"Reasonableness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... better, infinitely better, that you should be wholly uninterested in pictures, and uninformed respecting them, than that you should just know enough to detect blemishes in great works,—to give a color of reasonableness to presumption, and an appearance of acuteness to misunderstanding. Above all, I would plead for this so far as the teaching of these schools may be addressed to the junior Members of the University. Men employed in any kind of manual labor, by which they must live, are not likely to take up the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that it would be best to leave Miss Lou to herself for a time, that she might think over and become reconciled to the need and reasonableness of their action, but Mrs. Baron considerately sent up her dinner by Zany. The unhappy girl shook her head and motioned the ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... that has not, with its grime and its nastiness. In the dream that he dreamed the difference between the woman who had adornment and the other sad one back there in the cottage was as nothing. The irritating paradox of life was reconciled: there was great reasonableness in things, and he had ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... own denial of the possibility of a Miracle, on nothing stronger than "the nature of" his own "antecedent convictions." Thus, the question becomes merely a personal one between Mr. Baden Powell and the Apostles of CHRIST. The reasonableness of the "antecedent convictions" in the one case have to be set against the reasonableness of the "antecedent convictions" in the other. Either party, (according to this view,) has its own "previous belief and assumptions;" which, in the one case, are known to have produced conviction; in the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... suddenly developed a new and fighting resolve in him. If there was one type in Oxford he feared and detested more than another it was the Falloden type. To him, a Hellene in temper and soul—if to be a Hellene means gentleness, reasonableness, lucidity, the absence of all selfish pretensions—men like Falloden were the true barbarians of the day, and the more able the ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... yet if it wishes to get a volume of pure gas, it must separate the elements. The human soul was an atom that could unite with God only as a simple element. The French mystics showed in their mysticism the same French reasonableness; the sense of measure, of logic, of science; the allegiance to form; the transparency of thought, which the French mind has always shown on its surface like a shell of nacre. The mystics were in substance rather more logical than the schoolmen and much more artistic ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... had always been accustomed to cheerfulness, good humour, and serenity; and this habit now returned to visit me at the bottom of my dungeon. No sooner did my contemplations take this turn, than I saw the reasonableness and possibility of tranquillity and peace; and my mind whispered to me the propriety of showing, in this forlorn condition, that I was superior to all my persecutors. Blessed state of innocence and self-approbation! The sunshine of conscious integrity ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... where I can find a better place than just here, to make mention of one or two other things, which to me seem important, as in printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the whole story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe. For this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... irritated frown, her mouth resolutely unsmiling. Under one arm she carried a roll of cheap white lawn. Annabel frequently commented on the uselessness of buying expensive materials for a girl who grew as rapidly as Diantha, though the reasonableness of this contention was slightly discounted by her recognized ability to demonstrate that the cream of things was invariably her portion, while an all-wise Providence had obviously designed the skimmed milk for the ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... says Sidgwick, [Footnote: The Methods of Ethics, Book I, chapter vi, Sec 1.] "is to render scientific—i.e., true, and as far as possible systematic—the apparent cognitions that most men have of the rightness or reasonableness of conduct, whether the conduct be considered as right in itself, or as the means to some end conceived as ultimately reasonable." The use here of the word "cognitions" calls our attention to the fact that, when men say, "this is right, that is wrong," they mean ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... Tonson, presumably because Dryden invariably was in debt to Tonson. On one occasion Dryden asked for an advance of money, but Tonson refused upon the grounds that the poet's overdraft already exceeded the limits of reasonableness. Thereupon Dryden penned the following lines and sent them to Tonson with the message that he who wrote these ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... perform their work. The motives and sentiments of the various organized groups will govern the action of the wage earners, and produce almost the same result under any system of wage payment. The state of industrial relations, the satisfaction the workers feel in their position, the reasonableness shown by the different groups, the intelligence or ignorance of labor leadership—these and similar other factors will, at bottom, govern the effort put forth by the wage earners. These are the matters to which all who ...
— The Settlement of Wage Disputes • Herbert Feis
... this, to wonder whether Henry More, the retired, and so far untried, student of Cambridge, would have been able thus to meet the alternations of suffering which he imagines? It is one thing to see reasonableness, another to be reasonable when objects have become circumstances. Would he, then, by spiritual might, have risen indeed above bodily torture? It is possible for a man to arrive at this perfection; it is absolutely necessary that a man should some day or other ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... would not allow its reasonableness. He took a gulp of coffee before saying, uncandidly, "I can't make out what you're driving at, mother. But, fortunately, there's no hurry about your meaning. The thing's in the only shape we could possibly give it, and I am satisfied to leave ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Horble in his tone of wounded reasonableness, "you can make a power of mischief between me and Madge. I don't think it comes very well from you to do it; I don't think anything that calls himself a man would do it; least of all a genelman like yourself, whom we all respeck and look up to. Captain Cole, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... ignore the creeping cold of a country house. Nan wore her gown of the morning, and her stout shoes. Indeed she had to, Raven reminded himself, when he was about to commend her for good taste. She had brought only her little bag. Nan was now sweet reasonableness itself. No sleepiest kitten, claws in drawn, could have been softer. Amelia was baiting her, asking her, with a reproving implication that she ought not to have been in a position to know, about the life over seas, and Nan was answering by the card, ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... ground, whereas the fern loves a deep dryish soil. The attributes of the divining-rod were fully credited; the discovery of the philosopher's stone was daily hoped for; and electricity, magnetism, and other remarkable and misconceived phenomena were appealed to as proof of the reasonableness of their expectations. Until such phenomena were traced to their sources, imaginary and often mystical causes were assigned to them, for the same reason that, in the wilds of a partially discovered ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... being social, resists a virgin egotism and forbids it to express itself publicly, no matter how well grounded it may be in transcendental logic and in animal instinct. Social convention is necessarily materialistic, since the beginning of all moral reasonableness consists in taming the transcendental conceit native to a living mind, in attaching it to its body, and bringing the will that thought itself absolute down to the rank of animals and men. Otherwise no man would acknowledge another's rights ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... therefore, I believe in the immortality of the soul, not in the sense in which I accept the demonstrable truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God's work. Such a belief, relating to regions quite inaccessible to experience, cannot of course be clothed in terms of definite and tangible meaning. For the experience which alone can give ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... power of a State to prescribe the qualifications for admission to the bar of its own courts is unaffected by the XIV. Amendment, and this court can not inquire into the reasonableness or propriety of the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... slave-trade; and our work being to induce them to raise and sell cotton, instead of capturing and selling their fellow-men, our errand appears quite natural; and as they all have clear ideas of their own self- interest, and are keen traders, the reasonableness of the proposal is at once admitted; and as a belief in a Supreme Being, the Maker and Ruler of all things, and in the continued existence of departed spirits, is universal, it becomes quite appropriate to explain that we possess a Book containing a Revelation of the will of Him to whom ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... several hours' cool and calculated thought, at midnight; that I caught the murdered man unawares, drove the knife into his body, and then ran away and left it there. Now, think of this, gentlemen, and remember that my life or death depends upon the reasonableness of it, depends upon this link in the chain of circumstantial evidence. It has been urged again and again that whatever I am, I am not a fool, that I am capable of careful and connected thought, that ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... be reckoned with that such Impressions and Comments, stated absolutely and without consideration for divergent Impressions and Comments, may seem, as a friend who has read some of them points out, to lack explicit reasonableness. I trust they are not lacking in implicit reasonableness. They spring, even when they seem to contradict one another, from a central vision, and from a central faith too deeply rooted to care to hasten unduly towards the most ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... effect upon the masculine character and comfort if this shyness should become general, as it may in a contingency that is already on the horizon? We refer, of course, to the suggestion, coming from various quarters, that women should propose. The reasonableness of this suggestion may not lie on the surface; it may not be deduced from the uniform practice, beginning with the primitive men and women; it may not be inferred from the open nature of the two sexes (for the sake of argument two sexes must still be insisted ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... other peculiarities of India, you have to think out how your proposals will work. Democracies do not always think how things will work. Sir Henry Cotton made a speech that interested and struck me by its moderation and reasonableness. He made a number of remarks in perfect good faith about officials, which I received in a chastened spirit, for he has been for a very long time a very distinguished official himself. Therefore, he knows all about it. He went on to ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... taught, lowered it. It is, further, remarkable that the latter members of the Amati family pursued the same course as Andrea Amati (though in a less degree), after which they awoke, as it were, to the reasonableness of the example set by Gasparo, and gave us those instruments so highly thought of by the connoisseur, the form of which has much in common with that adopted by Niccolo Amati and perfected by ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... bore such external similarity to it, that it fell in with the old literary tastes. The evil effects which it subsequently produced in reference to religion were due only to the point of view which it ultimately induced. Like Locke's work on the reasonableness of Christianity, it stimulated intellectual speculation concerning revelation. By suggesting attempts to deduce a priori the necessary character of religious truths, it turned men's attention more than ever away from spiritual ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... the neutrality which she had proclaimed and with apparent reasonableness she was able to hold that the letter of the Triple Alliance did not compel her to enter the conflict. Laughing in her sleeve she could even give it out that her sympathetic neutrality would sufficiently ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... such speculation is not all idle. It serves to quicken within us the thought of how near the dead may be to us, to purify that thought, and to breathe upon our fevered hearts a consoling hope. And when I combine its intrinsic reasonableness with the spirit and spiritualism of Christianity, and that intuitive suggestion which springs up in so many souls, I can urge but faint objection to those who entertain it, and would, if possible, share and diffuse ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... Christ's ministry, was the reserve which, for some time, and upon some occasions at least, he used in declaring his own character, and his leaving it to be collected from his works rather than his professions. Just reasons for this reserve have been assigned. (See Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity.) But it is not what one would have expected. We meet with it in Saint Matthew's Gospel (chap. xvi. 20): "Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ." Again, and upon a different occasion, in Saint Mark's (chap. ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... justice taken away from men, while lies and ill-will prevailed, and brought such a mist before public affairs, that the offenders were not able to see the greatest mischiefs that can befall men. And as he was so bold, he seemed not to have kept himself out of danger, by speaking so freely; but the reasonableness of what he said moved men to regard him as having behaved himself with great manhood, and this at a proper time also, for which reason every one heard what he said with pleasure; and although they first took care of their own safety by keeping silent themselves, yet did they kindly receive ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... mounted his horse, turning from the contact of the white and black heads, admire the reasonableness of the Cecil who had never shown any fears for his safety, nor any tendency to run about the passages in her robe de chambre, though she was ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Spenser, preferred Tasso to Milton, and called the old English dramatists "mad and turbid mountebanks." In the same spirit he writes: "In the time of Pope it was all Horace, now it is all Claudian." He saw—what fanatics had begun to deny—that Pope was a great writer, and the "angel of reasonableness," the strong common sense of both was a link between them; but the expressions he uses during his controversy with Bowles look like jests, till we are convinced of his earnestness by his anger. "Neither time, nor distance, nor grief, nor age can ever diminish my veneration for him who is the ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... their ruins, and of the delicacy of which, as I said, that golden flower on its silver stalk or the golden honeycomb of Daedalus, might be taken as representative. In these metal-like structures of self-supporting polygons, locked so firmly and impenetrably together, with the whole mystery of the reasonableness [208] of the arch implicitly within them, there is evidence of a complete artistic command over weight in stone, and an understanding of the "law of weight." But over weight only; the ornament still seems to be not ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... the hopes that had been entertained gave poignancy to the sudden disappointment and grief, and the home children could not acquiesce in the dispensation with the same quiet reasonableness as those who had been so long separated from them as not to miss the gentle countenance, or the 'sweet toils, sweet cares, for ever gone.' Indeed Wilmet was physically much exhausted by her long hours of anxiety, and went about pale-cheeked and tear-stained, quietly attending ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... everybody—todo el mundo—that he must have had a real motive for making it. Gossip increases, instead of diminishing; and the emotions of Teodora, Don Julian, and himself are stirred to the point of nervous tensity. Don Julian, in spite of his own sweet reasonableness, begins subtly to wonder if there could be, by any possibility, any basis for his brother's vehemence. Don Severo's wife, Dona Mercedes, repeats the talk of the town to Teodora, and turns her imagination inward, till it falters in self-questionings. Similarly the ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton
... young friend, a policy like yours would decimate the House of Commons and abolish the House of Lords. Practical religion has a sweet reasonableness. We are all human, even if we are all gentlemen; ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... practical purposes, can receive no confirmation. If the far future is to be regulated by different principles, of what avail the knowledge of them, or how can they be intelligible to us, to whom are denied the circumstances necessary for their establishment, and for the demonstration of their reasonableness? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... lest he might run over somebody. It was strange to think that so much humane painstaking care and exertion was being introduced into the business of hanging people; that the most insane deed on earth was being committed with such an air of simplicity and reasonableness. The cars were running, and human beings sat in them as people always do, and they rode as people usually ride; and then there would ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... from it through negligent misunderstanding or wilful passion. Herein lies obligation: a man ought to act according to the Law of Reason, because he can as little refrain from assenting to the reasonableness and fitness of guiding his actions by it, as refuse his assent to a geometrical demonstration when he understands the terms. The original obligation of all is the eternal Reason of Things; the sanction of Rewards ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... neither came to fetch her, nor sent any writing to tell of the causes for his delay. The girl was fruitful of new reasons for his silence, and then grew a black fear which answered all doubts and, by its reasonableness, terrified her. Perhaps "Mister Jan" was ill—too ill even to write. He had but little strength—that she knew, and few friends—of that Joan was also aware, for he had told her so. Yet, surely, there were those, if only his servants, who might have written ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... showing that "being," and the cognate words, originally denoted merely physical perceptions. But so, probably, did all language. So did "spirit," so did "geist," so did "power," so did even "sweet reasonableness," and "the not us which makes for righteousness." Other perceptions or ideas have gradually come, and are now denoted by the words which at first denoted physical perceptions only. Why have not these last comers as good a ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... of course, deny the reasonableness of this plea; but neither could they ignore the inconveniences to themselves that would arise from its frank recognition. Between their base at Salonica and the troops which had advanced to Krivolak ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... policies within policies. It is not enough that you have set out to suppress something or to encourage something. You must follow his particular way. He is in terror of compromise and sees profligacy in sweet reasonableness. He knows the tragic failure of other movements with vacillating policies. This one must be saved at all costs. 'Twere better to smash the whole movement than proceed along undesirable lines. He would scorn victory that came through avenues not recognized by ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... perhaps it would not have been needed. Their story claims from us that sympathy which is the due of their exalted courage. But we cannot blame the government. Those who know what the condition of the country really was, must feel their inability to suggest, with any tolerable reasonableness, what else could have been done. They may regret so hard a necessity, but they will regret in silence. The king, too, was not without feeling. It was no matter of indifference to him that he found himself driven to such stern courses with his subjects; ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... communion, but he had not come before the session at all. She knew he had doubts concerning close communion, and she had heard him say that certain complications of predestination and free will did not appear reasonable to him. Marg'et Ann thought it very daring of him to exact reasonableness of those in spiritual high places. She would as soon have thought of criticising the Creator for making the sky blue instead of green as for any of His immutable decrees as set forth in the Confession of Faith. It did not prevent ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... certainly behaved like an escaped lunatic since early this morning, my good de Marmont," he said drily. "Don't you think that—as we shall have to mix again with our fellow-men presently—you might try to behave with some semblance of reasonableness." ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... The reasonableness of a test is not hard to be proved; but, perhaps, it must be allowed, that the proper ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... notwithstanding the reasonableness of old Morelli's objections, as politely obstinate as young lovers are to old fathers, when those old fathers condescend to reason with them instead of resorting to the more usual and summary process of turning them out of doors, and forbidding their ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... in circumstances of trouble and sorrow. We need not enter upon them particularly, but the thing that I desire to point out is that three times does the Psalmist take himself to task and question himself as to the reasonableness of the emotions that are surging in his soul, and checks these by higher considerations. Thrice he does it; twice in vain, for the trouble and anxiety come rolling back upon him in spite of the moment's respite, but the third ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Peter, but I see the reasonableness of them all, and promise—at least I promise to do ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... about by men who had already striven to preserve the rights of property acquired under the Clergy Reserve grants, rather than by those whose policy was little {39} short of spoliation. The propriety and reasonableness of all this was very generally recognized at the time, not merely by the supporters of MacNab and Macdonald, but also by their political opponents. A. A. Dorion, the Rouge leader, considered the alliance quite natural. Robert ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope
... intermittent or recurrent in its nature, the patient in the interval being in his right mind. The question of the presence or absence of a lucid interval frequently occurs where attempts are made to set aside wills made by persons having property. In these cases the law, from the reasonableness of the provisions of the will, may assume the existence of the lucid interval. A will made during a lucid interval is valid. When an attempt is made to set aside the provisions of a will on the ground of insanity in a person not previously ...
— Aids to Forensic Medicine and Toxicology • W. G. Aitchison Robertson
... this they will not do so long as they adhere to the notion that criticism belongs of right to the professional musician, and will eventually be handed over to him. As for the critic, he may recognize the naturalness and reasonableness of a final resort for judgment to the factor for whose sake art is (i.e., the public), but he is not bound to admit its unfailing righteousness. Upon him, so he be worthy of his office, weighs the duty of first determining whether the appeal is taken from a lofty purpose or a low ...
— How to Listen to Music, 7th ed. - Hints and Suggestions to Untaught Lovers of the Art • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... carriage and horses, and household furniture, in a very plain style, have cost me more than that. When I send you my account, either settled here, or to be settled there, I shall take the liberty of referring this article to the consideration of Congress. Its reasonableness has appeared to me so palpable, that I have presumed it would appear so to Congress, and have therefore kept up the expenses of my house at the current rate of nine thousand dollars a year. If my expectations should be thought unreasonable, I shall submit and immediately ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... asked the ministers of the North Carolina Synod for the reasons of the hope that is in them, or properly, for the proofs of their doctrines; and, agreeably to the last invitation given them, they might have had the opportunity of showing the reasonableness of their doctrines. Now as they have neglected to endeavor to convince us, why do they warn the people against us, especially since they are not willing to confront us in a public debate?" (42 f.) Henkel continues: ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... friendship one is grateful. No matter that it comes unsought, and comes not for the seeking. You do not discuss the reasonableness of your gratitude. You only know that your whole being bows with humility and utter thankfulness to him who thus crowns you monarch of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... hear of a prisoner having picks and shovels, and all the modern conveniences in his wardrobe to dig himself out with? Now I want to ask you—if you got any reasonableness in you at all—what kind of a show would THAT give him to be a hero? Why, they might as well lend him the key and done with it. Picks and shovels—why, they wouldn't furnish 'em ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... if it had not been already familiar in ages before his own. A censor born in a cottage, and accustomed to sleep upon straw, does not propose that men should return to the woods and the caves for shelter; he admits the reasonableness and the utility of what is already familiar; and apprehends an excess and corruption, only in the newest refinement ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... atrocity. We have but to fancy one out of the thousand statues of bronze or marble which it is proposed to erect to the memory of Sir Robert Peel in our great towns and cities, surmounted with a hat of marble or of bronze, to see, at a glance, the absurdity of the thing, and the reasonableness of the demand for a change. There is a very good bust of Chaucer, with a cap on, and there is a still more excellent bust of Lorenzo de Medici, which has also a cap; but we put the question to the most ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Grammar School an Hour a Day, and teaches Reading, Writing and Arithmetic with becoming Accuracy—It is hoped that the above Considerations, together with the healthy and convenient Situation of the Place, on a Pleasant and navigable River, in the midst of a plentiful Country; the Reasonableness of the Inhabitants in the Price of Board, and the easy Access from all Places, either by Land or Water will be esteemed by the considerate Public, as a sufficient Recommendation of this infant College, which (as it is erected upon ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... he believes and declares himself guilty of crimes of which he is as innocent as the child unborn. The history of the transaction we have been considering, affords a clear illustration of the truth and reasonableness of ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... speculation to excite notice in scientific circles. One of the curious features of the history is that it was Kant who first cited Wright's theory, pointed out its accordance with the appearance of the Milky Way, and showed its general reasonableness. But, at the time in question, the work of the philosopher of Konigsberg seems to have excited no more notice among his scientific ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... both saw the soundness and reasonableness of this counsel, and knew that their respective fathers would both concur in this opinion, though their own ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in 1826 covers a good deal of miscellaneous ground, including Moliere and Racine, Blair's Sermons ('not very substantial'), Tom Jones, Tomline's Life of Pitt, Waterland's Commentaries, Leslie on Deism, Locke's Defence of The Reasonableness of Christianity, which he finds excellent; Paradise Lost, Milton's Latin Poems and Epitaphium Damonis ('exquisite'), Massinger's Fatal Dowry ('most excellent'), Ben Jonson's Alchemist; Scott, including the Bride of Lammermoor ('a beautiful ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... that Lord Vargrave's absence from London had prevented his being prematurely mixed up, by false scruples of honour, in secessions which his judgment must condemn. He treated of the question in dispute with the most delicate address,—confessed the reasonableness of Lord Vargrave's former opposition to it; but contended that it was now, if not wise, inevitable. He said nothing of the justice of the measure he proposed to adopt, but much on the expediency. He concluded by offering to Vargrave, in the most ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tendency of want to cramp the noblest attitude. Poverty and misfortune had overhung her childhood and she had none of the pretty delusions about life that are supposed to be the crowning grace of girlhood. This very competence, which gave her a touching reasonableness, made Glennard's situation more difficult than if he had aspired to a princess bred in the purple. Between them they asked so little—they knew so well how to make that little do—but they understood also, and she especially did not for a moment let him forget, ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... type of the moderate anti-slavery sentiment was William Ellery Channing. In Channing was a blending of high moral ideals, intelligent views of human nature and society, an apostle's earnestness wedded with "sweet reasonableness," and a personal character of rare symmetry and beauty. He was an evolutionist and not a revolutionist. Foremost among the group of New England ministers who broadened and ripened out of the orthodoxy of their day, and were ostracized ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... the Coburg character has been described as the sound judgment and quiet reasonableness associated with the temperate blood of the race. Accordingly, we find the Duchess not only submitting with gentle resignation to misfortune, but rousing herself, as her brother might have done ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... her, in that deep, masterful tone which, like a true woman, she both loved and dreaded. "It's the height of reasonableness. Why, dear, the great primal reason of all things speaks through me. And I won't let you throw away a year of our love. Johnnie, it isn't as though we'd been neighbours, and grown up side by side. I came from the ends ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... it. I love you, my dear, and I want you to be happy. You will be, if only you can get the right point of view. Try! Won't you, dear?" As he finished speaking with this appeal, Hamilton leaned forward anxiously, pleadingly. Deep down in his heart he felt a glow of pride over the mildness and the reasonableness with which he had presented the case in its true light to ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... well-intentioned, but uninstructed and narrow-minded men, fallacious or thoroughly inconclusive arguments had been confidently used, to the detriment rather than to the advantage of the cause they had at heart. But at the very least, a certain acquiescence in the 'reasonableness of Christianity,' and a respect for its teaching, had been secured which could hardly be said to have been generally the case about the time when Bishop Butler began to write. Meanwhile the revived ardour of religion which had sprung up among Methodists and Evangelicals, ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... We are supposing three courses open to Destiny. One, to kill you, lawlessly—Destiny being notoriously lawless. Another to make you change your mind. A third to make me change mine. The reasonableness of suicide in the first case is obvious, if Death is not annihilation. I should catch you up. In the second, all the Hereafters in the Universe would be no worse for me than Life in the dark, without ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... of the land. If, they argue, there had been no Englishmen and Scotchmen to take large farms, the small holders would not have been swept away, and "driven like a wild goose on the mountain" to make room for them. Without for the present discussing the reasonableness of this plea, I merely record the simple fact that an English or Scotch farmer is unpopular from the beginning. Here and there such a one as Mr. Simpson may manage to live the prejudice down; but that he will have to encounter it on ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... of Penrod, this question was without meaning or reasonableness. It was within neither his power nor his desire to analyze the process by which the phrase had become offensive to him, and was now rapidly assuming the proportions of an outrage. He knew only that his gorge rose ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... Planchette's penetration; but while we sat in quiet expectation of the reply, which of course did not come, my friend's mother—a sober, middle-aged lady, habitually behaving herself with perfect reasonableness, and, moreover, without a spark of imagination (but that, indeed, was rather of course; belief in such supernatural agencies betokening, in my opinion, an absence of poetical imagination, as well as of spiritual faith), practical, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... know them in other things, and neglected that only in them, which chiefly tends to the Advancement of the Art of the Stage? Or is it that he wanted Discernment to see the Justness, and the Greatness, and the Harmony of their Designs, and the Reasonableness of those Rules upon which those Designs are founded? Or how come his Successors to have that Discernment which he wanted, when they fall so much below him in other things? How comes he to have been guilty of the grossest Faults in ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... was apprized of the Roman invasion."—Nixon's Parser, p. 123. "If I say, 'I gallopped from Islington to Holloway;' the verb is intransitive: if, 'I gallopped my horse from Islington to Holloway;' it is transitive."—Churchill's Gram., p. 238. "The reasonableness of setting a part one day in seven."—The Friend, Vol. iv, p. 240. "The promoters of paper money making reprobated this act."—Webster's Essays, p. 196. "There are five compound personal pronouns, which are derived from the five simple personal pronouns by adding to some ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... you may no doubt awaken a responsive echo in your own bosom. You are well aware, for example, that your knowledge of the Queens of England is culpably imperfect. You know you are never likely to go in steadily for the study of constitutional developments, and so are led to admit the reasonableness of tackling history from a lighter and more entertaining point of view. Again, as to the River Thames, one must really grant that a considerable amount of self-complacency and internal sunniness would result from the ability to ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... Discourse upon the Reasonableness of Men's having a Religion or Worship of God. This Piece met with many Answers, to which, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... the General Assemblies of the church of Scotland, which are binding as to matters of ecclesiastical jurisdiction; and the whole together forms a code of regulations, which is eminently distinguished for the reasonableness and practical good sense of its particular provisions, and which experience has shewn to be perfectly effectual for the important purpose intended. So much convinced indeed are the lower classes in Scotland of the benefits attending this system, that, where the parishes ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... no direct or traceable connection between Lady Waterham and the unknown woman whose property it had been. Jim was not shaken in his own private conviction (strengthened as it had been by his dream), but he was too hard-headed not to admit the reasonableness of Mr. Hendrick's arguments; and the more he heard of the tales that had been circulated, the more deeply he regretted his pride and misplaced confidence. He finally made no objection to Hendrick's proposal that the matter should be left in the hands of the Rev. Cooper Smith, who ...
— A Child of the Glens - or, Elsie's Fortune • Edward Newenham Hoare
... rates established by section 111(d)(1)(B) may be adjusted to insure that the rates for the additional distant signal equivalents resulting from such carriage are reasonable in the light of the changes effected by the amendment to such rules and regulations. In determining the reasonableness of rates proposed following an amendment of Federal Communications Commission rules and regulations, the copyright arbitration royalty panels shall consider, among other factors, the economic impact on copyright owners and users: *Provided*, That no adjustment in royalty rates shall be ...
— Copyright Law of the United States of America and Related Laws Contained in Title 17 of the United States Code, Circular 92 • Library of Congress. Copyright Office.
... the Eighteenth Amendment. And it would have, I think, an incomparably more favorable reception, from the start, than would a proposal of simple repeal. For the public could readily be brought to see the reasonableness of giving the nation a chance, through its representatives at Washington, to express its will on the subject from time to time, and the unreasonableness of binding generation after generation to helpless submission. The plea of majority rule ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... into the Wisdom or Reasonableness of representing the Torments of Hell to be Fire, and that Fire to be a Commixture of Flame and Sulphur; it has pleased God to let the Horror of those eternal Agonies about a lost Heaven, be laid before us by those Similitudes or Allegories, which are most moving to our Senses ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... different Protestant denominations were not followed by the Government. There was much correspondence between the Board and the Governor-General and his Council over the proposals. But it was on the whole amicable. The objections of one side were always met with reasonableness by the other, and a harmonious agreement was finally reached. The Governor-General forwarded the amended Charter to the Colonial Office with his approval and his advice that it should receive Royal sanction. The Board of the Royal Institution, ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... the port, to purchase refreshments, and procure shelter, I would, as soon as the wind would permit, in defiance of all their menaces, and all their force, go and anchor close to the town; that if at last I should find myself unable to compel them to comply with requisitions, the reasonableness of which could not be controverted, I would run the ship a-ground under their walls, and, after selling our lives as dearly as we could, bring upon, them the disgrace of having reduced a friend and ally to so dreadful an extremity. At this they seemed to be alarmed, as ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... reality in the past. Whether we have not lost much in the discontinuance of the old Acts and Apponencies, which at least assured that a young man should be required to stand up before a public audience to defend the reasonableness of his opinions, may fairly be doubted. The aim of the Dominican teachers was to turn out trained preachers furnished with all tricks of dialectic fence, and practised to extempore speaking on the most momentous subjects. Unfortunately the historian, ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... passage about the atonement escaped notice for twenty years, till a notable divine, Archbishop Magee, in entire ignorance of the suppression, quoted the passage from one of the earlier editions as a strong testimony to the reasonableness of the Scriptural doctrine of the atonement from a man whose intellectual capacity and independence were above all dispute. "Such," he says, "are the reflections of a man whose powers of thinking ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... belonged to the passing and not to the coming hour. Truth was abroad, felt the philosophers, and must prevail. Feudal privilege, oppression, vice and venality in government, the misery of the poor—all would slowly fade away. The human mind was never keener than in the eighteenth century; reasonableness, hope, and thoroughness characterized its activity. Natural science, metaphysics and historical studies made giant strides, while political theories of a dazzling splendor never equaled before nor since were rife on every side. Such ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... himself to study just exactly how these prejudices worked, to get at the nature and habits and strengths of each kind of prejudice, and to devise means for its treatment, destruction or neutralization. He had no great faith in the power of pure reasonableness; his psychological ideas were modern, and he had grasped the fact that the power of most of the great prejudices that strain humanity lies deeper than the intellectual level. Consequently he sought to bring himself ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... probably the sanest book that Chesterton has ever written. It is, I venture to think, the work that will gain for him immortality. It is a book on the greatest of themes, the reasonableness of the Christian religion. There have been many books written to attack the Christian religion, equally many to defend it, but Chesterton has made his apology for the religion on original grounds—the contradictories of the detractors of it. 'Orthodoxy' goes alone with Christ ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... drove homeward under the stars, well content with his attempts at keeping the peace, he thought wistfully of the touch of Rebecca's head on his knee, and the rain of her tears on his hand; of the sweet reasonableness of her mind when she had the matter put rightly before her; of her quick decision when she had once seen the path of duty; of the touching hunger for love and understanding that were so characteristic in her. "Lord A'mighty!" he ejaculated ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... anticipations he does for more perfect achievements in the future? As he is happily only one, though the chief, worker among many, it will be necessary, while proceeding with our story, to give convincing testimony from outsiders concerning the reasonableness and practicableness of his aims and hopes. In giving some interesting and striking illustrations by way of proof that he is no visionary, but a cool-headed, hard-working calculator who well knows that the capital he is working with will ...
— From Slave to College President - Being the Life Story of Booker T. Washington • Godfrey Holden Pike
... disliked a quality of cool reasonableness in this girl. Now he saw a fighting courage, a thing he had never guessed under that gentle exterior, and he liked it even less. Had he followed his inclination he would have treated her with the rough brutality he had awarded Pancha, but ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... has followed to a hair's breadth the lines of His gospel; and He lays His hand to-day with heavenly wisdom on the social wants that still trouble us, "the social lies that warp us from the living truth." Christ's view of life and the world is as full of sweet reasonableness now as it was in the first century. Every moral step that man has taken upward has brought a wider, clearer vision of his need of such a religion as that ...
— Joy & Power • Henry van Dyke
... exultingly exclaimed, How can they leave the nursery for the camp! And the camp has by some moralists been termed the school of the most heroic virtues; though, I think, it would puzzle a keen casuist to prove the reasonableness of the greater number of wars, that have dubbed heroes. I do not mean to consider this question critically; because, having frequently viewed these freaks of ambition as the first natural mode of civilization, when the ground must be torn up, and the ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... the perfect reasonableness of this. Restraint, soberness, the matured thought, the unselfish act, they are necessities of the barbarous state, the life of dangers. Dourness is man's tribute to unconquered nature. But man has conquered nature now for all practical ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... and reasonableness of the great main positions of Christian faith and service are constructively presented. Careful attention is also given to the practical application of Christian principles to the perplexing problems ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell
... become lord of Rimini; in the contemplation of which event, albeit he was rude in appearance and a cripple, Messer Guido desired him for a son-in-law above any one of his brothers. Discerning, therefore, the reasonableness of what his friend counselled, he secretly disposed matters according to his device; and a day being appointed, Polo, a brother of Gianciotto, came to Ravenna with full authority to espouse Madonna Francesca. Polo was a handsome man, very pleasant, and of a courteous ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... serious questioning among ladies old and young, while yet unmarried, is thus finely defined by Jeremy Taylor:—"It is a voluntary cession that is required; such a cession as must be without coercion and violence on his part, but upon fair inducements and reasonableness in the thing, and out of love and honour on her part. When God commands us to love Him, He means we shall obey Him. 'This is love, that ye keep my commandments; and if ye love me,' says the Lord, 'keep my commandments.' Now as Christ is to the Church, ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... diseases arising from over-shelter and under-cleanliness of that shelter (lack of air). Both men and women are sentimental and non-progressive, but education is assumed to make wiser human beings. Women are said to be monopolizing the education; is it making them more amenable to reasonableness and less under the control of ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... master told him that they were on the point of starting for the army, to fight for liberty, he shrewdly suggested that it would be a great satisfaction to know that he was indeed going to fight for his liberty. Struck with the reasonableness and justice of this suggestion, General Sullivan at once gave him ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... expatiating on the Maumsey household, turned the conversation to something else—especially to Nora's first attempts at golf, in which he had been her teacher. Nora, whose reasonableness was abnormal, very soon took the hint, and after five minutes' "chaff" with Winnington, to whom she was devoted, she took up her work and went back to ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the services rendered by this philosophy. It was a powerful factor in the negative and dissolving criticism of doctrines having nothing but tradition and class interest behind them; it accustomed men to freedom of discussion and to the notion that beliefs had to be submitted to criteria of reasonableness. It undermined the power of prejudice, superstition, and brute force, by habituating men to reliance upon argument, discussion, and persuasion. It made for clarity and order of exposition. But its influence was greater in destruction of old falsities than in the construction of new ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... Reasonableness? Another host Of sages see! The habits of the Ghost, The Astral Body's action, Absorb them, eager. Does more furious fire The councils of the Caucusites inspire, Or light the feuds ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... she should enslave a man against his will? Fascination exists only in the imagination of the fascinated. If he have the strength to deny the fascination and convince himself that it does not exist, he is saved. It is purely a matter of willpower and calm reasonableness. There must have been sturdy, level-headed Egyptian citizens who could not understand what people saw to ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... anything has happened?" Rebecca asked with diminishing distrust before the reasonableness ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... ideas had filled her mind at intervals all the way across the Atlantic, and her passionate renunciation of the stage, made that miserable day when Roland deserted her, began to lose its reasonableness and therefore its sense of obligation. After her interview with Elizabeth, the question of money to carry out such intentions was practically settled, and she had, therefore, only to arrive at a positive personal ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... detail. Let us now consider some of the opinions to which a persevering, patient, and learned—but by no means consistent—series of investigations has led. In doing so, I profess to bring forward statements, not to vouch for their reasonableness or probability. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Even the 'music' was far removed from the simplicity of pure song. The song of these poets was an incantation. Nay, painting itself witnessed a corresponding revolt against the 'eloquence' of the pseudo-realists—the 'far away dirty reasonableness', as Manet dubbed it, which missed the essential vision by using the worn-down accepted ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... reasonableness of Robinette's answers to questions by no means always devoid of malice, had struck the young man very much, ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Love of a Mother for her Child, as of Octavia, who swooned at 'Tu, Marcellus, eris,'—or of Wives for their Husbands, as Artemisia and Laodamia, sometimes amounting to Idolatry—nay, the Love of Friend for Friend, with alle its sweet Influences and animating Transports, yet exceeding the Reasonableness of that of David for Jonathan, or of our blessed Lord for St. John and the Family of Lazarus, may procure far more Torment than Profit: even if the Attachment be reciprocal, and well grounded, and equallie matcht, which often it is not. Then interpose human Tempers, and Chills, and Heates, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... however, had a singular effect upon the inhabitants of the great public hospital of Charenton, in which it may be remembered Louis XVII. had been, as in mockery, confined. His majesty of demeanor, his calm deportment, the reasonableness of his pretensions, had not failed to strike with awe and respect his four thousand comrades of captivity. The Emperor of China, the Princess of the Moon, Julius Caesar, Saint Genevieve, the patron saint of ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... A yoke, a cross, we cannot escape, whithersoever we go, whithersoever we turn ourselves, because we carry ourselves about with us, and our own crooked perverse apprehensions of things which trouble us more than the things themselves. Now consider the reasonableness of taking on the yoke of Christ's obedience. Should we not with David, offer ourselves willingly, and present ourselves even before we are called? "Lo I come, to do thy will, O God. I delight in thy law, it is in my inward part," Psal. ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... way worthy of the master's reputation. If the first essential in a portrait is an exact likeness, this one possesses it to a very high degree. The head, which is admirably painted, expresses the indulgent and wise character, the gentleness and reasonableness, that are so conspicuous in the model; the eyes an expression, affectionate and paternal; the expression of the mouth is most striking; one feels that it can utter only words ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... be brought to look upon politics as of serious concern for grown folk (a class in which she scarcely included man), and she gratefully gave up reading 'leaders' the day I ceased to write them. But like want of reasonableness, a love for having the last word, want of humour and the like, politics were in her opinion a mannish attribute to be tolerated, and Gladstone was the name of the something which makes all our sex ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... shooting at each other every evening after six o'clock in the refuse-laden streets of Djakovica—would have been concluded and would not have been continued by their sons even if the Serbs had not appeared. Let them, before proclaiming the modern reasonableness of the Albanians, recollect that in 1919 the Moslem Bosniak ex-prisoners required on the average three months in order to traverse central Albania, the country of their co-religionists. From village to village the Bosniaks ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... offered to go away; but others of his people, equally intoxicated, insisted on my remaining. I sat down a little, but seeing that the chief was still alarmed, I said to his people, "The chief objects and I can't stay:" they saw the reasonableness of this, but I could not get my cowardly attendants to come on, though one said to me, "Come, I shall show you the way: we must speak nice to them." This the wise boys think the perfection of virtue, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... say that the Renaissance referred to—this modern Renaissance, not less formidable than the historic revolt which bears that name—is an insurrection of free spirits against Christianity. It is much rather a reversion to a humane and classic reasonableness as opposed to mob-stupidity and middle-class philistinism—things which only the blundering of centuries of popular misapprehension could associate with the sublime and the imaginative figure ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... that she and Frances had a duet they wanted to practise before playing it to their mother, that Mrs Mildmay's slight instinctive misgiving as to her elder daughter's docility and reasonableness was for the ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... continually exhorted to perseverance in study. Amidst all the pleasures of novelty which his travels supplied, and in the dignity of his publick station, he preferred the tranquillity of private study, and the quiet of academical retirement. The reasonableness of this choice has been always disputed; and in the contrariety of human interests and dispositions, the controversy will not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... laws of nations, and so commonly affect the rights of foreigners, that they fall within the considerations which are relative to the public peace. The most important part of them are, by the present Confederation, submitted to federal jurisdiction. The reasonableness of the agency of the national courts in cases in which the State tribunals cannot be supposed to be impartial, speaks for itself. No man ought certainly to be a judge in his own cause, or in any cause in respect to which he has ...
— The Federalist Papers |
