and contradiction which have been brought against writers on pigments, faults that lie rather with the nature of the ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field
... held in abject slavery four millions of human beings; which erected altars to the living God, yet denied to creatures, formed in the image of God and charged with the custody of immortal souls, the common rights of humanity; he declared that the hateful inconsistency should cease to defile the prayers of Christians and stultify the advocates of freedom. No dreamer was he, no mere theorist, but a worker, and a strong one, who did well the work committed to him. He entered upon his self-imposed ...
— Oration on the Life and Character of Henry Winter Davis • John A. J. Creswell
... probably thought of the announcement I had made at the banquet of my own approaching marriage, and strove to reconcile it with the apparent inconsistency of my present observation. But he was too discreet to utter his mind aloud—he ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... were discussed by Parks and Brace, Saunders still retaining the air of a dispassionate observer, ready to be convinced, but abstaining from argument—and occasionally replenishing the glasses. There was felt to be no inconsistency between their present attitude and their previous conversation; rather it proved to them that gentlemen could occasionally indulge in a social glass together without frequenting a liquor saloon. This ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... knight. The brigadier stands in contrast to his senior. He is as tall a man, more commanding in carriage, but of very different temperament and gait. It is no studied negligence which has arranged the careless inconsistency of his dress. It is but the mind speaking through the person. He wears nothing that has cost a tailor a minute's thought to shape. His staff cap is set askew; his badges of staff distinction have obviously been sewn into position by some unskilled craftsman—probably ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... was unquestionably in the right; and whoever examines himself candidly, will be satisfied of it, though the inconsistency between principles and practice is greater in ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... of view; but can conceive it to be—to the general reader—not only disappointing, (if indeed I may flatter myself that I ever interest enough to disappoint), but even liable to confirm in his mind some of the fallacious and extremely absurd insinuations of adverse critics respecting my inconsistency, vacillation, and liability to be affected by changes of the weather in my principles or opinions. I purpose, therefore, in these historical sketches, at least to watch, and I hope partly to correct myself in this ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... place a certain restraint, but the Restrictions are, as already shown, not in reality enforceable. They are for good purposes a nullity; they are effective, if at all, almost wholly for evil; they exhibit the radical and fatal inconsistency of Gladstonian policy. The policy of Home Rule is a policy of absolute and unrestricted trust; the safeguards are based on distrust. There is something to be said for generous confidence, and something also for distrustful prudence; there is nothing ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... of mysticism. But pure wit is akin to Puritanism; to the perfect and painful consciousness of the final fact in the universe. Very briefly, the man who sees the consistency in things is a wit—and a Calvinist. The man who sees the inconsistency in things is a humorist—and a Catholic. However this may be, Bernard Shaw exhibits all that is purest in the Puritan; the desire to see truth face to face even if it slay us, the high impatience with irrelevant sentiment or obstructive symbol; the constant effort to keep the ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... capriciously even, Laura, an inexplicable spirit of inconsistency besetting her, was a very different woman from the one who an instant before had spoken so gravely of the seriousness of marriage. She hesitated a moment before answering Jadwin, her head on one side, looking at the rose leaf ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... been formally inaugurated in New Caledonia or British Columbia, as it was soon to be known, and Douglas's authority as governor did not extend beyond Vancouver Island. But so, for that matter, were illegal all his actions on this journey; yet by an odd inconsistency of fact against law, they restored peace and order ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... jurist's honor. But these considerations do not wholly cover the case. All that the historian can say is that the President chose to take notice of the threats and acts of South Carolina and to ignore the threats and acts of Georgia, without ever being troubled by the inconsistency of his course. His political career affords many such illustrations of the arbitrary and even erratic character ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... opened his cloak, forgetting, with his characteristical inconsistency, that he showed ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... experimental and progressive. If his Epistles be arranged in chronological order, it will easily be seen that there is a splendid growth in his theology from first to last. He never, indeed, gave up the doctrines of his earlier life; there is no inconsistency between one part of his writings and another; but neither his experience nor his thinking ever stood still; he made his first doctrines the foundations on which he reared a structure which was rising higher and higher to the very close of ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... grunted; we took two or three playful blows, we were drenched with spray, uphill we laboured, we caught the moon in a net of rigging, away we plunged; we mounted to plunge again and again. I reproached the vessel in argument for some imaginary inconsistency. Memory was like a heavy barrel on my breast, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... character. It is only since it has been found that all these groups are susceptible of limitation, according to distinct categories of structure, that our nomenclature has assumed a more precise and definite significance. Even now there is still some inconsistency among zooelogists as to the use of special terms, arising from their individual differences in appreciating, structural features; but I believe it to be, nevertheless, true, that general orders, classes, etc., are not merely larger or smaller groups of the same kind, but are really based ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... bought by him was not perfect; but a week afterwards, if the fact was so, he would of his own accord recall imperfections in that which he had asserted to be perfect; and he would do this without any shame, without any apparent sense of inconsistency or weakness. Edwin noticed a similar trait in other grown-up persons, and it astonished him. It astonished him especially in his father, who, despite the faults and vulgarities which his fastidious son could find in him, always impressed Edwin as a strong man, a man with the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... people have most inconsistently fallen of enslaving a portion of their brethren of mankind,—for 'God hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth,'—it is manifestly the duty of all Christians who enjoy the light of the present day, when the inconsistency of slavery both with the dictates of humanity and religion has been demonstrated and is generally seen and acknowledged, to use their honest, earnest, and unwearied endeavors to correct the errors of former ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... also to its composition and presidency. The impossibility of such a judiciary system in antiquity is clear from its presupposing the Book of the Law as its basis, from its co-ordination of priests and Levites, and also from its actual inconsistency with incidental notices, particularly in Isaiah and the older prophets (down to Jeremiah xxvi.), in which it everywhere is taken for granted as a thing of course that the rulers are also at the same time the natural judges. Moreover, Chronicles ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... should be received in a very different manner from that in which she had been treated on her former visit. She laughed, and said, "that she should be entertained by observing the change which a few thousand pounds more or less could produce in Lady Stock's behaviour." Yet, such is the inconsistency or the weakness of human wishes, that the very attentions which our heroine knew were paid merely to her fortune, and not to her merit, flattered her vanity; and she observed, with a strange mixture of pain and pleasure, that there was a marked difference ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... he took the ground that Austria should be permitted to proceed to aggressive measures against Servia without interference from any other Power, even though, as was inevitable, the humiliation of Servia would destroy the status of the Balkan States and threaten the European balance of power. The inconsistency between Germany's claim that it could give Austria a carte blanche to proceed against Servia and agree to support its action with the sword of Germany, and the other contention that neither Russia nor any European State had any right to interfere on ...
— The Evidence in the Case • James M. Beck
... has, as it were, stereotyped the true date of the journey to Canterbury, I shall clear away another stumbling-block, still more insurmountable to Tyrwhitt than his first difficulty of the "halfe cours" in Aries, viz. the seeming inconsistency in statements (1.) and (2.) in the following lines of the prologue to the Man of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 79, May 3, 1851 • Various
... for the abandonment of their policy and the abdication of the Government. The partial removal already made caused great chagrin. The report, at first, was hardly credited in British political circles, and, when confirmed, was construed into inability, inconsistency, and concession by the Administration, and a sign that things were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... unanimously wearing that expression of remarkable virtue which seems always to visit, when he goes to church, the average good fellow who is no better than he should be. I became, myself, filled with this same decorous inconsistency, and was singing the hymn, when I caught sight of John Mayrant. What lady was he with? It was just this that most annoyingly I couldn't make out, because the unlucky disposition of things hid it. I caught myself craning my neck and singing the hymn simultaneously and with no difficulty, because ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... be truly glad they have made the order, notwithstanding its inconsistency; and let us rest perfectly confident the police are glad, too. Because there is no personal peril in arresting boys, provided they be of the small kind, and the reporters will have to laud their performances just as loyally as ever, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that? His own people who objected to gaming, when it involved the loss of their servants' liveries. But they had no such scruples when it came to their own pleasure. Therefore, for their own pleasure, careless of the inconsistency, they had established a very fine place of their own just outside the boundaries of the foreign Concession. Lawson had heard of the place before—the most famous, the most notorious on the China Coast. Kept by the son of a parson, so he had been ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... Ha, ha, ha! [Resuming her former attitude.] As I was remarking, I'm a mass of inconsistency. On the stage the embodiment ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... she said bitterly, then added with feminine inconsistency, "Go on, Dan, be a darling. Fix it so I can speak to him without the old man ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... secret gifts. He remembered how he had worshiped him even while the pious padres at San Jose were endeavoring to eliminate this terrible poison from his blood and combat his hereditary instinct in his conflicts with his school-fellows. And it was a part of this inconsistency that, riding away from the scene of his first bloodshed, his eyes were dimmed with moisture, not for his victim, but for the one being who he believed had impelled ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... children admittedly are unready; an acceptance of new things on popular report, without scientific basis, and a lack of courage to maintain the truth for its own sake, in the face of so-called authority, and a craving to be modern. At the root of all this inconsistency and possibly its cause, is the lack of a guiding policy or aim, the lack of belief in the scientific or psychological basis of education, and consequently the want of that strong belief in absolute truth which helps the teacher to ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... young people of ardent dispositions, he seemed to forget, that when a victory is enjoyed, a defeat must be endured; and that before any one can rejoice in taking a scalp, some one must be rendered miserable or lifeless by losing it. The remarks of the hunter, respecting the inconsistency of such customs with the peaceful principles of religion, especially the solemnities of a dying hour, had not been made altogether in vain; yet still he dwelt on the image of Oseola grasping his scalping-knife, ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... generalities and abstract propositions, and who became the most strenuous and violent of conservatives. But there is an interval when, as the quarrel with the Colonies went on, Burke was as revolutionary as Washington. The inconsistency is not as flagrant as it seems. He had been brought forward by the party of measured propriety and imperative moderation, of compromise and unfinished thought, who claimed the right of taxing, but refused to employ it. When ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... coarse material such as domestic servants wear, the stockinged foot that peeped at me beneath its hem (her shoes were drying on the hearth) was clad in a silk so fine that I could catch, through it, the gleam of the white flesh beneath. From this apparent inconsistency I deduced that she was of educated tastes, but poor—probably a governess, or, more likely still, taking her hands into consideration, with their long, prehensile fingers, a teacher of music, and ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United States." Only in flagrant violation of these safeguards to the nation's liberty, can any religious observance be enforced by civil authority. But the inconsistency of such action is no greater than is represented in the symbol. It is the beast with lamb-like horns—in profession pure, gentle, and ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... change in us, and well for the child who can defy such a changeable authority, which not only unsettles but breaks up character anew when it is just at the beginning of the formative period. Neglect is better than this, and fear of inconsistency of authority makes the best parents often jealous of arbitrariness in teachers. Only thus can we develop general habits of will and bring the child to know general maxims of conduct inductively, and ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... earthly controul, he is supposed to be also above earthly descent, and therefore, as a natural consequence, he sometimes styles himself the sole ruler of the world and the Son of Heaven. But that no inconsistency might appear in the grand fabric of filial obedience the Emperor, with solemn ceremony at the commencement of every new year, makes his prostrations before the Empress Dowager, and on the same day he demands a repetition of the same homage ...
— 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
... Christian, blush! for e'en the dark, Untutored heathen see Thy inconsistency; and, lo! They scorn thy ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... knew. I cannot describe him as the faithful son, the tender father, the true friend, the man of large humanity and lofty honesty he really was, without stepping too far within the sacred circle of his domestic life. To me, there was no inconsistency in his nature. Where the careless reader may see only the cynic and the relentless satirist, I recognize his unquenchable scorn of human meanness and duplicity,—the impatient wrath of a soul too frequently disappointed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... equal respect for the doctrines of Buddhism and Christianity. "But how can you," said the principal, "with your superior education and intelligence, reconcile yourself thus to halt between two opinions, and submit to the inconsistency of professing an equal belief in two conflicting religions?" "Do you see," replied the subtle chief, laying his hand on the arm of the other, and directing his attention to a canoe, with a large spar as an outrigger lashed alongside, in which a fisherman was just ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... arisen, and on those which may be due to a more northern and more southern extraction respectively. Suffice it to say that the Romance of the Round Table, far less vivid and brilliant, far ruder as a work of skill and art, has more of the innocence, the emotion, the transparency, the inconsistency of childhood. Its political action is less specifically Christian than that of the rival scheme, its individual more so. It is more directly and seriously aimed at the perfection of man. It is more free from gloss and varnish; it tells its own tale ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... sacramental service that the Church puts the significant prayer, "Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid; Cleanse the thoughts in our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit." Inconsistency in adults is far too well recognised to need proof. In children it is even more obvious, and for this reason that, looked at aright, it is the faculty of maintaining the general health of the soul, spite of local morbid conditions—a ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... not a thing to boast about and be proud of, since the most degraded savage has that —and, like the best of us, has nothing higher. To speak plainly, we despise all reverences and all objects of reverence which are outside the pale of our own list of sacred things. And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked when other people despise and defile the things which are holy to us. Suppose we should meet with a paragraph like the following, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... nor individual," said he, "can in any noble sense succeed, with such rotten inconsistency woven into its life. It was this shoddy in the garment of our Goddess of Liberty, which has occasioned the rent which those needles there"—pointing to some bayonets—"must mend. And it is this ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... This fundamental inconsistency penetrates the whole system even down to its practical applications. Christian Science denies the testimony of the senses as to sickness and yet accepts them as to health. It goes further than this, it accepts the testimony of the senses of ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... acknowledged the difficulty of fixing any general plan; but he lays down two salutary rules, which often afforded relief and support to the distressed Christians. Though he directs the magistrates to punish such persons as are legally convicted, he prohibits them, with a very humane inconsistency, from making any inquiries concerning the supposed criminals. Nor was the magistrate allowed to proceed on every kind of information. Anonymous charges the emperor rejects, as too repugnant to the equity of his government; and he strictly requires, for the conviction ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... various, so authoritative, astonished a corrupt age; and the treasury trembled at the name of Chatham, through all her classes of venality. Corruption imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and talked much of the inconsistency of his glory and much of the ruin of his victories; but the history of his country, and the calamities of the enemy, answered and ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... No; to reject either would be to reject all; it belonged to God alone to reconcile these contradictious. Between infinite and finite can be no ratio; and the consistency of the Creator implies the inconsistency of the creature. ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... with Nant was thirty-six hours of age, free once more to humour the dictates of his own sweet will, to go on to Nimes (his professed objective) or to the devil if he liked. A freedom which, consistent with the native inconsistency of man, he exercised by electing to stop over in Nant for another day or two, at least; assuring himself that he found the town altogether charming, more so even than Meyrueis—and sometimes believing this fiction for as much as twenty ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... opinion that expresses very rigid hostility to divorce and little practical opposition to lax sex relations. The low attitude toward the sex element in marriage and the coarse viewpoint disclosed by conversation often surprise the country visitor who is not acquainted with the occasional inconsistency of rural ethics. Judging the standing of married life by infrequent divorces and rather early marriage, he is painfully disconcerted to discover that the marriage ideal is nevertheless mean and lacking ...
— Rural Problems of Today • Ernest R. Groves
... prepared to sympathise with him when exposed to the wiles of Francisco—the Iago of the piece. But, unfortunately, the scene is not merely a digression in a constructive sense, but involves a psychological inconsistency. The gallant soldier contrives to make himself thoroughly contemptible. He is represented as excessively uxorious, and his passion takes the very disagreeable turn of posthumous jealousy. He has instructed Francisco to murder the wife whom he adores, in case ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... it came out in the evidence that he had called on Jeffrey at his chambers more than once. There is no denying that. But, mark you!" Mr. Marchmont added emphatically, "that does not cover the inconsistency of the will. There is nothing in the second will to suggest that Jeffrey intended materially to increase the ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... this extent that the sages had not probably any conscious purpose of according a relative reality to the phenomenal world, but in spite of regarding Brahman as the highest reality they could not ignore the claims of the exterior world, and had to accord a reality to it. The inconsistency of this reality of the phenomenal world with the ultimate and only reality of Brahman was attempted to be reconciled by holding that this world is not beside him but it has come out of him, it is maintained in him and it will ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... story is said to have been painted on a robe, or coverlet; because it was delineated upon a Pharos: that word being equivocal, and to be taken in either sense. And here I cannot but take notice of the inconsistency of the Greeks, who make Theseus a partaker in this history; and suppose him to have been acquainted with Ariadne. If we may credit Plutarch[225], Theseus, as soon as he was advanced towards manhood, went, by the advice of his ...
— A New System; or, an Analysis of Antient Mythology. Volume II. (of VI.) • Jacob Bryant
... curiosity to be raised in the unprivileged younger sisters. To Catherine's simple feelings, this odd sort of reserve seemed neither kindly meant, nor consistently supported; and its unkindness she would hardly have forborne pointing out, had its inconsistency been less their friend; but Anne and Maria soon set her heart at ease by the sagacity of their "I know what"; and the evening was spent in a sort of war of wit, a display of family ingenuity, on one side in the mystery of an affected secret, on the other of undefined ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... have been at this time that Carbo first showed his dissatisfaction with the party, of which he had almost been the accepted leader. If he declined to accompany his colleagues on this new and untried path, the first step in his conversion to the party of the optimates betrays no inconsistency with his former attitude; for he could maintain with justice that the proposal for enfranchising Italy was not a popular measure either in ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the old names of the days of the week, while he allowed the names of the months, as set down in the Republican calendar, to remain. He commenced by ordering the Moniteur to be dated "Saturday," such a day of "Messidor." "See," said he one day, "was there ever such an inconsistency? We shall be laughed at! But I will do away with the Messidor. I will efface all the inventions of ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... gives no judgment on the fact, and we have to form our own estimate. But it is not to be estimated as if it had occurred five or six centuries later. The family of Jacob was not so fenced off, nor was its treasure of revelation so complete, as afterwards. We may be fairly sure that Joseph felt no inconsistency between his ancestral faith, which had become his own in his trials, and this union. He was risking a great deal; that is certain. Whether the venture ended well or ill, we know not. Only we may be very sure that a marriage in which a common faith is not a strong bond of union lacks ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... it not; For all once minded such perplexity It doth create to puzzled reason, that She sayes and unsayes, do's she knows not what. Why then should we the worlds infinity Misdoubt, because when as we contemplate Its nature, such strange inconsistency And unexpected sequels, ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... With the impulsive inconsistency which, in spite of his shrewdness, sometimes marked his conduct, Jones alternately demanded a court-martial for Simpson and recommended him to the command of the Ranger, he himself hoping for a more important vessel; it was Jones's ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... unintelligible to me, than the passages now in question. It would, I am aware, be quite fashionable to dismiss them at once as Platonic jargon. But this I cannot do with satisfaction to my own mind, because I have sought in vain for causes adequate to the solution of the assumed inconsistency. I have no insight into the possibility of a man so eminently wise, using words with such half-meanings to himself, as must perforce pass into no meaning to his readers. When in addition to the motives thus suggested by my own reason, I bring into distinct remembrance ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... now came back with more persuasive power; but to the envoys whom they sent the stern answer was returned that he was under a vow to deal with the Christians as Godfrey and his fellows had dealt with the Saracens. Yet, conscious or unconscious of the inconsistency of his words with the oath which he professed to have sworn, he promised them his mercy if they would at once surrender the city. The besieged resolved to trust the word of the conqueror, as they could not resist his power. The ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... which, without inconsistency, he cannot fail to offer? As prosecuting attorney for the Darringtons he would be recreant to his client, if he ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... all. Plainly this rascal Ho- bart had saved some provisions from the wreck, upon which he had been subsisting ever since. The steward had pro- vided for himself, while all around him were dying of starvation. Detestable wretch! This accounts for the inconsistency of his well-to-do looks and ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... as if they could never be sufficiently stated, unless written in the Liquor wherewith Witches use to write their Covenants; and that he who becomes an Author at such a time, had need be fenced with Iron, and the Staff of a Spear. The unaccountable Frowardness, Asperity, Untreatableness, and Inconsistency of many Persons, every Day gives a visible Exposition of that passage, An evil spirit from the Lord came upon Saul; and Illustration of that Story, There met him two possessed with Devils, exceeding fierce, so ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... cannot think, from what I know of you, that you will be long in following my example. Let us forgive one another. Fate has thrown us together, and we must not afford a malicious world the spectacle of our inconsistency, or the satisfaction of seeing us quarrel, after so many years ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... the discredit with which Pleydell had treated it. 'Assuredly,' thought Sampson to himself, 'he is a man of erudition, and well skilled in the weighty matters of the law; but he is also a man of humorous levity and inconsistency of speech, and wherefore should he pronounce ex cathedra, as it were, on the hope expressed by worthy Madam Margaret ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... they are obliged to condemn, have thought fit to renew the Company's old order against contracting private debts in future. They begin by rewarding the violation of the ancient law; and then they gravely reenact provisions, of which they have given bounties for the breach. This inconsistency has been well exposed.[51] But what will you say to their having gone the length of giving positive directions for contracting the debt which they ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... discipline the mind of a thinker, or reconcile him to the weakness, the inconsistency of his understanding; and a still more laborious task for him to conquer his passions, and learn to seek content, instead of happiness. Good dispositions, and virtuous propensities, without the light of the Gospel, produce eccentric characters: comet-like, they are always in extremes; while revelation ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... previous chapter I spoke of social life among colored people; so there is no need to take it up again here. But there is one thing I did not mention: among Negroes themselves there is the peculiar inconsistency of a color question. Its existence is rarely admitted and hardly ever mentioned; it may not be too strong a statement to say that the greater portion of the race is unconscious of its influence; yet this influence, though silent, is ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... 1774, Vol. XVII., p. 65, which adds: "This vote of rejection was heavily censured. The opposition cried out at the inconsistency of the House, who but a few days ago received a petition from this very man, in this very character; and now, only because they chose to exert their power in acts of injustice and contradiction, totally refuse to receive anything from him, as not duly qualified. But ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... be 'examined with the utmost diligence,' and, together with the grievances presented by the princes against the Pope and the hierarchy, should be made the subject of a representation to the Council now demanded. But the inconsistency that lurked in this decree caught Luther's eye and aroused his suspicion. It was scandalous, he declared in a paper upon it, that the Emperor and the princes should issue 'contradictory orders.' They ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... in his argument Ricardo constantly assumes that his 'natural price' will also be the real price of labour. The assumption that the labourers' wages tend to a minimum is a base for his general arguments. The inconsistency, if there be one, is easily intelligible. Ricardo agreed with Malthus that, though the standard might be raised, and though a rise was the only way to improvement, the chances of such a rise were not encouraging. Improved wages, as he says,[346] might ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... a slight inconsistency here. The conversation is represented as taking place in the ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... greater part of this narrative an anthropomorphic deity, with little that is specially characteristic of her solar functions. Here, however, it is plainly the sun itself which witholds its light and leaves the world to darkness. This inconsistency, which has greatly exercised the native theologians, is not ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... broad-shouldered athlete, masquerading in her sweet name. Boys or men of all shapes and sizes squeaking or bawling out the tender and pathetic lines of Shakespeare's heroines, and no joys of scenery to distract the playgoer from the uncouth inconsistency! At first sight it would seem that the Elizabethan playgoer's lot ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... positive and undeniable evidences of coherence, as antecedent and consequent, though we are occasionally perplexed by inconsistencies of detail. To deal with these latter, is a portion of the duties of a critic; but he is not to treat the Iliad as if inconsistency prevailed every where throughout its parts; for coherence of parts—symmetrical antecedence and consequence—is discernible throughout the larger half of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... like a round "o," "I have asked you to come here to inform you of this. Your highly respected father has appealed by letter and by word of mouth to the Marshal of the Nobility begging him to summon you, and to lay before you the inconsistency of your behaviour with the rank of the nobility to which you have the honour to belong. His Excellency Alexandr Pavlovitch, justly supposing that your conduct might serve as a bad example, and considering that mere persuasion on his part would not be sufficient, ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... tablet erected to the memory of Granville Sharpe, by the African Institution of London, in 1816; upon the marble was a long inscription, recapitulating many of the deeds of this benevolent man, and from which I copied the following:—"He aimed to rescue his native country from the guilt and inconsistency of employing the arm of freedom to rivet the fetters of bondage, and establish for the negro race, in the person of Somerset, the long-disputed rights of human nature. Having in this glorious cause triumphed over the combined resistance of interest, prejudice, and pride, he took his ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... It was a curious inconsistency in the mind of Ida Locke which had prompted her to write in that red-covered note-book just what she had written. No one would have guessed the secret strain of introspection in her, nor guessed the impulse which led her to put into writing her hidden life. Unless, indeed, that introspection and ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... much inconsistency in the passages of the poem in which the Vanars are spoken of, which seems to point to two widely different legends. The Vanars are generally represented as semi-divine beings with preternatural powers, living in houses and eating and drinking like men sometimes as here, as monkeys pure and ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... reason, when any incongruous ideas occur in the trains of imagination, which compose our dreams; we cannot compare them with our previous knowledge of nature and reject them; whence arises the perpetual inconsistency of our sleeping trains of ideas; and whence in our dreams we never feel the sentiment of novelty; however different the ideas, which present themselves, may be from the usual ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... the greatest pleasure I could give him was in the frequent use of them. Perhaps he thought it would seem like an empty parade of learning in one who so confessedly possessed it, to deal in the strange words of another tongue, and consequently rejected them, while, with an innocent inconsistency, characteristic of the man, it never occurred to him that there was any thing, either in the quaintness of his dialect or the occupations of his leisure, which might subject him to the same imputation ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was favourably disposed towards him and the monarchical movement. It can well be imagined, therefore, how intense was his surprise when he later received a warning from the Japanese Government against the resuscitation of the monarchy in China. When this inconsistency in the Marquis's actions was called in question in the Japanese House of Representatives, the ex- Premier absolutely denied the truth of the statement attributed to him by the Japanese papers, without any show of hesitancy, and thus ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... of style, could adhere to,—was soon abandoned, and there is in most of Sheridan's own papers a finesse and ingenuity of allusion, which only the most cultivated part of his readers could fully enjoy. For instance, in exposing the inconsistency of Lord North, who had lately consented in a Committee of the whole House, to a motion which he had violently opposed in the House itself,—thus "making (says Sheridan) that respectable assembly disobey its own orders, and the members ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... himself and Mr AEsop, who overheard him, that as yet the grapes were unripe. The story, or any allusion to it, seldom fails to excite a smile. I, too, laugh when I hear it; but not so much at Reynard's inconsistency as at his wit. The faculty of discovering grave defects in that which we have failed to obtain is one for which we cannot be too thankful. It is a source of infinite comfort in this comfortless world—a principle which enables both parties in every ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... impeachment and trial of his companions, were carried on at the trial of Lord Kenmure. The unhappy nobleman replied in few and touching words, and, in a voice which could not be heard, pleaded guilty; an inconsistency, to express it in the mildest terms, of which he afterwards ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... nationalities, on principles of justice and compromise. He had a happy faculty of adapting himself to the decided current of public opinion even at the risk of leaving himself open to a charge of inconsistency, and he was just as ready to adopt the measures of his opponents as he was willing to enter their ranks and steal away some prominent men whose support he thought ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot
... theme the idea is not entirely novel, for Ibsen, in the Wild Duck, had said that happiness may be based upon a lie. As usual, Galds provided his own antidote, for, with what appeared a strange inconsistency, and was really a desire for balance, the lesson of the very drama, Los condenados, is that "man lives surrounded by lies, and can find salvation only by embracing the truth, and accepting expiation." ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... evidence of the great doctrine of brotherhood and equality. I verily believe that those who were the true lovers of liberty did all they could at that time. In their debates in the Convention they denounced slavery—they protested against the hypocrisy and inconsistency of a nation declaring such glorious truths, and then trampling them underfoot by enslaving the poor and oppressed, because he had a skin not colored like their own; as though a man's skin should make any difference in the recognition of his rights, any ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... increase your distress,' said the surgeon, after a short pause, 'by making any comment on what you have just said, or appearing desirous to investigate a subject you are so anxious to conceal; but there is an inconsistency in your statement which I cannot reconcile with probability. This person is dying to-night, and I cannot see him when my assistance might possibly avail; you apprehend it will be useless to-morrow, and yet you would ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... opportunity not only of commencing the fight, but even of standing their ground. Thus being driven back to the Red Rocks, (there they pitched their camp,) they suppliantly sue for peace; for the obtaining of which they were sorry, from the natural inconsistency of their minds, before the Roman garrison was drawn ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... hard to move from a path which, after long reflection, he had decided to be the right one. He looked at politics judicially, and was so little of a party man that on several occasions he was accused (quite wrongfully, as I hope hereafter to prove) of gross inconsistency. The position of leadership, which he won so early and kept so long, he held by sheer force of giant intelligence, sleepless industry, and an integrity which no man ever doubted. But he was above ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... thing to do, and must certainly have resulted in disaster had not poor, unhappy Admiral Kamimura been morally chained down, and prevented from taking effective measures against the raiders, by a stringent order that he was to hold the Strait of Korea at all costs. Yet, such is human inconsistency, notwithstanding the above stringent order, which bound the unfortunate admiral hand and foot, and effectually precluded his pursuit of the raiding ships, he was so severely blamed by "the man in the street" for the damage done that a mob actually attacked and wrecked his house! This, of ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... in the new existence we have chosen for you, an apparent inconsistency with the life you have hitherto been leading. I confess that I was myself at first rather startled by it, but you heard, did you not, what was said to you? The position of a workman is no longer what it used ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... entirely,' said His Excellency, in after seasons, with a twinkle in his eye. 'My inconsistency must always have been distasteful to such a ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... naturally enough rebelled against the injustice of this treatment, which deprived him of the only comfort which he had received for submitting to a confinement in other respects irksome. He accused Queen Mary and Catherine Seyton (for concerning the opinion of Dame Fleming he was indifferent) of inconsistency in being displeased with him on account of the natural consequences of an order of their own. Why did they send him to hear this overpowering preacher? The Abbot Ambrosius, he recollected, understood the weakness of their Popish cause better, when he enjoined him ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott |
