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Arbiter   Listen
noun
Arbiter  n.  
1.
A person appointed, or chosen, by parties to determine a controversy between them. Note: In modern usage, arbitrator is the technical word.
2.
Any person who has the power of judging and determining, or ordaining, without control; one whose power of deciding and governing is not limited. "For Jove is arbiter of both to man."
Synonyms: Arbitrator; umpire; director; referee; controller; ruler; governor.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Arbiter" Quotes from Famous Books



... to say must be spoken to the arbiter—to no one else. I am afraid I answered you impatiently just now. You must forgive me; if you knew all, I am ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell

... productions. So that, we may say, from Poussin to Puvis de Chavannes, from Clouet to Meissonier, taste—a refined and cultivated sense of what is sound, estimable, competent, reserved, satisfactory, up to the mark, and above all, elegant and distinguished—has been at once the arbiter and the stimulus of excellence in French painting. It is this which has made the France of the past three centuries, and especially the France of to-day—as we get farther and farther away from the great art epochs—both in amount and general excellence of artistic activity, comparable only with ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... religion is true. Calvin says that his is the only true one. Each of the others says that his is the only true one. Calvin says that they are wrong. He makes himself (by what right I do not know) the judge and sovereign arbiter. He claims that he has on his side the sure evidence of the Word of God. Then why does he write so many books to prove what is evident? The truth is surely not evident to those who die denying that it is truth! Calvin asks how doctrine is to be guarded if heretics are not ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... forgotten history according to his own ideas of fitness. The Germans have been our masters in this species of destructive, dubitative, restorative criticism; and it is undoubtedly flattering to the historian's vanity to constitute himself a judge and arbiter in cases where tact and ingenuity may claim to sift the scattered fragment of confused narration. Yet to resist this temptation is in many cases a plain and simple duty. Tradition, when not positively ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... the floor he was tinglingly aware of her presence. Even before Mrs. Hastings heard her light footfall, even before the clear voice spoke, St. George knew that he was at last in the presence of the arbiter of his enterprise, and of how much else he did not know. He was silent, breathlessly waiting for her ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale

... at Court, they trace his evolution up to the time when it had no longer any serious motive; that is, when the chairs of modern history and modern languages were founded at the English universities, and when, with the fall of the Stuarts, the Court ceased to be the arbiter of men's fortunes. In the course of this evolution they show us many phases of continental influence in England; how Italian immorality infected young imaginations, how the Jesuits won travellers to their religion, how France became the model of deportment, what were the origins of the ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard

... pleading for her, one problem more in his life it is true, but only one among many, and not the greatest. She did not see him as he saw himself, his family as the somewhat troublesome, and yet quite understandable, group of selfish human beings in whose perplexities he had always played the part of arbiter. ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris

... souls music gives expression to the longing that it feels for the company of its natural ally, gymnastics—that is to say, its necessary form in the order of visible phenomena. In its search and craving for this ally, it becomes the arbiter of the whole visible world and the world of mere lying appearance of the present day. This is Wagner's second answer to the question, What is the meaning of music in our times? "Help me," he cries to all who have ears to hear, "help me to discover that culture ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... daring and untrammeled Shakespearian play, Goetz von Berlichingen, and by his open defiance, announced in Werther, of the authority of all artistic rules and standards; and Buerger, asserting the right of the common man to be the only arbiter of literary values, were, each in his own way, upsetting the control of an artificial "classicism." Immanuel Kant, whose deep and dynamic thinking led to a revolution comparable to a cosmic upheaval in the geological world, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... eos, interque reges eorum tum virtute tum majestate eminens.... summus rerum arbiter, (Bohadin, p. 159.) He does not seem to have known the names either of Philip ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... penetrates to the inner sanctuary of true values, photographs something typical of war's many aspects, places the negative in the dark room of memory, and fades into inertia until again called upon to act as arbiter of significance for everyday instinct. Not till long later, when released from the tension of danger and abnormal endeavour, is one's mind free to develop the negative and produce a clear photograph. The sensitive freshness ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott

... class came a natural increase in the importance and influence of the notaries, already and through the Spanish traditions very considerable in this region. In many parts of the province the notary is recognised as an unofficial, but authoritative, social arbiter, to whom may be safely referred for settlement all sorts of disputes, including very often questions of property which would elsewhere be taken before the courts of law. It was pleasant to see that the relation thus established between M. Labitte and the people generally had not been affected by ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... genius, would soon be exhausted. Such a regular labour occasioned Bayle a dangerous illness, and Maty fell a victim to his Review. A prospect always extending as we proceed, the frequent novelty of the matter, the pride of considering one's self as the arbiter of literature, animate a journalist at the commencement of his career; but the literary Hercules becomes fatigued; and to supply his craving pages he gives copious extracts, till the journal becomes tedious, or fails in variety. The Abbe Gallois ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... possesses. The field seems open for individual boldness and heroism; success, if obtained, must redound to his own credit; and what can equal, in its spirit-stirring enthusiasm, that first moment when we become in any way the arbiter of our own fortunes? ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... than that of men, an attention to undistinguished impressions, brought on in a course of time by a gradual depreciation of human reason, has acted with considerable force. I fear that some of these, in the upright intention of their hearts to consult the Almighty on all occasions as the sole arbiter of every thing that is good, have fostered their own infirmities, and gone into retirements so frequent, as to have occasioned these to interfere with the duties of domestic comfort and social good, and that they have been at last so ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... of Pere Fouan, whose daughter Fanny he married. He was the owner of a small farm, which he managed so well that he became one of the richest of the peasant proprietors at Rognes. He was a man of calm, upright nature, and was frequently selected as arbiter in petty disputes. In his own affairs, however, he allowed himself to be much influenced by his wife. He was a municipal councillor, and ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson

... commonwealth) King Macrianus was invited in courteous terms to come to Mayence; and the event proved that he also was well inclined to make a treaty. When he arrived, however, it was marvellous how proud and arrogant he was, as if he were to be the supreme arbiter of the peace. And on a day appointed for a conference he came, carrying himself very loftily, to the very brink of the Rhine, and escorted by a number of his countrymen, who made a ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... however, had not only made marriage a religious act; it had also made it a public act. The officiating priest, who had now become the arbiter of marriage, was bound by all the injunctions and prohibitions of the Church, and he could not allow himself to bend to the inclinations and interests of individual couples or their guardians. It was inevitable that in this matter, as ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... end to year's end the same pastimes were enjoyed, the same studies pursued The composition of poetry took precedence of everything. Eminent among the poetasters of the twelfth century was the Emperor Go-Toba. The litterateurs of his era looked up to him as the arbiter elegantiarum, especially in the domain of Japanese versification. Even more renown attached to Fujiwara no Toshinari, whose nom de plume was Shunzei, and who earned the title of the "Matchless Master." His son, Sadaiye, was well-nigh equally famous ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... surest arbiter of disputes among freemen. Under this conviction every proper effort was employed to induce the hostile parties to vote at the election of delegates to frame a State constitution, and afterwards at the election to decide whether Kansas should be ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... at that time an absolute despotism. The king was the supreme arbiter of its destinies. He was the head of the army. He appointed his own ministers, made his own laws, levied and raised taxes at his pleasure, and lavished his treasures as he pleased. The common people were more like cattle than men. They tilled the ground ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell

... feelings; that, if they are nurtured there, no room will be found for noble and generous sentiments. Quarrels will occur in which blows will be dealt lustily: a few simple illustrations will prove that force is a dangerous and imperfect arbiter of justice. If unhappily falsehood prevails, let him make haste to supplant a habit, so fearful and pernicious, though every thing else be laid aside. Let him show the great inconvenience a man must experience in whose word no confidence can be reposed. ...
— Reflections on the Operation of the Present System of Education, 1853 • Christopher C. Andrews

... That debate will disclose the fact that the danger then became more and more realized of leaving this question unsettled as to who should determine whether the electoral votes of a State should be received or rejected when the two houses of Congress should differ upon that subject. There was no arbiter between them. This new-fangled idea of the present hour, that the presiding officer of the Senate should decide that question between the two disagreeing houses, had not yet been discovered in the fertility of political invention, or born perhaps of party necessity. ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... Cabinet, and the more or less meddlesome attitude of leaders in the Senate and the House, at times sorely tried the strength and patience of the harassed President, compelling him to act the part of peacemaker, and sometimes of judge and arbiter as well. At one time Secretary Stanton threatened to resign; and Chase declared that in that case he should go with him. Stanton and Welles were in frequent antagonism, Welles stating in his Diary that Stanton assumed, or tried to assume, ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... frankly accepted as a substitute, as a truer reality? She is always on her guard against imagination as against the outer world, whose 'lies' she is resolved shall not 'beguile' her. She has accepted reason as the final arbiter, and desires only to see clearly, to see things as they are. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... Empire, would assuredly find himself surrounded by everything antagonistic to that to which he has become accustomed, and the people would seem of a different race. This may be due to the differences of climate—climate, indeed, is ultimately the first and the last word in the East; it is the arbiter, the builder, the disintegrator of everything. A leading writer on Eastern affairs says that the "climate is the explanation of all this history of Asia, and the peoples of the East can only be understood and accounted for by the ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle

... perform. Come, gentlemen, let us sit down and hear in what manner Baron Weichs will he able to defend his smile. Sit down here on my right side, prince, and you, Baron Weichs, on my left, and my husband may take a seat opposite us and play the role of an arbiter." ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... expensive arbiter, Senor Gordon. Your claim is slight. The title has never been perfected by you. In fifteen years you have paid no taxes. Still your claim, though worthless in itself, operates as a cloud upon the title of my ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... knowledge, for an idle contentment with narrow horizons, were perhaps foolisher still. But assuredly each must perforce be content with his own prevision. None can answer yet for the generality, whose decisive franchise will elect a fit arbiter ...
— Life of Robert Browning • William Sharp

... preamble, he claimed the prerogative, in right of his imperial authority, to interpret the meaning of the religious treaty, the ambiguities of which had already caused so many disputes, and to decide as supreme arbiter and judge between the contending parties. This prerogative he founded upon the practice of his ancestors, and its previous recognition even by Protestant states. Saxony had actually acknowledged this right of the Emperor; and it now became evident how ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... established, externally at least, among the petty Greek states. But the internal condition of the several communities also furnished employment to the Roman arbiter. The Boeotians openly displayed their Macedonian tendencies, even after the expulsion of the Macedonians from Greece; after Flamininus had at their request allowed their countrymen who were in the service of Philip to return home, Brachyllas, the most decided partisan of Macedonia, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... miles, tutor bonus, arbiter idem Integer; ambiguae si quando citabere testis Incertaeque rei, Phalaris licet imperet ut sis Falsus et admoto dictet periuria tauro, Summum crede nefas, animam praeferre pudori Et propter ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke

... the Pullman Company the porter's leeway is a very considerable one. His instructions are never to say "Against the rules!" but rather "I do not know what can be done about it"—and then to make a quick reference to the Pullman conductor, who is his arbiter and his court of last resort. His own initiative, however, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... the arbiter of this commonwealth in cases of conscience more peculiarly appertaining to religion, Christian charity, and a pious life, shall have the care of the national religion, and the protection of the liberty of conscience with the cognizance of all causes ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... dreadful battle-din will take place again, or Jove is establishing friendship between both sides, he who has been ordained the arbiter of ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... unfortunate's petition before President Lincoln. It acknowledged the guilt and the justice of his condemnation; he was penitent and deplored his state—all had fallen away from him after his conviction. The chief arbiter was touched by the piteous and emphatic appeal. Nevertheless, he felt constrained ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... sov'reign arbiter of kingdoms Detests thy false associates' black designs, And frowns on perjury, revenge, and murder. Embark'd with treason on the seas of fate, When heaven shall bid the swelling billows rage, And point vindictive lightnings at rebellion, Will not the patriot share the traitor's ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... the nails hemispherical at the base; and the smooth palm furnishing few characters for an Egyptian fortune-teller to read. It was not as the sturdy farmer's hand of Cincinnatus, who followed the plough and guided the state; but it was as the perfumed hand of Petronius Arbiter, that elegant young buck of a Roman, who once cut great ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville

... roving Scythian bands, Of cities, nations, lawless tyrants red With guiltless blood, art thou the haunting dread; Within thy path no human valor stands, And, arbiter of empires, at thy frown The sceptre, once supreme, slips ...
— Echoes from the Sabine Farm • Roswell Martin Field and Eugene Field

... magnate's wife, and Skinner asked for a dance. And as he led that lady to the ballroom, he formulated the following entry in his notebook to be jotted down at the first opportunity: "Credit, dress-suit account, one dance with the wife of a multi-millionaire—a social arbiter. An event undreamed of, even in my most ambitious moments! What next, ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge

... Code so fresh and simple. The great lady was gone, the keen advocate had disappeared, the austere arbiter of Freekirk Head's destinies was no more. She seemed a girl. He arose and ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams

... secret of rest is to cease from self, from self as guide, from self as aim, from self as safety. And when self-will is cast out, and self-dependence is overcome, and self- reliance is sublimed into hanging upon God's hand, and when He, not mine own inclination, is my Director, and the Arbiter of my fate, then all the fever of unrest is swept wholly out of my heart, and there is nothing left in it on which the gnawing tooth of anxiety or of care can prey. God being my peace, and I yielding myself to ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the general public, that last arbiter in a democracy, whose referendum, for a year at least, confirms or renders null and void all critical legislation good or bad? The general public is apparently on the side of the novelist; to borrow a slang term expressive here, it is "crazy" ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... she had never known, had spent itself upon the Englands she found beyond the seas; upon the hard-worked soldiers and civilians in lonely Indian stations, upon the captains of English ships, upon the pioneers of Canadian fields and railways; upon England, in fact, as the arbiter of oriental faiths—the wrestler with the desert—the mother and maker of new states. A passion for the work of her race beyond these narrow seas—a passion of sympathy, which was also a passion of antagonism, since every phase of that work, according to ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... pressing matters to be dealt with, and the only women who had been taught to demand the rights of their sex were precisely those whom the Revolution was guillotining or exiling. Even had it been otherwise, we may be quite sure that Napoleon, the heir of the Revolution and the final arbiter of what was to be permanent in its achievements, would have sternly repressed any political freedom accorded to women. The only freedom he cared to grant to women was the freedom to produce food ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... the Empress Eugenie, that supreme arbiter of elegance and grace. Oh! those bunchy hooped skirts! That awful India shawl pinned off the shoulders, and the bonnet perched on a roll of hair in the nape of the neck! What were people thinking of at that time? Were they ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory

... with all his hospital studies, had never heard of the Marquis of Queensbury. But even if he had, it would never have occurred to him to be bound by that arbiter of fisticuffs. In fact, he had no intention even of being restricted to the use of his hands as fists. The Japanese, long centuries before, had proven the fist less than the most effective manner in which ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... the murmuring thought! Thy will be done O Arbiter of life and death. I bow To thy command—I yield the precious gift So late bestowed; and to the silent grave Move sorrowing, yet submissive. O sweet babe! I lay thee down to rest—the cold, cold earth A pillow for thy little head. Sleep on, Serene in death. No care shall trouble thee. ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart

... thus left alone with his regrets. He saw the miserable peril in which he stood involved. He saw, with inexpressible dismay, that there was no limit to his weakness, and that, from concession to concession, he had fallen from the arbiter of Macfarlane's destiny to his paid and helpless accomplice. He would have given the world to have been a little braver at the time, but it did not occur to him that he might still be brave. The secret of Jane Galbraith ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... betaken themselves, and fastens there a little vine or creeper whose roots are still in her own bosom. It is a part and a necessity of her very existence, to handle and direct catholic interests. This, as well as her position in other respects, has made her the arbiter of this nation and country, and you can no more shut her out from participation in the affairs of this continent than you can shut in the mighty river from its outlet to the ocean. And if you cut her off, see to it that she does not become the little Rome whose ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Corsairs, belonged to France. When in 1528 he judged himself and his country ill-used by Francis I., he carried over his own twelve galleys to the side of Charles V.; and then the Imperial navies once more triumphed. Doria was the arbiter of fortune between the contending states. Doria was the liberator of Genoa, and, refusing to be her king, remained her idol and her despot. No name struck such terror into the hearts of the Turks; many a ship had fallen a prey to his devouring ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... is more evil in the world than good. Their mistake is due to the fact that they make the experience of the individual man the arbiter in this question, thinking that the universe was made for his sake. They forget that man is only a small fraction of the world, which is made by the will of God. Even so man should be grateful for the great amount of good he receives from God, for many of the evils of man ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... but when we arrived at Baliana to visit Abydos, between Enid Biddell and Harry Snell I had an interlude of nightmare. It was Rachel's fault, but it was I who had to suffer for her sins. I, who had engaged as Conductor of the Set and found myself their Arbiter as well. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson

... if Philip Crane, playing with all his intense subtlety, had met his master in Fate; the grim arbiter of man's ways had pushed forward a chessman to occupy a certain square on the board ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser

... knew that was impossible. And she looked with a frown at this woman who could make Jonah forget his business instincts for a minute. For she worshipped him in secret, grateful to him for lifting her out of the gutter, and regarded him as the arbiter of ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone

... had yet undertaken to reform either the savageness of neglect, or the impertinence of civility; to show when to speak, or to be silent; how to refuse, or how to comply. We had many books to teach us our more important duties, and to settle opinions in philosophy or politics; but an arbiter elegantiarum, (a judge of propriety) was yet wanting who should survey the track of daily conversation, and free it from thorns and prickles, which tease the passer, though they do not wound him. For this purpose nothing is so proper ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson

... Victor overthrown! The Arbiter of others' fate A suppliant for his own! Is it some yet imperial hope That with such change can calmly cope? Or dread of death alone? To die a prince—or live a slave— Thy ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... Trimalcion is an episode in the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, the poem in which are described all the excesses of Roman luxury and debauchery. Petronius Arbiter lived ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo

... shall go to Leppich and shall remain with him for a long time; it will be a feast to me to become more closely connected with a man whose invention will render military art superfluous, free mankind of its internal destroyer, make of you the arbiter of kings and empires and the benefactor ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose

... (He shows the letter.) With a sum of money guaranteed me here I am once more the sole arbiter of my destiny. When the king sees the character and the results of my work, he will cancel that marriage, which has been obtained by violence. And my love for Marie is such that I can ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac

... Lord, that sovereign arbiter, from whose decision in literary as well as in civil causes, there frequently lies no appeal, will lead us to consider boldness of transition as a circumstance which is peculiarly characteristic of the Ode. Lyric Poets have in all ages appropriated to themselves the liberty of indulging ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie

... grown to be one of his nature's chief cravings. The Korps life had done its work in the direction of his character, developing his latent love of organisation and law, accustoming him to look upon cold steel as the arbiter of right, and upon his country as the strongest among ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... contract (which covered about 200 printed pages) was minute in detail as to the work to be done, and sweeping powers of supervision were given the city through the Chief Engineer of the Board, who by the contract was made arbiter of all questions that might arise as to the interpretation of the plans and specifications. The city had been fortunate in securing for the preparation of plans the services of Mr. William Barclay Parsons, ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous

... not laugh when you are one of the actors. Well, not to lengthen my history unduly, an open rivalry and enmity at last arose between myself and poor George. We had been spurred on to hate each other, and narrowly escaped having an 'affair' together—appealing to the pistol as the arbiter. ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... beside me sent up its dank breath of stale powder fumes, and the acrid odor was as the fragrance of a fertile field ripe for the sickle. In this reeking pit at my elbow, gold, the subtle, the potent, the arbiter of all destinies, stood ready to fight for me. The liberty which I had stolen, but which had first been stolen from me, would shortly find a defender too strong to be overthrown by all the prejudice and injustice ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde

... Female. | Actor Actress. | Lion Lioness. Arbiter Arbitress. | Peer Peeress. Baron Baroness. | Poet Poetess. Benefactor Benefactress. | Sorcerer Sorceress. Count Countess. | Songster Songstress. Duke Duchess. | ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham

... would have kept you at her feet. It is not my fault, I have often told your wife so." Thus the Emperor, by taking part in behalf of his daughter-in-law and against his brother, took a position as arbiter in their domestic quarrels. This interference was all the more galling to Louis,—who would have liked to be master in both his own kingdom and in his own house,— that calumny, as he well knew, persisted in representing the Emperor as his rival in Hortense's ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... arbiter of beauty is the heart; to the male rattlesnake the female rattlesnake is the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce

... been a minor poet for three years soon after she put her hair up—Mrs. Forbes had acquired a certain literary expression of countenance and a manner that was decidedly prosy. She read a good deal after her supper of an evening, and was wont to be the arbiter when any literary matter was discussed in ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens

... the loss. For literature thus being in the hands of men of leisure, free from the struggle for bread, was never governed in Russia by the law of supply and demand, and the dollar never became, as with us, the potent, even though the temporary arbiter of its destinies. Hence the singular purity of Russian literature in point of style. Dickens needs the dollars, and he therefore spins out his satires to a length of distance to be traversed only by seven-league boots, and in verbosity is equalled only by Thackeray. Gogol, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin

... complete unimportance to her country, had (for the first time) a sudden longing to "do something." And so, being unfitted for needlework, nursing or the kitchen, she adopted eagerly the suggestion of some stupid and unimaginative old gentleman, and constituted herself (under God) Supreme Arbiter of Men's Consciences for the South-West Suburbs of London. Patriotically aglow, she handed out white feathers to all the un-uniformed young men she chanced to meet ... the whitest of all coming to John, as he made his way next morning to the ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various

... recognized and effective method of warfare; whereas the sinking of an occasional merchant ship with its passengers and crew is a method of warfare nowhere effective, and almost universally condemned. If war, with its inevitable stratagems, ambuscades, and lies must continue to be the arbiter in international disputes, it is certainly desirable that such magnanimity in war as the conventions of the last century made possible should not be lost because of Germany's behavior in the present European convulsion. It is also desirable to reaffirm with all possible emphasis that fidelity ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... became an oracle at the billiard-table, and a hero in the racquet-court. His refined education, however, fortunately preserved him from the fate of many other lively youths: he did not degenerate into a mere hero of sports and brawls, the genius of male revels, the arbiter of roistering suppers, and the Comus of a club. His boyish feelings had their play; he soon exuded the wanton heat of which a public school would have served as a safety-valve. He returned to his books, his music, and his ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli

... nominally the delegate and practically the servant of his immediate chief, the Provincial Governor. He was the arbiter of local petty questions, and endeavoured to adjust them, but when they assumed a legal aspect, they were remitted to the local Justice of the Peace, who was directly subordinate to the Provincial Chief Judge. He was also responsible to the Administrator for the collection of taxes—to ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... she had exercised the thoughts of a thousand dollars. She saw herself in a score of pathetic situations in which she assumed a tremulous voice and suffering manner. Her mind delighted itself with scenes of luxury and refinement, situations in which she was the cynosure of all eyes, the arbiter of all fates. As she rocked to and fro she felt the tensity of woe in abandonment, the magnificence of wrath after deception, the languour of sorrow after defeat. Thoughts of all the charming women she had seen in plays—every fancy, every illusion which she had concerning the ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... Furthermore, fortunately for itself, labor in America had come into a political patrimony at a time when the country was standing on the threshold of a new era, during which government was destined to become the arbiter of industry. ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... hardly ever drank wine neat. Hence the allusion. The symposiarch, or arbiter bibendi, settled the proportions ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... was scarcely dawn; the venerable and courteous, but inflexible representative of the Emperor expressed solicitude and sympathy; a secretary and physician, with the guard and their prisoner, confronted each other by the dim light of two candles. Irritated by the conventional politeness of this arbiter of his destiny at such a crisis, having vainly sought death, and bitterly conscious of the long outrages perpetrated under the name of justice, Foresti burst forth into stern invectives, and boldly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various

... height of its power under Innocent III. The eighteen years of his pontificate were one long effort, for the most part successful, to make the pope the arbiter of Europe. Innocent announced the claims of the Papacy in the most uncompromising manner. "As the moon," he declared, "receives its light from the sun, and is inferior to the sun, so do kings receive all their glory and dignity from the Holy See." This meant, according to Innocent, that the ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... every art of peace was making rapid progress in England, under the fostering care of the King and Queen. No sovereign was more respected in Europe than Edward; his contemporary, Dante, cites him as an instance of a gallant son of a feeble parent: and he was often called on as the arbiter of disputes, as when the kings of Arragon and France defied each other to a wager of battle, to take place in his dominions in Southern France, which combat, however, never took place. He was a most faithful and affectionate husband and indulgent father, and the household rolls afford ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... possible aids it hardly ever escapes desolation and distress. The supreme solution is, and always will be, to see in necessity the fatherly will of God, and so to submit ourselves and bear our cross bravely, as an offering to the Arbiter of human destiny. The soldier does not dispute the order given him: he obeys and dies without murmuring. If he waited to understand the use of his sacrifice, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... was unsatisfactory, as its decisions were of merely local validity and might be overruled by the voice of the universal Church. The general council was hard to convene, particularly after a rift had opened between the Eastern and the Western Churches. It was easier to select as the final arbiter a bishop whose knowledge of tradition was derived from an apostolic predecessor. In the East there were three such sees (Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria), but in the West Rome alone satisfied the necessary conditions. And the Bishops of Rome could ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... the outset denies. The state of nature is governed by the law of nature. The law of nature is not, as Hobbes had made it, the antithesis of real law, but rather its condition antecedent. It is a body of rules which governs, at all times and all places, the conduct of men. Its arbiter is reason and, in the natural state, reason shows us that men are equal. From this equality are born men's natural rights which Locke, like the Independents in the Puritan Revolution, identifies with life, ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... Western with the Belt Line terminals would make the Pendleton system dominant in Lattimore. In the possession of Halliday it would render him the arbiter of the city's fortunes, and would cut off from his rival's lines the rich business from this feeder. Both men were playing with the patience of Muscovite diplomacy the old and tried game of permitting the little road to run until it got into difficulties, and then swooping down upon ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... they fell in with the strangest and most picturesque figures of Italian society; how they climbed mountains and read books and modelled in clay and played on musical instruments; how Browning was made a kind of arbiter between two improvising Italian bards; how he had to escape from a festivity when the sound of Garibaldi's hymn brought the knocking of the Austrian police; these are the things of which his life is full, trifling and picturesque things, a series of interludes, a beautiful and happy story, beginning ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton

... brambles within reach, resolved to utter no word which Brian could twist into any sort of promise for the future. He knew that his silence might injure his prospects, by lowering him in Brian's estimation—Brian being now the arbiter of his fate—but for all that he could not bring himself to make submission or to profess penitence. Something made the words stick in his throat; no power on earth would at that moment have forced ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... community. Interior quarrels were easily appeased in this way. But when feuds broke out between two different tribes, or two confederations of tribes, notwithstanding all measures taken to prevent them,(5) the difficulty was to find an arbiter or sentence-finder whose decision should be accepted by both parties alike, both for his impartiality and for his knowledge of the oldest law. The difficulty was the greater as the customary laws of different tribes and confederations were at variance ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... beautiful and accomplished daughter of the Cables was worshipped by her father with all the warmth and ardour of his soul. Times there were when he looked in wonder upon this arbiter of not a few manly destinies; and for his life could not help asking himself how the Creator had given him such a being for a child, commenting on the fact that she bore resemblance to ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... conviction and execution—it would have inaugurated a reign of terror, such as had not even then been approached, and which no community could bear. Every man and woman would have felt in the extremest peril, hanging upon the will of an irresponsible arbiter of life ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... understands all things, and in the place of conscience dwells in the most profound recesses of the mind. For he of whom I speak is a perfect guardian, a singular prefect, a domestic speculator, a proper curator, an intimate inspector, an assiduous observer, an inseparable arbiter, a reprobator of what is evil, an approver of what is good; and if he is legitimately attended to, sedulously known, and religiously worshipped, in the way in which he was reverenced by Sokrates with justice and innocence, will be a predicter of things ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... these rooms, with a window outlook upon a tangle of switching tracks with their shifting panorama of cars and locomotives, Ford set up his standard as chief executive of the three "annexed" roads, becoming, in the eyes of three separate republics of minor officials and employees, the arbiter ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde

... communicating with the deceiver, and ever after distrusting, and refusing him their confidence. They were universally Catholic; consequently, sectarian disputes were unknown. They practised eminently the Christian virtues, and were constant in their attendance at mass. The priest was the universal arbiter in all disputes, and his decision most implicitly acquiesced in. They had a horror of debt, and lawsuits, and would sacrifice any property they might have, to meet punctually an obligation. Fond of amusements, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks

... of your priesthood; you are sole arbiter of his life or death, but were he one of Amun's and I demanding his opinion had been so answered, and it was delivered as to stone ears, as his was to us, I would pass it by. However, if you are bent on ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... which they engrafted on the young Republic assuming, as it does, that power, not humanity, is statute-maker, could not be more diametrically opposed to the axiom which asserts, that humanity, not power, is lawful arbiter of its own rights. The man, unwashed, unmended, unlearned, is yet a safer judge of his own interests, than is all the rank, the wealth, or the wisdom of men or angels. Thomas Simms is a better witness as to his own need of freedom ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... bounds, indicated and staked out beforehand, offers an opportunity for all runners: the government has laid out and leveled the ground, established compartments, divided off and prepared rectilinear lists which converge to the goal; there, it presides, the unique arbiter of the race, exposing to all competitors the innumerable prizes which it proposes for them.—These prizes consist of offices, the various employments of the State, political, military, ecclesiastical, judiciary, administrative and university, all the honors and dignities which it dispenses, all ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Congress. Quarantine laws, for example, may be considered as affecting commerce; yet they are, in their nature, health laws. In England, we speak of the power of regulating commerce as in Parliament, or the king, as arbiter of commerce; yet the city of London enacts health laws. Would any one infer from that circumstance, that the city of London had concurrent power with Parliament or the crown to regulate commerce? or that it might ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... declares that it is "the most mysterious thing in the World. The Sceptres of our Kings are not so much respected; for the Savages have such a Deference for this Pipe, that one may call it The God of Peace and War, and the Arbiter of Life and Death. Their Calumet of Peace is different from the Calumet of War; They make use of the former to seal their Alliances and Treaties, to travel with safety, and receive Strangers; and the ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various

... retained as a sacred trust in the hands of Great Britain (to be used, not in the first instance for supply, but in the last exigence for control), it is obvious, that the presiding authority of Great Britain, as the head, the arbiter, and director of the whole empire, would vanish into an empty name, without operation or energy. With the habitual exercise of such a power in the ordinary course of supply, no trace of freedom could remain to America.[91] If Great Britain were stripped of this right, every ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the Baron; "if there is any fraud, you will be pleased to detect it, and, if all that is affirmed be true, you will not shut your eyes against the light; you are concerned in this business; hear it in silence, and let reason be arbiter ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve

... dignity of man, and those who would absorb man in the greatness of the Deity. These two schools have advocated doctrines which, logically carried out to their ultimate sequences, would produce a Grecian humanitarianism on the one hand, and a sort of Bramanism on the other,—the one making man the arbiter of his own destiny, independently of divine agency, and the other making the Deity the only power of the universe. With one school, God as the only controlling agency is a fiction, and man himself is infinite in faculties; the other holds that God is everything ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... tradition survived, the tradition of Dryden as the arbiter of literary criticism at Will's is illustrated by the story told by Dr. Johnson. When he was a young man he had a desire to write the life of Dryden, and as a first step in the gathering of his materials he applied to the 'only two persons then alive who had known him, Swinney and Cibber. ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... will make it intolerable. They have succeeded in establishing among themselves a fatal unanimity on the question of Slavery,—fatal because it makes the office of spy and informer honorable, makes the caprice of a mob the arbiter of thought, speech, and action, and debases public opinion to a muddy mixture of fear and prejudice. In peace, the majority of their population will be always looked on as conspirators; in war, they would ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various

... may be also givers of life, and this is the gift that comes to you at the entrance to the Land of the Teens. Can you imagine a more important period in the life of an individual than that point where is intrusted to him the physical powers which make him the arbiter of the destiny of those who ...
— Almost A Man • Mary Wood-Allen

... the two greatest Englishmen of my time, men of a type that seems now to be lost among us. Since Colonel Clive we have had no victorious captain, and since Mr. Pitt, no mighty minister, and hence it is that our country, which under the rule of a Cromwell or a Pitt, hath risen to be the arbiter of Europe, and held all nations in awe, is now sunk, under the sway of feeble intellects, to a precarious position, the mock of every power, and saved only by her ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward

... French, or fiercish in Latin, and on the testimony of Diodati had terrible spurs for self-defence, prepare to do your manly utmost in this feminine kind of fight. Madame de Saumaise stands by as Juno, arbiter of the contest, Salmasius himself, lying in the next room ill with the gout, when he heard the battle begun, almost dies with laughing. But alas! and O fie! our unwarlike Alexander, no match for his Amazon, falls down vanquished. She, getting ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... doctrine, than the motives usually assigned for maintaining and enjoining it. Such, for instance, are the arguments drawn from the anticipated loss and damage that would result from its abandonment; as that it would deprive the Christian world of its only infallible arbiter in questions of faith and duty, suppress the only common and inappellable tribunal; that the Bible is the only religious bond of union and ground of unity among Protestants and the like. For the confutation ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... spoke his name; two centuries, Armed and threatening either, Turned unto him submissively, As waiting fate together; He made a silence, and arbiter He sat between the two. He vanished; his days in the idleness Of his island-prison spending, Mark of immense malignity, And of a pity unending, Of hatred inappeasable, Of ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells

... of Braga, two personages of rank, who did but follow the prevailing fashion that decreed the presence of a humanist scholar to be an indispensable appendage in the households of the great. He read and commented the classics to his exalted patrons, was the arbiter of taste, their friend, the companion of their cultured leisure, and their confidant. Replying to the praises of his disciples, couched in extravagant language, he administered a mild rebuke, recalling them to moderation in the expression ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... as a sportsman that his reputation reached us, as when his Meteor beat the Duke of Queensberry's Egham, at Newmarket, or when he brought Jim Belcher up from Bristol, and sprang him upon the London fancy. But usually it was as the friend of the great, the arbiter of fashions, the king of bucks, and the best-dressed man in town that his reputation reached us. My father, however, did not appear to be elated at my mother's ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle

... rich in the possession of various editions of his works, kindly inform me whether any commentator on the poet has traced the well-known lines that I have quoted to the "Corcillum est, quod homines facit, caetera quisquilia omnia" of Petronius Arbiter, cap. 75.? Pope had certainly both read and admired the Satyricon, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various

... especially attract immense crowds; much business in novel implements, machinery, seeds, and artificial fertilizers, was done when times were good, and the towns in which the shows are held benefit by a large increase in general trade. The weather, however, is the arbiter as to the attendance, upon which the financial result of ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... individuality of each human soul—our Protestant idea, the right of individual conscience and judgment—our republican idea, individual citizenship. In discussing the rights of woman, we are to consider, first, what belongs to her as an individual, in a world of her own, the arbiter of her own destiny, an imaginary Robinson Crusoe with her woman Friday on a solitary island. Her rights under such circumstances are to use all her faculties for her own ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... estimate very nearly as old as that of her father. This person, of whom she had such slight recollection, had been the chosen instrument employed by her tutelar protectress in rescuing her from captivity, and in avenging the loss of a father, and she was bound by her vow to consider him as the arbiter of her fate, if indeed he should deem it worth his while to become so. She wearied her memory with vain efforts to recollect so much of his features as might give her some means of guessing at his disposition, and her judgment toiled in conjecturing ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott

... Abd-er-Rahman II. reigned, he did not trouble himself about the laws of his crumbling empire. The one man in whom he delighted was Ziryab. What Petronius was to Nero,[A] and Beau Brummel to George IV., that was Ziryab to the Sultan Abd-er-Rahman II., the elegant arbiter in matters of taste. From the dishes which should be eaten to the clothes which should be worn, he was the supreme judge; while at the same time he knew by heart and could "like an angel sing" one thousand songs ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele

... related to me [by mendacious or ill-informed persons] barbarities which excite horror. He has done us all a great deal of ill. He has been a King for his own Country; but a Trouble-feast for those about him;—setting up to be the arbiter of Europe; always undertaking on his neighbors, and making them pay the expense. As Daughters of Maria Theresa, it is impossible we can regret him, nor is it the Court of France that will make his funeral oration." [Comte de Hunolstein, Correspondance inedite de Marie Antoinette ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... 'let's drop dispute, And go before Raminagrobis, [23] Who'll judge, not only in this suit, But tell us truly whose the globe is.' This person was a hermit cat, A cat that play'd the hypocrite, A saintly mouser, sleek and fat, An arbiter of keenest wit. John Rabbit in the judge concurr'd, And off went both their case to broach Before his majesty, the furr'd. Said Clapperclaw, 'My kits, approach, And put your noses to my ears: I'm deaf, almost, by weight of years.' And so they did, not ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine

... particularly Hamburg or Rostock." Sept. 19, 1626, he opens his mind to Du Maurier: "This is the second year since they have ceased all regard for me, and put in practice whatever might serve to depress a man of the greatest steadiness." It was precisely since Cardinal Richelieu became the Arbiter of France that Grotius was thus treated. The disgrace of the Chancellor D'Aligre deprived him of all remains of hope: the Seals were given to Marillac, who professed an open enmity to all that was Protestant. Learning was no merit with him if joined to ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny

... following as to decide the nature of the novel with us remains to be seen. Will the reader be content to accept a novel which is an analytic study rather than a story, which is apt to leave him arbiter of the destiny of the author's creations? Will he find his account in the unflagging interest of their development? Mr. James's growing popularity seems to suggest that this may be the case; but the work of Mr. James's imitators will have much to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... invisible penance; conditions with which the priest would in times of ignorance and corruption, easily comply, as they increased his influence, by adding the knowledge of secret sins to that of notorious offences, and enlarged his authority, by making him the sole arbiter of the ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... of boyish homesickness and desolation; then gradually, as the marvellous healing properties of youth began to stir, a new feeling awakened in his mind—a sense of curiosity concerning the strange old man whom fate, by a twist of the wheel, had made the arbiter of his life. Even to one so young and inexperienced, it was impossible to know Andrew Henderson and not to feel that some strange peculiarity set him apart from other men. In his ascetic face, in his large, light-blue ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston

... accepted, and, in the fulness of his confidence, Sheridan insisted that the actor should not even rehearse the part, and yet that he should get through with it satisfactorily to the public and himself on the night of the first performance. It came. The arbiter of hopes and fears appeared in all the "bearded majesty" of the age of Elizabeth; and, flattered by the preference of the great author, had carefully conned over the following instructions:—"Mr. ——, as Lord Burleigh, will advance from the prompter's side;—proceed to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various

... Europe. He might apprehend danger from opposing such earnest desires: he might hope for large supplies if he concurred with them: and however inglorious and indolent his disposition, the renown of acting as arbiter of Europe would probably at intervals rouse him from his lethargy, and move him to support the high character with ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume

... been designated as such friendly sovereign, it became my duty to carry with good faith the agreement so made into full effect. To this end I caused all the measures to be taken which were necessary to a full exposition of our case to the sovereign arbiter, and nominated as minister plenipotentiary to his Court a distinguished citizen of the State most interested in the question, and who had been one of the agents previously employed ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... offering to the Gods, and vice versa—a great offering to the Gods a great dinner—that the very ministers and chief agents in religion were at first the same. Cocus, or [Greek: mageirost], was the very same person as the Pope, or presiding arbiter in succession to a Pope. 'Sunt eadem,' says Casaubon, 'Cocus et Pope.' And of this a most striking example is yet extant in Athenaeus. From the correspondence which for many centuries was extant between Alexander the Great, when embarked upon his great expeditions, ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... must take care of your clothes, too," proceeded the arbiter elegantiarum. "Fold your trousers when you take them off, and have them pressed. Get your hair cut once a week—have a regular day for it. Trim your nails twice a week. I've got you a safety razor. Shave at least once a day—first thing after you get out of bed is the best time. And change your ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips

... them answer'd' "are so leaden gross, That with their weight they make the balances To crack beneath them. Joyous friars[3] we were, Bologna's natives; Catalano I, He Loderingo named; and by thy land Together taken, as men use to take A single and indifferent arbiter, To reconcile their strifes. How there we sped, Gardingo's vicinage [4] can best declare." "O friars!" I began, "your miseries—" But there brake off, for one had caught mine eye, Fix'd to a cross ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock

... not enough to have aggrandized the Church, and deprived himself of friends, he, wishing to have the kingdom of Naples, divides it with the King of Spain, and where he was the prime arbiter in Italy he takes an associate, so that the ambitious of that country and the malcontents of his own should have somewhere to shelter; and whereas he could have left in the kingdom his own pensioner as king, he ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli

... protection to as many of her "hands", as were essential to her safe and efficient working. How many were really required for this purpose was, however, a moot point on which ship-masters and naval officers rarely saw eye to eye; and since the arbiter in all such disputes was the "quarter-deck gentlemen," the decision seldom if ever went ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson

... of Christendom, the key-stone of the whole political edifice was the papacy. Up to the sixteenth century, the Sovereign Pontiff had been acknowledged by all Christian nations as supreme arbiter in international questions, and if England did possess any shadow of authority over Ireland, it was owing to former decisions of popes, who, being misinformed, had allowed the Anglo-Norman kings to establish ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... well as some almost incredible tales of his familiar companionship with certain men of awe-inspiring name and great renown, with various mighty feats of arms in recent campaigns, vaguely current, conduced to make him the monarch of the forecastle, and the arbiter of the various discussions and arguments among the men, who rarely ventured to dispute the dictum of ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady

... immense dumb force of belief in established things, all that stubborn hatred and dread of change, that incalculable power of imagining nothing, which, since the beginning of time, had made Horace Pendyce the arbiter of his land, rose up ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... lads had on the Tuesday affronted a soldier; so two or three hundred redcoats came over from Windsor, intending to wreck the camp. There was a babel of cursing and screaming, much brandishing of belts and tent-rods, when suddenly an arbiter appeared, a white-haired, brown-eyed, calm Colossus, speaking Romany fluently, and drinking deep draughts of ale—in a quarter of an hour Tommy Atkins and Anselo Stanley were sworn friends over a loving-quart. "Mr Burroughs," said one of the Gypsies (it is the name by which ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins

... remarkable characters in the reign of Nero was Titus Petronius Arbiter. He was a great favourite with the Emperor, and held some official appointment—the duties of which he is said to have discharged with ability. In his writings he is supposed to condemn immorality, but ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... family whose political ideas were not his. Yet the Duke and Duchess of Orleans were not discouraged. They entered on negotiations a long time in advance with the Baroness of Feucheres, who was in reality the arbiter of the situation. M. Nettement relates that the first time that Marie-Amelie pronounced the name of the Baroness in the presence of the Duchess of Angouleme, the daughter of Louis XVI. said to her: "What! you have seen that woman!" The Duchess of ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... affairs. Thus out of chaos, Christendom arose, a single homogeneous society of peoples. It was in the middle ages that the pontifical authority reached its full stature. The Holy See exercised the lofty function of arbiter among contending nations, and of leadership in great public movements, like the Crusades. Civil authority and ecclesiastical authority, emperors and popes, were engaged in a long conflict for predominance. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... sad, sweet gaze at the Colonel, "but have not I been authorized to form other ties? In so strange a position, a secret voice bids me trust to your kindness, which is so well known to me. Can I be wrong in taking you as the sole arbiter of my fate? Be at once judge and party to the suit. I trust in your noble character; you will be generous enough to forgive me for the consequences of faults committed in innocence. I may then confess to you: I love ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac

... upon Lucius Icilius,[12] a person of similar rank in society. For this maiden Claudius conceived a passion, and not otherwise able to attain his ends he arranged with certain men to declare her a slave: he was to be the arbiter. The father of the girl accordingly came from the camp and pled his case. When Claudius had given sentence against her and the girl was delivered to those who had declared her a slave and no one came to the rescue, her father ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... in conclusion, this sentiment: "The Little Court-room at Geneva—where our royal mother England, and her proud though untitled daughter, alike bent their heads to the majesty of Law and accepted Justice as a greater and better arbiter ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... Exemplar of Peace America and the World's Peace America's Mission in the Peace Movement America's Mission to Mankind America's Obligation The Arbiter of the World Arbitration versus War The Challenge of Thor The Conflict of War and Peace A Congress of Nations The Cost of Militarism The Cost of Peace The Crucial Parallelism The Dawn of Peace The Dawn of Universal Peace Democracy and Peace Diplomacy and Peace Disillusionment The Dominant ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association

... the sort of stuff that we all of us wrote more or less after we left school," said the Baron with a bored expression—he was acting his part of arbiter of taste who has seen everything. "We used to deal in Ossianic mists, Malvinas and Fingals and cloudy shapes, and warriors who got out of their tombs with stars above their heads. Nowadays this poetical frippery has been replaced by Jehovah, angels, seistrons, the ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... Taney, the arch apostle of State rights, answered Wisconsin in the very language of the Federalists of 1798, whom Jefferson despised and condemned: "The Constitution and laws of the United States are supreme, and the Supreme Court is the only and final arbiter of disputes between the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... it being a loose term, that may apply to any person or thing) was now terrified by his enemies in turn. 6. The love of his people was as heartily detested by them as scarcely any other monarch, not even his great-grandson, has been, before or since. 7. The arbiter of peace and war was fain to send superb ambassadors to kick their heels in Dutch shopkeepers' antechambers. 8. Is again a general term. 9. The man fit to be master of the universe was scarcely master of his own kingdom. 10. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... seemed to revive to some sense of enjoyment, when she again found herself surrounded by that comfort to which she had been accustomed. Weakened in mind as in body, Mrs. Euston fondly flattered herself that her daughter might yet be happy amid the splendors of wealth; and the poor mother welcomed the arbiter of their future fate with smiles and courteous words, to which he listened with politeness, and scorned as the hollow ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... Madame de Longueville was no less the idol of the Carmelites and the party of the Saints than that of the Hotel de Rambouillet. Again, the Duke d'Enghien, already covered with the laurels of Rocroy, and about to entwine therewith those of Thionville, was so evidently the arbiter of the situation, that Madame de Chevreuse insisted, with much force, that Mazarin should be got rid of whilst the young Duke was occupied with the distant enemy, and before he should return from the army. ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies

... confession and the confessor are to the impoverished souls of those poor women. In the priest who listens and whose voice falls softly on her ear, the woman of toil and suffering sees not so much the minister of God, the judge of her sins, the arbiter of her welfare, as the confidant of her sorrows and the friend of her misery. However coarse she may be, there is always a little of the true woman in her, a feverish, trembling, sensitive, wounded something, a restlessness and, ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... a wonderfully short space of time, turns the flesh putrid and renders the blubber so rotten that it cannot be lifted, nor, if it could, would it be of any value. So it was no wonder that our haste was great, or that the august arbiter of our destinies himself condescended to take his place among the toilers. By nightfall the whole of our catch was on board, excepting such toll as the hungry hordes of sharks had levied upon it in transit. ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... the highest typical human being should be. This "Ideal of Humanity," as it has been called, is more or less constantly and consciously pursued, and becomes a spur to national action and to a considerable degree an arbiter of national destiny. If the ideal is low and bestial, the course of that nation is downward, self-destroying; if it is lofty and pure, the energies of the people are directed toward the maintenance of those principles which are elevating and preservative. ...
— An Ethnologist's View of History • Daniel G. Brinton

... smith, a tall, brawny man, of great size and corresponding wisdom, who had been the village arbiter and general councillor for a generation. There was not a will made in Clinton Magna that he did not advise upon; not a bit of contentious business that he had not a share in; not a family history that he did not know. His probity was undisputed; his ability was regarded with awe; but as he had ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... with this invisible, this incorporeal person, stands a more solid and substantial form, a new and formidable power, till these days unknown in Europe. Master of unbounded wealth, he boasts that he is the arbiter of peace and war, and that the credit of nations depends upon his nod. His correspondents are innumerable; his couriers outrun those of sovereign princes and absolute sovereigns; ministers of state are in ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... discovered her error at the last, it was too late for reform—her son was ruined, and an ingratitude engendered which would tinge the whole stream of her future life with bitterness. The mother is almost always the arbiter of her child's destiny; and if she misguide the bark of his life so that it finally anchors in a gulf of base and stormy passions, can it be wondered that his sympathies should be blunted, and the manifestations of his ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various

... and literary skill, he would expose to his eager readers. He was interested in almost everything; he wrote histories, dramas, philosophic treatises, romances, epics, and innumerable letters to his innumerable admirers. He was a sort of intellectual arbiter of Europe, such as Petrarch and Erasmus had been. The vast range of his writings enabled him to bring his bold questionings to the attention of all sorts and conditions of men,—not only to the general reader, but even ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... nation is to be far too vivacious amidst prosperity. If we take for the basis of all our operations true policy, which is nothing else than the calculation of combinations and chances, we shall long be la grande nation and the arbiter of Europe. I say more: we hold the balance of Europe: we will make that balance incline as we wish; and, if such is the order of fate, I think it by no means impossible that we may in a few years attain those grand results of which the heated and enthusiastic imagination catches a glimpse, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... from him, things are grotesque or eccentric, or fail of their sanity. Nothing out of its place is good, and nothing in its place is bad. He bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions, neither more nor less. He is the arbiter of the diverse, and he is the key. He is the equaliser of his age and land: he supplies what wants supplying, and checks what wants checking. If peace is the routine, out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building vast and populous cities, encouraging ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman

... certain minds this view of reason as the arbiter and reconciler of man's impulses ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... should say that the exceptions which might occur should invariably be counted as misfortunes. Not that many good, true, noble women do not live and die unmarried. Circumstances, that inflexible arbiter of human life, as it often seems, may strangely turn into wide and unaccustomed channels the love, the devotion, the energy, the self-sacrifice, that, in their pure, strong action, make woman's best development, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... way," Croisette answered in a low tone. "That is not however the worst of it. Louis is in his power. Suppose he thinks to make Kit the arbiter, Anne, and puts Louis up to ransom, setting Kit for the price? And gives her the option of accepting himself, and saving Louis' life; or refusing, and ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... The Victor overthrown! The Arbiter of others' fate A Suppliant for his own! Is it some yet imperial hope That with such change can calmly cope? Or dread of death alone? To die a Prince—or live a slave— Thy choice is most ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... and quarrels, he was the chosen arbiter. His decisions were generally as conclusive as those of the Kazi himself. Laborious, active, and intelligent, and esteemed by all who knew him, Bebut was happy; and his happiness was still enhanced by love. Tamira, the beautiful daughter of his patron, was the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 327, August 16, 1828 • Various

... the Central European struggle. The Swedes, notwithstanding the death of their King, continued to have some notable successes, and even approached to within striking distance of Vienna. But Richelieu now became the chief arbiter of events. The French generals Conde and Turenne invaded Germany and the Netherlands. Victories were won by the new armies at Rocroi, Thionville, and at Noerdlingen, but Vienna was not captured. The Imperial troops were, however, again defeated ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... with the actions of men, is to annihilate all the ideas that are given to us of this being. To say that man can disturb the order of the universe, that he can grasp the lightning from God's hand, that he can upset His projects, is to claim that man is stronger than his God, that he is the arbiter of His will, that it depends on him to change His goodness into cruelty. Theology does nothing but destroy with one hand that which it builds with the other. If all religion is founded upon a God who becomes angry, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier

... redeemed in turn by means of the teeth. Having been compelled to provide himself with a "plate" he invariably removed the detested contrivance and placed it beside him when sitting down to meals (on those rare occasions when he and not his "uncle" was the arbiter of its destinies).... ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... to his art, has extended his views to all ages and to all schools, and has acquired from that comprehensive mass which he has thus gathered to himself, a well digested and perfect idea of his art, to which everything is referred. Like a sovereign judge and arbiter of art, he is possessed of that presiding power which separates and attracts every excellence from every school, selects both from what is great and what is little, brings home knowledge from the east and from the west, making the universe tributary towards furnishing his mind and enriching ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... breastplate with his lance; then pressing upon him with the weight of his horse, threw him to the ground, and with two or three strokes more, slew him. Immediately he leapt from his horse, laid his hand upon the dead king's arms, and, looking up toward Heaven, thus spoke: "O Jupiter Feretrius, arbiter of the exploits of captains, and of the acts of commanders in war and battles, be thou witness that I, a general, have slain a general; I, a consul, have slain a king with my own hand, third of all the Romans; ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... we are led to self-government and self -renunciation—from a sense of duty, and with a view to future happiness in the enjoyment of the divine approbation. But Calvinistic necessity destroys the majesty of the human mind, as "an arbiter enthroned in its own dominion, endowed with an initiating power, and forming its determinations for good or for evil by an inherent and indefeasible prerogative." It tells us that we have neither ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull



Words linked to "Arbiter" :   judge, fashion arbiter, arbitrate, arbitrator, third party, Petronius Arbiter, supreme authority, evaluator, expert



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