"Criterion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Friend the Captain," serve as excellent after-courses. The promises recorded in the Haymarket bills are, a new tragedy by a new author, and an old comedy called "Riches;" a certain hit, if the continued success of "Money" be any criterion. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the criterion of the perfectness of any language is not to be found in a comparison of its forms or methods with those of any other, but in its fitness as a vehicle for the expression of deeper life, of the best and the greatest that is in ...
— Commentary Upon the Maya-Tzental Perez Codex - with a Concluding Note Upon the Linguistic Problem of the Maya Glyphs • William E. Gates
... girls arrived at the "Metropole," and, picking up the boys, they drove on to the "Grosvenor" for Goody and his friend. It was a tight squeeze to find seating room for all, but the Criterion Theatre was not far away, and Hil laughingly insisted on taking all of them. Thus, for the third time, the five chief characters of this veracious history were in each other's company, though on this occasion four were known to each other, and the fifth a stranger, but knowing well himself in ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... or essentially temporary conglomeration or assemblage, and not one of the fundamental entities of the universe. It is interesting to remember that this was one of the opinions strongly held by the late Professor Tait, who considered that persistence or conservation was the test or criterion of ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... sincerity, but not the truth, of the sufferer's belief; every creed has had its martyrs, and as the truth of one creed excludes the truth of every other, it follows that the vast majority have died for a delusion, and that, therefore, the number of martyrs it can reckon is no criterion of the truth of a creed, but only of the devotion it inspires. While we allow that the Christians underwent much persecution, there can be no doubt that the number of the sufferers has been grossly exaggerated. One can scarcely help ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... Stoic system is noteworthy for their theory as to the test of truth, the Criterion. They compared the new-born soul to a sheet of paper ready for writing. Upon this the senses write their impressions, fantasias and by experience of a number of these the soul unconsciously conceives general notions koinai eunoiai or anticipations. prolhyeis When the impression ...
— Meditations • Marcus Aurelius
... enterprises, when beside those numberless infirmities peculiar to myself, I find so many which are common to human nature? Can I be sure, that in leaving all established opinions I am following truth; and by what criterion shall I distinguish her, even if fortune should at last guide me on her foot-steps? After the most accurate and exact of my reasonings, I can give no reason why I should assent to it; and feel nothing but a strong propensity to consider objects strongly in that view, under ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... of probability in history or of worthiness in philosophy is not the Christian criterion. It is that of their contemporaries outside the church, who are rationalists in history and egotists or voluntarists in philosophy. The biblical criticism and mystical speculations of the modernists call for no special remark; they are such as any studious ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... determined to be the most useful and appropriate. And it is a singular comment upon our modern conceit that we make our own vagaries and changeableness, and not any fixed principles of art or of utility, the criterion of judgment, on other races and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... female took part in this employment: and if the degree of consideration in which the ever-adorable sex is held by the men be—as the philosophers affirm—a just criterion of the degree of refinement among a people, then I may truly pronounce the Typees to be as polished a community as ever the sun shone upon. The religious restrictions of the taboo alone excepted, the women of the valley were allowed every possible indulgence. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Constantius Chlorus, and was with him at Eboracum at the time of his death, and there assumed the purple. His son, Constantius II., or Junior, was named Caesar by his father in 317, and died in 340. There is no proper criterion by which to distinguish the coins of these two emperors. Of the 208 coins of Constantine in my collection there ...
— The Coinages of the Channel Islands • B. Lowsley
... solitary reflection, by meditation which will diffuse its aroma like a fragrant perfume through our characters, and by the habit of bringing all circumstances, moods, and desires to be tested by its infallible criterion, and by the unreluctant acceptance of its guidance at every moment of our lives. There are many of us who, in a real though terribly imperfect sense, hold the truth, but who know nothing, or next to nothing, of its power to make us truthful. If it is to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... for philosophers to talk of invariable sequence as the criterion of Causality. But, in fact, that is quite fallacious. No one ever regards a phenomenon as the cause of another phenomenon. We ascribe Causality to the energetic transmutation which in some form or other we inevitably believe to accompany the appearance of ...
— Essays Towards a Theory of Knowledge • Alexander Philip
... makes on every occasion the strongest attacks upon faith in a personal God, a Creator and Lord of the world; that he traces all the motives of human action to self-interest; that he denies the liberty of man and the moral system of the world; that he makes consent to his view of things the criterion of the intellectual development of a man; and that he thinks to render a service to civilization by such a view of ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... show itself, until "death is swallowed up in victory." There can be no compromise. Either we are affirming Life, as a principle, or we are denying it, no matter on how great or how small a scale; and the criterion by which to determine our attitude is our realisation of our own Wholeness. Death is the principle of disintegration; and whenever we admit the power of any portion of our organism, whether spiritual or bodily, to induce any condition independently of the intention of the Will, we ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... is a criterion of morphological truth, and a sure test of all homologies. Our lobster has not always been what we see it; it was once an egg, a semifluid mass of yolk, not so big as a pin's head, contained in a transparent membrane, and exhibiting not the least trace of any one of those organs, the multiplicity ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... were like relief from cramp and pain, to Alvina. "It takes his sort to make all sorts." It took her sort too. And it took her father's sort—as well as her mother's and Miss Frost's. It took every sort to make all sorts. Why have standards and a regulation pattern? Why have a human criterion? There's the point! Why, in the name of all the free heavens, have human criteria? Why? Simply for bullying ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... degree from constant integrity, than from the closest attention to self-interest. Now happiness is one of those consequences which Paley meant by final or remotest. But we could never use this idea as an exponent of integrity, or interchangeable criterion, because happiness cannot be ascertained or appreciated except upon long tracts of time, whereas the particular act of integrity depends continually upon the election of the moment. No man, therefore, could venture to lay down as a rule, Do what makes you happy; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... enterprise and enlightenment. It has existed since the early part of the eighteenth century, and is old enough to have acquired some civilisation of its own; but age in a Siberian settlement is no criterion of development, and Petropavlovsk either has not attained the enlightenment of maturity, or has passed into its second childhood, for it is still in a benighted condition. Why it was and is called Petropavlovsk—the village of St. Peter and St. ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... I think, afforded every opportunity that could be reasonably expected, to judge of my credibility. I have appealed to the existence of things in the Hotel Dieu Nunnery, as the great criterion of the truth of my story. I have described the apartments, and now, in this volume, have added many further particulars, with such a description of them as my memory has enabled me to make. I have offered, in case I should be proved an impostor, to ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... in which such men were the leaders, held corresponding principles. They owed whatever success they won to their own right hands. They were sturdy workers, with eyes fixed upon success in life, and success generally of course measured by a money criterion. Many of them showed intellectual tastes, and took an honourable view of their social functions. Watt showed his ability in scientific inquiries outside of the purely industrial application; Josiah Wedgwood, in whose early days the Staffordshire ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... * Relative use as a criterion for POB's selection of books to be converted into digital form ...
— LOC WORKSHOP ON ELECTRONIC TEXTS • James Daly
... battle, and "died as the fool dieth!" [Great applause.] How would the intimation have been received that Warren and his associates should have waited a better time? But, if success be indeed the only criterion of prudence, "Respice finem"—wait ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... ask by what criterion he settled these points in so superior a manner:—but I thought it best to imitate the silence of Colonel Wellbred, who constantly called a new subject, upon every pause, to avoid all argument and discussion while the good-humoured Colonel Manners was just as ready to start forward in the new subject, ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... that St. Paul had himself trusted in "the Law," and it had led him into grievous error. As usually happens in such cases, his recoil from it was almost violent. He exalts the inner light into an absolute criterion of right and wrong, that no corner of the moral life may remain in bondage to Pharisaism. The crucifixion of the Lord Jesus and the stoning of Stephen were a crushing condemnation of legal and ceremonial righteousness; ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... century-long contact with the races of the East, the English diplomat of the Sir Edward Grey type presents the bland, imperturbable, non-committal, almost inane expression of the Oriental that hardly gives one any criterion of the tremendous power of perception and concentration ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... that the task of the modern player, who must change his person without concealing it, is much more difficult; but this difficulty affords no just criterion for deciding which of the two the preference must be awarded, as a skilful representation of ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... if that be so, the same doctrine must prevail in trespass. It might be assumed that trespass is founded on the defendant's having caused damage by his act, without regard to negligence. But if that be true, the law must apply the same criterion to other wrongs differing from trespass only in some technical point; as, for instance, that the property damaged was in the defendant's possession. Neither of the above assumptions, however, can be hastily permitted. It might very well be argued that the ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... according to the separate powers of purchase in the European countries, the countries and the classes of population which are least in need will get all, those which are most in need, nothing. How can it be otherwise, if immediate ability to pay is the criterion? In ordinary times the machinery of international finance does tend to distribute surplus stocks according to the needs of the different nations, for the production of the actual goods for export trade with which imports are paid for, the true base of credit, is continually proceeding. But the ...
— Morals of Economic Internationalism • John A. Hobson
... be distinguished by his equals is perhaps a criterion of talent. At that moment of life, with no flattery on the one side, and no artifice on the other, all emotion and no reflection, the boy who has obtained a predominance has acquired this merely by native powers. The boyhood of NELSON ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... topmast-heads and smoke of a steamer were seen just showing above the ocean's rim, about three points on the starboard bow. She seemed to be in a hurry, too, if the dense volumes of smoke that poured from her as yet unseen funnels were to be taken as any criterion. ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... going to France to care for other people not to be looked after ourselves. However, if Miss Lord's behavior this afternoon is a fair criterion I shall certainly become as a little child. For the entire time we were together I don't think I dared do anything except what she commanded. But isn't it wonderful that our entire Camp Fire unit is to go to France for the reclamation work? I thought when Mrs. Burton ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... was the very reverse of what was expected. Every proprietor began to fear the ambition of the Minister, who undertook impossibilities. The being bound for the debts of an individual, and justifying bail in a court of law in commercial matters, affords no criterion for judging of, or regulating, the pecuniary difficulties of a nation. Necker's conduct in this case was, in my humble opinion, as impolitic as that of a man who, after telling his friends that he ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... engaged, the council was sitting in the poop cabin, drafting the laws by which the community was to be governed—and making a mighty poor business of it, if the frequent outburst of voices raised in angry altercation might be taken as a criterion. As for me, half a dozen seamen were placed at my disposal thoroughly to overhaul the hull, spars, rigging, and sails of the ship; and I began my task by unbending all the sails that needed any repair, sending them down on deck, and storing them away in the sail-room prior ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... short thick laugh. "I am a man who believes nothing, hopes nothing, fears nothing, feels nothing. I am beyond the pale of humanity; no criterion of what you should be who live here among ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... not a mere modification of the external law, which has ceased to correspond to genuine beliefs and powerful motives. The commonest criticism, indeed, of all projectors of new Utopias is that they propose a change of human nature. The criticism really suggests a sound criterion. Unless the change proposed be practicable, the Utopia will doubtless be impossible. And unless some practicable change be proposed, the Utopia, even were it embodied in practice, would be useless. If the sole result of raising wages were an increase in the consumption ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... quite a different thing; and this difference is connected not only with the objects to which we may have to direct our judgment, but to the very criterion of our judgment. The same object can displease us if we appreciate it in a moral point of view, and be very attractive to us in the aesthetical point of view. But even if the moral judgment and the aesthetical judgment were both satisfied, this object would ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... but if he has gained their confidence they give assistance freely in every respect. Loving their liberty in a high degree they prefer not to be ordered. The cowardly manner in which they cut heads is no criterion of ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... that one is to have a pair of horses, whose health is so uncertain that I am sure their lives must be a burden to them, if we may judge by our horses; and a great many servants, who are always conducting themselves in the most awful manner, if poor mamma's experience is any criterion; and a big expensive house, which nobody can be prevailed on to dust. No, Di! that is just the kind of life I hate. What I should like is a dear little cottage at Highgate or Wimbledon, and a tiny, tiny garden, in which ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... had been deposited as sediment. As lavas are sometimes laminated in their upper parts even horizontal lines, appearing like those of aqueous deposition, could not in all cases be relied on as a criterion of sedimentary origin. From these considerations it is not surprising that formerly many geologists believed in real transitions from aqueous deposits, through ...
— Volcanic Islands • Charles Darwin
... have the prettiest, funniest, smallest little cottage in the world just about two miles off. The Criterion it is called." ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... at the Criterion, where they were giving a knockabout farce called My Little Darling in which a clergyman was put into a boiler, a guardsman hidden in a linen cupboard, and a penny novelette duchess was forced to retreat into a shower-bath in full activity. I confess that I laughed more ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... sign or criterion of a native trait, in accordance with what we have been saying, is that it shall make its appearance when there has been no chance to acquire it through experience. This is the one perfect criterion; but unfortunately ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... will see in it that infallible criterion of hypocrisy and pretense in professions of regard, viz., extravagant ideas feebly and incoherently expressed. When the heart dictates what is said, the thoughts are natural, and the language plain; but ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... half-a-dozen doors, leading to half-a-dozen different places, with which arrangement not a few of us are familiar in pieces brought over fresh from the Palais Royal, and occurring in farces of which Bebe, Anglice Betsey, at the Gymnase and Criterion is a type, shall we complain? Shall we not rather laugh heartily over the good old game of Hide-and-Seek, which on the stage is invariably the cause of much amusement to one person for whom, at all events, I can answer? What does it matter if to some it recalls a few ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 5, 1892 • Various
... contrary, there has been a distinct and welcome advance in all the special characteristics which have won for this vegetable its popular position, and so highly is the crop esteemed that it is usually regarded as a criterion by which the general management of a ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... how the attention can be kept from wandering, on this plan, which subjects the auditor to no risk of sudden question or personal appeal. As to the prizes given for essays, etc., by the professors, these have the effect of drawing forth latent talent, but they can yield no criterion of the attention paid to the professor; not to say that the competition for these prizes is a matter of choice. Sometimes it is true that examinations take place; but the Oxford lecture is a daily examination; and, waiving ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... punishments inflicted for the commission of crime furnishes a convenient test of national civilization. If France in the sixteenth century be tried by this criterion, the conclusion is inevitable that for her the age of barbarism had not yet completely passed away. The catalogue of crimes to which death was affixed as the penalty is frightfully long; some of them were almost trivial offences. A boy less than sixteen years of age was hung for ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... disease, Seek the chimney-nook of ease. There ruminate, with sober thought, On all thou'st seen, and heard, and wrought; And teach the sportive younkers round, Saws of experience, sage and sound. Say, man's true genuine estimate, The grand criterion of his fate, Is not—Art thou high or low? Did thy fortune ebb or flow? Wast thou cottager or king? Peer or peasant?—no such thing! Did many talents gild thy span? Or frugal nature grudge thee one? Tell them, and press it on their mind, As thou ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... man or break down the laws of nature even for an instant in his behalf. The conclusion is, that there is no inspired Bible. Nor indeed an absolute religion. All religious truths are considered relative, with no such distinction as true religion and false religion, since there is no criterion revealed (according to the theory) by which we can test a religion whether it be true or false. Finally, there is no absolute standard of morals. Moral truths, like the religious, are relative only. In other words, the teaching that ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... interest excited at Pau was any criterion, every French soul in France went about his business with bulging eyes. Indeed, if Mr. Sycamore Tight were yet in the country, there was little doubt in most minds that his ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... prophecies, with regard to the Messiah, contained in the Old Testament were forged, it remains only to be considered, whether he or I have mistaken the meaning of them. So that, as I have repeatedly said in my former publications, the prophets, after all, are the only criterion which can be appealed to certainly most important to the great interests of humanity, were it only on this account, that the dispute has occasioned the most unparalleled degradation, misery, and oppression to one of the parties ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... The colour of his hair or the wrinkles on his cheek would not have anything to do with his age, for time was powerless against the richness of his blood. He would still be a boy when he was dying of old age; but if protestations, kisses and homage were any criterion then the fact that he loved his wife was fixed beyond any ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... entitled; or that a farmer deprived of his farm should claim but that a woman deprived of the earning power of her husband should not claim. In fact the case for including Pensions and Separation Allowances largely depends on exploiting the rather arbitrary character of the criterion laid down in the pre-Armistice conditions. Of all the losses caused by war some bear more heavily on individuals and some are more evenly distributed over the community as a whole; but by means of compensations granted ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... Criterion.—The keystone of the Confucian philosophy, that man is born good, will be found ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles
... opinion of your success. Whatever may come of it, and however well or ill you are treated by the public or criticism, my appreciation of the value that I recognize in your works will not vary, for it is not without a well-fixed criterion, quite apart from the fashion of the day, and the high or low tide of success, that I estimate your compositions highly, finding much to praise in them, except the reservation of some criticisms which almost all sum up as follows—that your extreme productiveness has not as yet left ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... as of salt-bitter taste, like that of Epsom (iii. 203). Sir William Muir (in his excellent life of Mahomet, I. cclviii.) remarks that "the flavour of stale water bottled up for months would not be a criterion of the same water freshly drawn;" but soldered tins-full of water drawn a fortnight before are to be had in Calcutta and elsewhere after Pilgrimage time; and analysis would at once detect ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... truth is to be found down in the depths of my own soul; for, no more than logic, has it ever been discovered 'parceled and labeled.' But how do I know that all truth is not merely subjective? Ages ago, skepticism intrenched itself in an impregnable fortress: 'There is no criterion of truth.' How do I know that my 'true,' 'good,' and 'beautiful' are absolutely so? My reason is no infallible plummet to sound the sea of phenomena and touch noumena. I tell ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... basis as well as an illumination in the constitution and course of Nature. All, therefore, that has been claimed for parable can be predicated a fortiori of this—with the addition that a proof on the basis of Law would want no criterion possessed by the ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... cling to them, and make them a part of himself, and by daily meditation upon them to bring himself into such a state of mind, that these wholesome maxims occur to him of their own accord, that wherever he may be, they may straightway be ready for use when required, and that the criterion of right and wrong may present itself to him without delay. Let him know that nothing is evil except what is base, and nothing good except what is honourable: let him guide his life by this rule: let ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... and Platonic schools. This resemblance appears most clearly in the writings of Philo of Alexandria, a Jew, born a few years before the birth of our Saviour. Though not belonging to the sect of the Essenes, he followed their example in adopting the doctrines of Plato and taking them as the criterion in the interpretation of the Scriptures. So, also, Flavius Josephus, born in Jerusalem, 37 A.D., and Numenius, born in Syria, in the second century A.D., adopted the Greek philosophy, and by its doctrines amplified and expanded ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... award challenging whether the northern limit of Trinidad and Tobago's and Venezuela's maritime boundary extends into Barbadian waters and the southern limit of Barbadian traditional fishing; joins other Caribbean states to counter Venezuela's claim that Aves Island sustains human habitation, a criterion under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which permits Venezuela to extend its EEZ/continental shelf over a large portion of ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... firmly in his grasp and dominion, as the hawk has the dove upon whom he has pounced. This age is ahead of the law. Public opinion is a check to legal rules on this subject, but the rules are feudal and stern. It can not, however, be concealed that the position of woman is always the criterion of the freedom of a people or an age, and when man shall despise that right which is founded only on might, woman will be free to stand on an equal level with him—a ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the way he took the corner by the barrack gate, on one wheel, any criterion; he always did it, just as he never failed to acknowledge the sentry's salute by raising his whip. It needed the observant eyes of Outram's Own to detect the rather strained calmness and the ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... it becomes the basis of the sovereign power, and the criterion of judgment with regard to the acts of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... fixing the smith's forge, on which the progress of the work at present depended, the writer requested that he might be called at daybreak to learn the landing-master's opinion of the weather from the appearance of the rising sun, a criterion by which experienced seamen can generally judge pretty accurately of the state of the weather for the following day. About five o'clock, on coming upon deck, the sun's upper limb or disc had just begun to appear as if rising from the ocean, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have always before his mind all the organic, psychic, and moral characteristics of human society and will see the differences from, and the resemblances to, those of the school-organism. In so far will he have an example, a law, a criterion, a form to follow in the direction of the little human society entrusted to him, with its beautiful and its ugly side, its good and its bad, its vices and its virtues. This idea of the school as an organism, however much it seems destined to overturn ideas ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... the practice of general illuminations cannot be adopted consistently by persons, who are lovers of the truth. They consider it as no certain criterion of joy. For, in the first place, how many light up their houses, whose hearts are overwhelmed with sorrow? And, in the second place, the event which is celebrated, may not always be a matter of joy to good minds. The birth-day of a prince, for example, may be ushered in as welcome, and the celebration ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... known to be perfect riders. The idea of being thrown, let the horse do what it likes; never enters their head. Their criterion of a good rider is, a man who can manage an untamed colt, or who, if his horse falls, alights on his own feet, or can perform other such exploits. I have heard of a man betting that he would throw his ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... no motive but interest; acknowledged no criterion but success; he worshiped no God but ambition; and, with an eastern devotion, he knelt at the shrine of his idolatry. Subsidiary to this, there was no creed that he did not profess, there was no opinion that he did not promulgate: in the hope of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... continued for weeks: the fish, unless driven away by some rover of prey of their kind, were in regular attendance during his hours of work. Perhaps the solitude and silence of that curious submarine world strengthened the impression of recognition and intimacy, but by every criterion we usually accept in terrestrial creation these little creatures had an interest and a friendly feeling for one who furnished them food, and who was always careful to avoid injuring them or giving them any unnecessary alarm. He could not, of course, take up a fish ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... her head shook: 'and Rose, Rose is, simply self-willed; a "she will" or "she won't" sort of little person. No criterion! Henceforth the world is against us. We have to struggle with it: it does not rank ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... celebrated and declared enemies of Christianity, are every-where interspersed, the design seems obviously to have been to inculcate the principles which they inculcated; if, indeed, they acted upon any principle, each fearing to acknowledge the superiority of the other. To doubt was their criterion of wisdom (but although Hume said, that even when he doubted, he was in doubt whether he doubted or not, he does not appear to have once doubted that he was wrong in his attacks on religion,) and they only united in ridiculing that ...
— A tour through some parts of France, Switzerland, Savoy, Germany and Belgium • Richard Boyle Bernard
... four hundred years convincingly shows that England in defending her own interests has always been fighting the battles of European liberty. And to-day more than ever, when Europe is transformed into an armed camp, when might has become the criterion of right, when all nations are living in perpetual dread of a European conflagration, the strict adherence of England to her old principle of the balance of power remains the best sanction of international law and the surest guarantee of ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... nonliving matter is manifest only when the sum of the activities of the living matter is considered; any single phenomenon of the living may appear also in the non-living material. Probably the most distinguishing criterion of living matter is found in its individuality, which undoubtedly depends upon differences in structure, whether physical or chemical, between the ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... criterion for the appreciation of art is one that perpetually recurs to those interested in any sort of aesthetic endeavor. Mr. John Addington Symonds, in a chapter of 'The Renaissance in Italy' treating of the Bolognese school of painting, which once had so great cry, and was vaunted ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... marry for Wealth. They have been educated to regard this as the criterion of excellence. A man's "worth" is reckoned, not in moral attainments, but in dollars and cents. He, therefore, who is poor, is set down as beneath much consideration. From her earliest days, the girl has, perhaps, heard her ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... cannot stand it is to be separated from his roe. Walter's roe was ruthlessly torn from him and served up separate on toast, with nothing to show that it was the glorious roe of Walter. It was eaten at the Criterion by a stockbroker, and it might have been anybody's roe. Meanwhile the mutilated frame, the empty shell of Walter, was squashed flat in a wooden box with a mass of others and sold at an auction by the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... Africa were placed in the same circumstances, a very similar shyness and dread of the upright biped would soon exhibit itself. What all these creatures—bears, cougars, lynxes, wolves, and even alligators—are now, is no criterion of their past. Authentic history proves that their courage, at least so far as regards man, has changed altogether since they first heard the sharp detonation of the deadly rifle. Even contemporaneous history demonstrates ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... explain it as she had so often tacitly explained his place in Brookshire—by the mere accidents of birth. After all, aristocratic as we still are, no party can now afford to choose its men by any other criterion than personal profitableness. And a man nowadays is in the long run personally profitable, far more by what he is than by what he has—so far at ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... parts. The Pradhan was allowed a deduction of rent, and enjoyed some honourable distinctions, and, when the heir was in any manner incapacitated, a relation was appointed to act for him. The representations of the other Zemindars or farmers in the same gram, were usually considered as the most just criterion of this incapacity. Besides the judicial powers and the magistracy of his territory, the Pradhan kept an account of the other tenants, and of their payments and debts to government, and, receiving what was due, transmitted it to the collector. He was also an agent for the other Zemindars of his village, ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... said, perhaps, that the last harvest of France has been a very favourable one, and affords no just criterion of its general prices. But, from all that I hear, prices have often been as low during the last ten years. And, an average not exceeding forty shillings a quarter may, I think, be conclusively inferred from the price at which exportation is ...
— The Grounds of an Opinion on the Policy of Restricting the Importation of Foreign Corn: intended as an appendix to "Observations on the corn laws" • Thomas Malthus
... accepting it on State mandate, Southern men naturally resented being called traitors or rebels. By the Websterian conception of the nature of our government they were so, but by Calhoun's they were simply acting out the Constitution in the best of faith. No recognized arbiter or criterion existed to determine between the two views. Massachusetts denounced seceding South Carolina as a traitor: South Carolina berated Massachusetts, seeking to impose the Union on the South against its will, as a criminal aggressor. An intelligent referee with no bias ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... closing stanzas of the main poem that his thought clearly emerges; when, having exposed the vanity of fame as a test of poetic merit, he asks how, then, poets shall be tried; and lays down the characteristic criterion, a happy life. But it is the happiness of Rabbi ben Ezra, a joy three parts pain, the happiness won not by ignoring evil but by ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... is magnanimity to spare the vanquished, exulting in power but not prone to mischief, with good sense enough to be aware of the instability of fortune, and with some regard to reputation. What may serve as a criterion to try this question by is the following consideration, that we sometimes find as remarkable a deficiency of the speculative faculty coupled with great strength of will and consequent success in active life as we do a want of voluntary power ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... throng around them who have no interest in the dispute, (which alone is a mortifying proof of their insignificance) but even by their associates and fellow-advocates. If to speak, therefore, in a dry and lifeless manner, is the true criterion of Atticism, they are heartily welcome to enjoy the credit of it: but if they wish to put their abilities to the trial, let them attend the Comitia, or a judicial process of real importance. The open Forum demands a fuller, and more elevated tone: and he is the ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... [346] Douglas (Criterion, p. 387, note), observes that some heretics affirmed that our Lord rose from the dead [Greek: phantasiodos], only in appearance, from an idea of ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... but I am glad to add that the committee's courtesy quite exceeded what might be expected of these busy workers. I had over half an hour of their most earnest attention, and if the expressions upon their faces were a criterion to judge by, Miss Carroll's story was not without its effect upon their sympathy and sense of right. I was particularly glad to see such evidences, because among their members were ex-Confederates, ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... performed for the first time in England by the Pioneer Players at the Criterion Theatre, London, on 16th December, 1917, with Gertrude Kingston as Ermyntrude, Helen Morris as the Princess, Nigel Playfair as the waiter, Alfred Drayton as the hotel manager, C. Wordley Hulse as the Archdeacon, and Randle ...
— The Inca of Perusalem • George Bernard Shaw
... a well-known brand and a 'gold-top.' Moet's or Roederer's carte d'or is the party-goer's criterion of the success of the entertainment. As soon as he sees the label, he swallows the wine, good or bad—more probably bad, for most champagnes, like all other wines, are 'specially prepared for the Australian market,' and you know what that means. 'Body,' or what captious folk ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... infidelity obstinately and offensively persisted in or endangering health in the case of the husband, really injure the home sufficiently to justify a divorce on the assumptions of our present argument. If we are going to make the welfare of the children our criterion in these matters, then our divorce law does in this direction already go too far. A husband or wife may do far more injury to the home by constantly neglecting it for the companionship of some outside person with whom no "matrimonial offence" ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... subtractions constituting their influences, appears as a specific trait of the individual, a trait so significant as to be used by the professionals absorbed in the study of man, the anthropologists, as a criterion of ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... are right-quite right," said the Colonel. "There is no longer any other criterion; and even a work that attacks the system must be submitted to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... have discerned between the life of man and the life of outward nature. Whoso goes roaming up and down the elf-land of popular fancies, with sole intent to resolve each episode of myth into some answering physical event, his only criterion being outward resemblance, cannot be trusted in his conclusions, since wherever he turns for evidence he is sure to find something that can be made to serve as such. As Mr. Tylor observes, no household ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... put I proceeded to recount the circumstances with which my reader is already acquainted. Of course Pepin was immediately summoned into the midst of the circle we had formed round the open window to have his reputed accomplishments tested as a criterion of his identity with Antoine. Amid bursts of laughter and a clamour of encouragement and approbation, it was discovered that my canine protege possessed at least the first two of the qualifications imputed to ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... grand Devonian Dinner took place at the Criterion. Of course, only La Creme de la Creme of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 15, 1890 • Various
... really mean to say that there is any internal or external criterion by which the reader of a biblical statement, in which scientific matter is contained, is enabled to judge whether it is to betaken au serieux or not? Is the account of the Deluge, accepted as true in the New Testament, less precise and specific than that of the call of Abraham, also accepted ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... trouble if I should engage in a further analysis of the two comedies which I have mentioned, since at all events I could only adduce sundry details, and such details in this case prove absolutely nothing; for the only safe criterion of the truly comic is that the picture as a whole, apart from what wit has done for it, should arouse interest as an organic adaptation of nature. With the rascally, lustful, country judge, Adam, in ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... dramas of Hon'ble IBSEN. When, Madams and Misses, I make the odious comparison of these works, with which I am completely unacquainted, to the productions of Poet SHAKSPEARE, where I may boast the familiarity that is a breeder of contempt, I find that, in Hamlet's own words, it is the 'Criterion of a Satire,' and I shall assert the unalterable a priori of my belief that the melodious Swan of Stony Stratford, whether judged by his longitude, his versical blankness, or the profoundly of his attainments in Chronology, Theology, Phrenology, Palmistry, Metallurgy, Zoography, Nosology, ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... conceive," says Mr. Mill, very properly, "is in no case to be received as a criterion of axiomatic truth." What modern in his senses would ever think of disputing this truism? The only wonder with us must be, how it happened that Mr. Mill conceived it necessary even to hint at any thing so obvious. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... soul's creativeness in sleep might furnish no whimsical criterion of the quantum of poetical faculty resident in the same soul waking. An old gentleman, a friend of mine, and a humorist, used to carry this notion so far, that when he saw any stripling of his acquaintance ambitious of becoming a poet, his first question would be,—"Young ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... temperaments, the same degree of excitement acts differently, so that it is scarcely possible to fix upon any positive quantity fit for all dispositions—the quantity must be relative; but we may, perhaps, fix upon a criterion by which, in most cases, the proportion may be ascertained. The golden rule,[95] which an eminent physician has given to the medical world for ascertaining the necessary and useful quantity of stimulus for ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... did Watteau ever try historical subjects? And as for Greuze, you know that his heads will fetch 1,000L., 1,500L., 2,000L.—as much as a Sevres "cabaret" of Rose du Barri. If cost price is to be your criterion of worth, what shall we say to that little receipt for 10L. for the copyright of "Paradise Lost," which used to hang in old Mr. Rogers's room? When living painters, as frequently happens in our days, see their ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... did not answer. He was a jezailchi of the Khyber Rifles— hook-nosed as an osprey—black-bearded—with white teeth glistening out of a gap in the darkness of his lower face. And he was armed with a British government rifle, although that is no criterion in that borderland of professional thieves where many a man has offered himself for enlistment with a stolen ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... sir, there ought to have been some universal criterion, in a matter of such great and general use. Still, if you will have it so, let the blind be excluded from philosophy, as they cannot see—though, by the way, they are just the people who most need philosophy to console them for their misfortune; but now, the people who can see—give them the utmost ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... the lower classes arrives at many interesting conclusions with regard to them; one conclusion long since fixed in Mr. Tymperley's mind was that the 'suffering' of those classes is very much exaggerated by outsiders using a criterion quite inapplicable. He saw around him a world of coarse jollity, of contented labour, and of brutal apathy. It seemed to him more than probable that the only person in this street conscious of poverty, and suffering under it, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... is to be known, we come, after much shuffling, upon the will of that majority in which Locke also put his trust. Rousseau's general will, indeed, is at bottom no more than an assertion that right and truth should prevail; and for this also Locke was anxious. But he did not think an infallible criterion existed for its detection; and he was satisfied with the convenience of a simple numerical test. Nor would it be difficult to show that Locke's state has more real room for individuality than Rousseau's. The latter made much show of an impartible and inalienable ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... the subject of careful examination and analysis. Sighele points out that the prohibition of intermarriage observed in its most rigid and absolute form is a fundamental distinction of the caste. If this be regarded as the fundamental criterion, the Negro race in the United States occupies the position of a caste. The prostitute, in America, until recently constituted a separate caste. With the systematic breaking up of the segregated vice ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... "The criterion of social justice in every civilized community," he writes, "is, and always has been, not how large or how intense is the misery of the social debtor class, but what is done with the social surplus of industry? It was formerly used to build pyramids, to create a landed or ecclesiastical ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... same exhibition the lowest was 5 1/2 lbs., and the highest over 8 1/2 lbs. per square foot of area. It may here be mentioned that it was not until the War period that the importance of loading per horse-power was recognised as the true criterion of aeroplane efficiency, far greater interest being displayed in the amount of weight borne per ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... religious corporations, both as societies and as individuals, must be estimated according to their own standards—the application of any other criterion would be palpably unfair. They undertook to hold the native in subjection, to regulate the essential activities of his life according to their ideas, so upon them must fall the responsibility for the conditions finally attained: to destroy the freedom of the subject and then attempt ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... existing dweller with a complete impression of our national life and civilization in the opening years of the twentieth century? The reply will be that it would give a very good idea of the average provincial town, but that it would hardly serve as a fair criterion to judge of the life pursued in the capital, or in the really large cities. Such a comparison will afford us a certain clue to the unveiling of ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... criterion, the true test of the absence or presence of insanity, I take to be the absence or presence of what, used in a certain sense of it, is comprisable in a single term, namely, delusion.... In short, I look on delusion .... and insanity to be almost, ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... criterion of man's well-being than the cities he has built and the manufactures he has produced, we persist in thinking that our social progress would be happier if there were not so many of us so very poor, and in busying ourselves ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... was not, published until February 1817.] I would to heaven, my dear sir, that the opinions of Southey, Walter Scott, Lord Byron, Mr. Frere, and of men like these in learning and genius, concerning my comparative claims to be a man of letters, were to be received as the criterion, instead of the wretched, and in deed and in truth mystical jargon of ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... peculiarity, that, as Gibbon says, firing away your double battery against those who believe too much, and those who believe too little, you hold out your own peculiar sensations, as to the precise criterion of truth; so that we must all be just of your size in order to pass the gate of that New Jerusalem which you are building. After this, your reputation as a divine might have become problematical with me; but recollecting the principle of the association of ideas so well developed by Locke, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... him a snob; but all dogs are so, though in varying degrees. It is hard to follow their snobbery among themselves; for though I think we can perceive distinctions of rank, we cannot grasp what is the criterion. Thus in Edinburgh, in a good part of the town, there were several distinct societies or clubs that met in the morning to—the phrase is technical—to "rake the backets"[21] in a troop. A friend of mine, the master of three dogs, was one ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... people of meaner understandings; it is a sort of derogation, in their opinion, to comply with the rules of Christianity, and reckon that man possessed of a narrow genius who studies to be good. What a pity that the Holy Writings are not made the criterion of true judgment! or that any one should pass for a fine gentleman in this world, but he that seems solicitous about his happiness in the next. My dear doctor, I am forsaken by all my acquaintance, utterly neglected by the friends of my bosom and the dependants of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... opinion varies, if a considerable section of the community revolt against the punishment of the alleged anti-social act, then we are not entitled to dignify it with the appellation of "crime." This is not an altogether sure or satisfactory criterion because there are frequently times and places, especially under the stimulation of some particular occurrence evoking an outburst of increased public emotion, when a section of the community succeeds by its noisy vigour in creating the impression that it voices the universal will. But, on the whole, ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... of the caution. For the momentary glimpse he had caught of this woman's face, she appeared to be about thirty. Her dress, though tasteful and elegant, in the present condition of California society afforded no criterion of her social status. But the figure of Dr. Duchesne waiting for him at the schoolhouse door just then usurped the place of all others, and she dropped out ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... beauty is the reminder of our immortal essence. The town is dangerous in that it has little beauty. It causes us to forget. It is exploring the illusion of trade, and its whole song is of trade. If you understand this, you have a criterion ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... machinery, the effect of its weight and that of the necessary fuel had to be considered. The midsection, or cross section of greatest area, would have to have been only a little abaft the paddle wheel axle to allow proper trim with a minimum of ballast. It was found by this criterion that the midsection of the reconstructed hull was located in proportion to length in a comparable manner to that of the Ohio. The run could have been made about as long and easy, in proportion, as that of the Ohio; likewise, the entrance could have been equally well designed for ...
— The Pioneer Steamship Savannah: A Study for a Scale Model - United States National Museum Bulletin 228, 1961, pages 61-80 • Howard I. Chapelle
... the aim of education could be expressed in purely individual terms. It was said to be the harmonious development of all the powers of the individual. Dewey attacks this definition showing that there is no criterion for telling what is meant by the terms used. We do not know what a power is; we do not know what is meant by development or harmony. A power is a power with reference to the use to which it is put, the function it has to serve. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... as ancient as philosophy, both from plausible objections, and from the odious imputation of supporting those absurd and monstrous systems which have been built upon it. Beneficial tendency is the foundation of rules, and the criterion by which habits and sentiments are to be tried. But it is neither the immediate standard, nor can it ever be the principal motive of action. An action, to be completely virtuous, must accord with moral rules, and must flow from our ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh
... the basis of all society is the recognition of the rights of others. The thief often excuses his acts by asserting that society owes him a living. Is this position right or do you agree with the following statement? "The criterion of what is for the benefit of the community at large must be settled by the community itself, not by an individual. The citizen, then, may and must do what the community determines it is best for him to do; he must stand in the forefront of battle ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... time. In the central blinds of bone, as they stand in their natural order, there are certain curious marks, curves, hollows, and ridges, whereby some whalemen calculate .. the creature's age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings. Though the certainty of this criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the savor of analogical probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we must grant a far greater age to the Right Whale than at first glance will seem reasonable. In old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies concerning ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the other as events should decide. I have known Mr. Falkland in his maturer years, and have always admired him, as the living model of liberality and goodness. If you could change all my ideas, and show me that there was no criterion by which vice might be prevented from being mistaken for virtue, what benefit would arise from that? I must part with all my interior consolation, and all my external connections. And for what? What ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... the moral, which involves the RIGHT, and the prudential, which is the expedient. But strictly, the moral is the principal and controlling view of the subject, and that which has made and will continually constitute the criterion of action from which the expediency is deduced, and the anomaly of slavery in our Republic understood, the paradox of a slaveholding democracy explained, and the institution of slavery justified with human equality, by justly discriminating between barbarism ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... per lb.?-Yes; but the number of ounces is not a criterion, because the less the weight the higher the price. We have given as high as 7d. per cut for worsted, and that should weigh 14 cuts of 100 threads to the ounce. That would be 8s. 2d. per ounce, or ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... be still retained on the tablets of your memory is an unexpected pleasure. Your gift, as a criterion of your esteem, will be often looked at with delight, and be carefully preserved, as a memorial of your friendship; and for which I beg to return my sincere thanks. May the meridian sunshine of happiness brighten your days through the voyage of life; and may your soul be borne ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield |
