"Arbitrary" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ankles and insteps, which looked like tight-fitting and elegant boots. Their faces were also tattooed, and their breasts were very profusely marked with every imaginable species of device—muskets, dogs, birds, pigs, clubs, and canoes, intermingled with lozenges, squares, circles, and other arbitrary figures. ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... the country since Adam's time, as all writers have labored hard to prove, and have succeeded. The streets of Magdala are any where from three to six feet wide, and reeking with uncleanliness. The houses are from five to seven feet high, and all built upon one arbitrary plan—the ungraceful form of a dry-goods box. The sides are daubed with a smooth white plaster, and tastefully frescoed aloft and alow with disks of camel-dung placed there to dry. This gives the edifice the romantic appearance of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in check, occasionally at least. The Rev. Joshua Moody had been settled in the ministry at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In the maintenance of the principles of religious liberty he suffered a long imprisonment, and was afterwards exiled by arbitrary power. He was then invited to the First Church in Boston, where he preached from 1684 to 1693, when he returned to Portsmouth. He died in 1697. By his active exertions, Mr. and Mrs. English were enabled to escape from the jail at Boston. The ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... full import we are still only just beginning to understand. And, owing mainly to their efforts also, the spirit of humanity has come to be an abiding influence in the world. It was they who, by their relentless exposure of the abuses of the French judicial system—the scandal of arbitrary imprisonment, the futile barbarism of torture, the medieval abominations of the penal code—finally instilled into public opinion a hatred of cruelty and injustice in all their forms; it was they who denounced the horrors of the slave-trade; it was they who unceasingly lamented ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... with his own reception as a postulant. The distinction between a probationer and a postulant was very slight, really an arbitrary one made by Father Burrowes for his own convenience, and until he had to decide whether he should petition to be clothed as a novice Mark did not feel that he was called upon to take himself too seriously as a monk. For that reason ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... the Aztec confederacy, they had a principal war-chief, elected for life or during good behavior, who was the general commander of the military bands. His powers were those of a general, and necessarily arbitrary when in the field. Behind this war-chief—noticed, it is true, by Spanish writers, but without explaining or even ascertaining its functions—was the council of chiefs, "the great council without whose authority," Acosta ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... is no fiction. Well would it be for the South American Republics at this day, as well as for the good name of Spain, if the poor aborigines of South America had nothing more serious to complain of than the arbitrary act of the dishonest governor referred to; but it is a melancholy fact that, ever since the conquest of Peru by Pizarro, the Spaniards have treated the Indians with brutal severity, and it is no wonder that revenge of the fiercest ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... of Maerchenland. She had read most of it already, and instead of reading any more, she found herself thinking of the contrast between their earlier Kings and Queens and the present occupiers of the throne. The former Sovereigns had had their failings; some of them had been arbitrary and wrong-headed, one or two cruel and tyrannical. But none had ever been vulgar or ridiculous. She could understand poor Mr. Wibberley-Stimpson's being so hopelessly out of his element—but it seemed strange that Queen Selina, who was the daughter of a Maerchenland Prince, should not have inherited ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... arbitrary point where the four territories met, New Reno flung its sprawling, dirty carcass over the muddy soil and roared and hooted endlessly, laughed with the rough boisterousness of miners and spacemen, rang with the brittle, brassy laughter of women following a trade older than New Reno. ...
— Foundling on Venus • John de Courcy
... The use of "&there4" is a rather arbitrary selection. There is no font available in general practice which renders the "therefore" symbol correction (three dots in a triangular formation). This can be done, however, in HTML, so if this document is read in a browser, then ...
— The Game of Logic • Lewis Carroll
... the soldiers might forget that they were also citizens, and might be ready to serve their general against their country? Was it not certain that, on the very first day on which Charles could venture to revoke his concessions, and to punish his opponents, he would establish an arbitrary government, and exact ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... governed by Bermdez, Mario and Pez. These three men had been at times hostile to Bolvar, and, in order to satisfy their ambitions, he had placed them in high commands. Pez was stationed in Caracas, where his arbitrary rule was resented by the people. He intrigued against the vice-president, Santander, executing his commands in such a way as to produce ill-will, especially an order providing for the recruiting of soldiers in Venezuela, which because of the manner of its execution, caused ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... rather be ruled by the personal, arbitrary whims of supremely wise men, or by laws ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... for sale at two thousand crowns each. Those who preferred official rank could buy the title of Councillor of State or of Commissioner of Police. New and profitable offices were created and disposed of to the highest bidder,—inspectorships of wood, of hay, of wine, of butter. Arbitrary power, no matter whether we call it sovereign prince or sovereign people, falls instinctively into the same ways in all times and countries. The Demos of a neighboring State, absolute and greedy as any monarch, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... and the application of the great discoveries in hydraulics, of which recent years have been so fruitful, on the other, may, and probably will, spread the vernal bloom of cultivation over wastes, now condemned to prolonged and arbitrary periods ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... was sure to get the worst of it. He did not exactly encourage his son in this ungenerous line of conduct, but his great maxim was to divide and rule; to exact from all who were dependent upon him, the most uncompromising obedience to his arbitrary will; and he laughed at my remonstrances, and turned my ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... who regarded him in fierce silence, he said aloud: "Sire, I pray for pardon; I am not to blame; Cocceji forbade me, in a proud, commanding tone, to look upon the Signora Barbarina. As I did not choose to obey this arbitrary order, he seized me without warning, and dashed me at the feet of the signora." [Footnote: Machler's "History of Frederick the Great."] The public, recovering from their astonishment, began to whisper, laugh merrily, and gaze ironically at ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Jesus' own case. At the heart of his instinct for fact is his instinct for God. He goes to the permanent and eternal at once in his quest of fact, because his instinct for God is so sure and so compelling. Bishop Phillips Brooks noted in Jesus' conversation "a constant progress from the arbitrary and special to the essential and universal forms of thought," "a true freedom from fastidiousness," "a singular largeness" in his intellectual life. The small question is answered in the larger—"the life ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... had the great pleasure of cooperating with the president of the Typographical Union in giving a reception and dinner to George W. Childs, of Philadelphia. Our relations were not always so friendly. We once resisted arbitrary methods and a strike followed. My men went out regretfully, shaking hands as they left. We won the strike, and then by gradual voluntary action gave them the pay and hours they asked for. When the earthquake fire of 1906 came I was unfortunately situated. I had lately bought ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... and exclude others, admit, however, that if visual and auditive impressions enter directly into the aesthetic fact, those of the other senses also enter into it, but only as associated. But this distinction is altogether arbitrary. Aesthetic expression is a synthesis, in which it is impossible to distinguish direct and indirect. All impressions are by it placed on a level, in so far as they are aestheticised. He who takes into himself the image of a picture or of a poem does ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... fathers, never sought For arbitrary sway, But free within each youthful mind, Bade ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... with small-pox; his eyes, blazing with an intelligence that was demoniacal, fixed upon her; the long wound that stretched from his cheek to his forehead. The pleading that had been mingled with the almost tyrannical command of his demeanour had vanished now. He looked ferocious, arbitrary, like a savage of genius full of some frightful message of warning or rebuke. As the camel rose he cried aloud some words in Arabic. Domini heard his voice, but could not understand the words. Laying his hands on the stuff of the palanquin he ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... of it, and ultimately one of the greatest sufferers by it, when the Bubble burst, see Smollett's "History of England," vol. ii; Pope's "Moral Essays," Epist. iii, and notes; and Gibbon's "Memoirs," for the violent and arbitrary proceedings against the Directors, one of whom was his ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... happened to be in the coffee-room at Fairport;a tall, beetle-browed, awkward-built man, who entered upon scientific subjects, as it appeared to my ignorance at least, with more assurance than knowledgewas very arbitrary in laying down and asserting his opinions, and mixed the terms of science with a strange jargon of mysticism. A simple youth whispered me that he was an Illumine', and carried on an ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to depart from this rule; as, for instance, in certain parts of fig. 864, where you will notice stitches, carried over 7 or 8 threads; also in the borders, fig. 865 and 866, where the stitches are arranged in a rather arbitrary manner, in order to bring out the pattern ...
— Encyclopedia of Needlework • Therese de Dillmont
... rather too severe on French as compared with English drama. Yet, when he comes to his own contemporaries, and sometimes even in reference to earlier writers, we find him slipping into those purely arbitrary severities of condemnation, those capricious stigmatisings of this as improper, and that as vulgar, and the other as unbecoming, which are the characteristics of the pseudo-correct and pseudo-classical ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... signs and symbols of affection, to that consummation which is most devoutly to be wished; and that it neither is necessary that there should be, nor probable that there would be, a single word spoken from first to last between two sympathetic spirits, were it not that the arbitrary institutions of society have raised, at every step of this very simple process, so many complicated impediments and barriers in the shape of settlements and ceremonies, parents and guardians, lawyers, Jew-brokers, and parsons, that many an adventurous ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... stringent restriction of immigration. A few persons believed in stopping immigration entirely for a period of years. Others would limit the number of immigrants that should be permitted to enter every year. But it was felt throughout the country that such arbitrary checks would be merely quantitative, not qualitative, and that undesirable foreigners should be denied admission, no matter what country they hailed from. A notable immigration conference which was called by the National Civic Federation in December, 1905, and which represented all ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... prices and currency exchange rates and expanded the state's right to intervene in the management of private enterprise. In addition to the burdens imposed by high inflation, businesses have been subject to pressure on the part of central and local governments, e.g., arbitrary changes in regulations, numerous rigorous inspections, and retroactive application of new business regulations prohibiting practices that had been legal. Further economic problems are two consecutive bad harvests, ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... opportunity for long excursions in the field of divinity; and therefore they take their religion at second hand from the priest on Sunday. It was not the multitude, but the sacred specialists, who built up the gigantic and elaborate edifice of theology, which is a purely arbitrary construction, deriving all its design and coherence from the instinctive logic of the human mind, that operates alike in a fairy tale and ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... and growers still complain loudly that the imposts upon wines, reckoning from the grape to the vat, are so heavy—amounting to about 35 or 40 per cent.—and their imposition and collection so very arbitrary and unequal, that ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... deliverance of Russia from the Mongols was accomplished by Ivan III, surnamed the Great. This ruler is also regarded as the founder of Russian autocracy, that is, of a personal, absolute, and arbitrary government. With a view to strengthening his claim to be the political heir of the eastern emperors, Ivan married a niece of the last ruler at Constantinople, who in 1453 A.D. had fallen in the defense of his capital ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... command, in the Spanish army, even unto the sentence of death. He had too often been the unwilling spectator, and even at times the innocent agent of scenes that were revolting to his better feelings, which emanated solely from this arbitrary power vested in heartless and incompetent individuals by means of their military rank. Musing thus upon the singular state of his affairs, and the events of the last two days, so important to his feelings, now recalling the bewitching glances of the peerless ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray
... also exacted in a most rigorous manner, a duty in kind: which, however, had existed long before his time: we allude to the annona, or supply of corn for use of the army and capital. This was a grievous and arbitrary exaction: rendered still more so "by the partial injustice of weights and measures, and the expence and labour of distant carriage." In a time of scarcity, Justinian ordered an extraordinary requisition of corn to be levied on Thrace, Bithynia, ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... back from Paris. Then I think the best that we can do will be to leave them to find a solution of the problem between them. Depend upon it that, whatever solution they do arrive at, it will be more accurate and will stand the test of time better than any arbitrary action which ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... miscellaneous entities; ethnicity, culture, race, religion, and language have divided states into separate political entities as much as history, physical terrain, political fiat, or conquest, resulting in sometimes arbitrary and imposed boundaries; maritime states have claimed limits and have so far established over 130 maritime boundaries and joint development zones to allocate ocean resources and to provide for national ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... seem at all acquainted with its existence. The government of the Sibnowans may be called patriarchal. The authority of the chief appears limited within very narrow bounds; he is the leader in war, and the dispenser of the laws; but possesses no power of arbitrary punishment, and no authority for despotic rule. The distinction between Sejugah and the lowest of his tribe is not great, and rather a difference of riches than of power. A few ornamented spears, presented by the Malays, seem his only insignia of office; ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... not yet ready for the methods of equal co-operation which the West is seeking to substitute for arbitrary power in politics and industry. In Russia, the methods of the Bolsheviks are probably more or less unavoidable; at any rate, I am not prepared to criticize them in their broad lines. But they are not the methods appropriate to more advanced countries, and our Socialists will be unnecessarily retrograde ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... determine in the system thus impaired, the peculiar morbid action of which tubercular matter is the product. The general division of causes into predisposing and exciting, must ever be more or less arbitrary. Individuals subject to predisposing causes may live the natural term of life and finally die of other disease. Indeed, when predisposing causes are known to exist, they should constitute a warning for the avoidance of other causes. Again, among the so-called exciting causes, some may operate ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... he said, in conclusion, "and I don't see that you or I have any call to pass judgment on it, or to lay down arbitrary lines, saying this is righteous, that is unrighteous. We may have our own thoughts about the matter—we must have, but we've no right to lop or stretch other people to fit them. Princess is a pure woman, a noble ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... have what sport he could out of the single poor gazelle that had been run down by his hounds. One who—albeit, of the weaker sex—had been venturesome enough to keep the Passover feast, might make sufficient resistance to his arbitrary will to afford him a little amusement, when none more exciting could be had. The monarch, therefore, after he had enjoyed his noonday siesta, gave command that the Hebrew prisoner should be brought into his presence in ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... fellow man. 'All men are born free and equal,' and are 'made of one blood.' Shall we look to wealth as giving one a title to the labor and freedom of another? Wealth is the creature of circumstances, and not an arbitrary law of nature. It takes to itself wings, and flies away; and he who is an opulent tyrant to-day, may on this principle be an impoverished slave to-morrow. Does physical strength make valid this claim? This, too, is evanescent: sickness and age would ultimately degrade the most muscular ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... a peculiar people. The next question will be: If God favours that family, will he do unjust things to help them?—will he let them do unjust things to help themselves? The Bible answers positively, No. God will not be unjust or arbitrary in choosing one man and rejecting another. If he chooses Jacob, it is because Jacob is fit for the work which God wants done. If he rejects Esau, it is because ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... power as little as any mortal I ever knew; and it is never a question of private will between us, but of absolute right. His conscience is too fine and high to permit him to be arbitrary. His will is strong, but not to govern others. He is so simple, so transparent, so just, so tender, so magnanimous, that my highest instinct could only correspond to his will. I never knew ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... being we have violated it; and now are so confused that we hardly know what "human nature" really is, or of what it is capable. That is why we get such extraordinarily different ideas about morals, and why, as I think, we get such arbitrary judgments ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... most laborious of all tasks—that of self-examination, and to establish a tribunal, which may secure it in its well-grounded claims, while it pronounces against all baseless assumptions and pretensions, not in an arbitrary manner, but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws. This tribunal is nothing less than the critical investigation ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... of his own—in fact, a double policy, one devoted to dealing with the land and its people; one to dealing with his enemies or those who questioned his authority. The one was as arbitrary, the other as cruel, as that of the tyrants ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume III • Charles Morris
... wish to distribute his subjects and provinces, and form of them new nations. But your majesty knows well that we cannot with impunity rob a people of their inalienable and noblest rights—of their nationality—give them arbitrary frontiers, and transform them into new states. Nationality is a sentiment inherent in the human heart, and our Prussians have proud hearts. They love ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... the church by its own courts from which they feared so many evils. "I dare confidently say," he affirms, "that, if comparisons be rightly made, presbyterial government is the most limited and the least arbitrary government of any other in the world."[267] And, after entering into details to make good this affirmation in regard to the papal and prelatical forms of government, he proceeds to maintain that Independents "must needs ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... for seeming to be brusk and arbitrary," said the lieutenant smiling, "but I can't permit you to go back. For our own sake, as well as yours. You might precipitate a general engagement, and while we're not running away from anything like that, we are not looking for it just ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... intimate friend of the Viceroy, gives a darker coloring to his story. He says that, forced to unceasing labor, and chafed by arbitrary rules, some of the soldiers fell under Roberval's displeasure, and six of them, formerly his favorites, were hanged in one day. Others were banished to an island, and there kept in fetters; while, for various light offences, several, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... know, as we use it, gives no idea of sight or of knowledge or of ability. When we hear it articulated, and we understand that know is the word meant, we then recognize the sense intended to be conveyed. We are able to do this because of our ability to construct and give arbitrary significance to new words, and to transfer the sense of an old word to one newly formed. When any word is used in speech of which the pronunciation does not correspond with the letters with which the word is written, we instinctively image the written or printed word in the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... at the close of the fifteenth century. The politics of the country were necessarily regulated by the temper and views of the leading powers. They were essentially selfish and personal. The ancient republican forms had been gradually effaced during this century, and more arbitrary ones introduced. The name of freedom, indeed, was still inscribed on their banners, but the spirit had disappeared. In almost every state, great or small, some military adventurer, or crafty statesman, had succeeded in raising his own authority ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... country, which marked the period from 1876 to the eighties. It was his influence, largely, which led to the war upon the "crookedness" which marked the early years of professional base ball history, in which pool gambling was the potent factor. It took years of cohesive and even arbitrary legislation to eliminate the poison of the pool rooms from the professional system, but success was finally achieved, and to the late President Hulbert and his able coadjutors in the League does the credit of this success ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... agony, and the sultan ordered them to desist. "I trust, Zara, you are now sufficiently punished for your disobedience." But I heard him not; and when the sultan perceiving that I did not reply, looked at me, his heart melted. He felt how arbitrary, how cruel he had been. The Circassian went to him; he ordered her, in a voice of thunder, to be gone, me to be unbound by the other ladies, laid on the sofa, and restoratives to be procured. When I came to my senses, I found myself alone with the sultan. "Oh Zara," said he, as the tears stood in ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... exceptions,—men educated in philosophy like Epaminondas, or in homely household virtues and citizenship like Washington—but there never was a soldier such as I speak of, who did more for the world than was compatible with his confined and arbitrary breeding. I do not speak, of course, with reference to the unprofessional part of his character. Circumstances, especially the participation of dangers and vicissitude, often conspire with naturally good qualities to render soldiers ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... precision, and so become an expert in the use of that precious instrument which is meant not only to express valuable thought, but to preserve it as well. Further, he will learn to feel respect for the language in which he writes and thus be saved from any attempt to remodel it by arbitrary and capricious treatment. Without this schooling, a man's writing may easily degenerate into ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... of my journey I reached Ganhard, which was formerly one of the most prosperous towns in Central India, but is now much decayed and governed by a wealthy, arbitrary, violent, generous, and cruel prince. His name is Rajah Maddan, a true Oriental potentate, delicate and barbarous, affable and sanguinary, combining feminine grace with ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Literary Supplement (August 18, 1921), that credibility varies as to classes of witnesses and classes of events, and also as to type of perception. Thus, perceptions of touch, odor, and taste have low evidential value. Our hearing is defective and arbitrary when it judges the source and direction of sound, and in listening to the talk of other people "words which are not heard will be supplied by the witness in all good faith. He will have a theory of the purport of the conversation, and will arrange the ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... sense. The man in whose favor no laws of property exist probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favor of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give reciprocation of right,—that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience; and it is a problem which I give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were not framed for him as well as his ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... an essential and intrinsic excellence, and immovable principles common to all languages, founded in the nature of our passions and affections, yet it has its ornaments and modes of address which are merely arbitrary. What is approved in the Eastern nations as grand and majestic, would be considered by the Greeks and Romans as turgid and inflated; and they, in return, would be thought by the Orientals to express themselves in a cold and ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... test for criminal responsibility is admittedly vague and inadequate, affording great opportunity for divergent expert testimony and a readily availed of excuse for the arbitrary and sentimental actions of juries, to which is largely due the distrust prevailing of the claim of insanity when interposed as ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... unpleasantly put before us. I like the girl; it would have been so easy to spoil her with moralising; but the Baron is the magnet, and, as a counterfoil, the diabolical German hotel keeper. There is too much arbitrary handling at the close for my taste. Only in the opening chapters of Victory does Mr. Conrad pursue his oblique method of taletelling; the pomp and circumstance of a lordly narrative style roll to a triumphant conclusion. This Polish writer ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... western posts were indeed to be vacated by June 1, 1796, though without indemnity for the past, but a British right of search and impressment was implicitly recognized, the French West Indian trade not rendered secure, and arbitrary liberty accorded to Great Britain in defining contraband. Opposition to ratification was bitter and nearly universal. The friends of France were jubilant. Jay was burned in effigy, Washington himself attacked. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... swallow up all the rest. The theory of checks and balances is admirable if the object be to trammel power, and to have as little power in the government as possible; but it is a theory which is born from passions engendered by the struggle against despotism or arbitrary power, not from a calm and philosophical appreciation of government itself. The English have not succeeded in establishing their theory, for, after all, their constitution does not work so well as they pretend. The landed ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... and bent all the resources of her powerful personality to the enlightenment and advancement of the land of her adoption. Her people were not "knouted into civilization," but invited and drawn into it. Her touch was terribly firm—but elastic. She was arbitrary, but tolerant; and if her reign was a despotism, it was a despotism of that broad type which deals with the sources of things, and does not bear heavily upon individuals. The Empress Catherine died suddenly in 1796, and Paul I. was crowned Emperor ...
— A Short History of Russia • Mary Platt Parmele
... that any pretended private revelation must necessarily have become a farce. No one, especially, would have held any such secret for months, and then divulged it in the ambiguous mode of a romance, while arbitrary arrests and unexplained imprisonments were making the once free States of the Old Union a second Venice. Suspicious circumstances have been observed, and suspicious persons put under watch; but if anything ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... had no vices to be criticized by the men, who respected him not only for his bravery on the battlefield, but for his good moral character; for even the vicious respect the virtues which they practically contemn. Being neither arbitrary nor tyrannical, he was cheerfully obeyed; and his company never appeared better than when, by the temporary absence of his superior, it was under ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... others do not. The distinction seems to be almost arbitrary. It can be largely developed, but only in those with whom original endowment of the faculty makes development possible. No matter how long a direction-blind man frequents the wilderness, he is never sure of himself. Nor is the lack any reflection on the intelligence. I once traveled in the Black ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... impossible to conceive of life without Shakespeare and Burns, without Paradise Lost and the Intimations ode and the immortal pageant of the Canterbury Tales; but (the technical question apart) to imagine it wanting Hugo's lyrics is easy enough. The largesse of which he was so prodigal has but an arbitrary and conventional value. Like the magician's money much has changed, almost in the act of distribution, into withered leaves; and such of it as seems minted of good metal is ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Dave sat up and assumed an arbitrary attitude. He was growing suspicious of Dad's ideas. "To begin with, how many bears do you reckon on ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... in turn, committed arbitrary acts; there were those who curried favor with him, and worked his will, and became his minions. In that school of misery, where bitter minds dreamed only of vengeance, where the sophistries hatched in such brains were laying up, inevitably, a store of evil ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... President Wilson was inaugurated. The duly-elected President of Mexico, Francisco Madero, had been overthrown by a band of conspirators headed by Huerta. Were the fruits of the hard-won fight of the Mexican masses against the arbitrary rule of the favoured few to be wasted? President Wilson answered this question in his formal statement of March 12, 1913, eight days after his inauguration. With respect to Latin-American affairs, ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... was to obtain redress of past grievances, with a proper regard to the individuals who had suffered; the next, to prevent the recurrence of such grievances by the abolition of tyrannical tribunals acting upon arbitrary maxims in criminal proceedings, and most improperly denominated courts of justice. They then proceeded to establish that fundamental principle of all free government, the preserving of the purse to the ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... that is, it distinguishes, individualizes, concretes, numbers, compares, things which, material or immaterial, are thoroughly identical and indistinguishable. Matter, as well as spirit, plays, as we view it, all sorts of parts; and, as there is nothing arbitrary in its metamorphoses, we build upon them these psychologic and atomic theories, true in so far as they faithfully represent, in terms agreed upon, the series of phenomena, but radically false as soon as they pretend to realize their abstractions and ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... all the faults of the system devised by the Puritans, it was a practical system. With all their foibles, with all their teasing, tyrannical, and arbitrary notions, the Pilgrims were lovers of liberty as well as sticklers for authority. . . . Nowhere can a better description of liberty be found than that given by Winthrop, in his defence of himself before the General Court on a charge of arbitrary conduct. 'Nor would I have you mistake ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... filling those numerous vacancies which had fallen in England during an interdict of six years, had proceeded in the most arbitrary manner; and had paid no regard, in conferring dignities, to personal merit, to rank, to the inclination of the electors, or to the customs of the country. The English Church was universally disgusted; and Langton himself, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... the Court Etiquette of the Republic. At the very commencement of the Government under the Constitution the social question became one of great magnitude, and in order to adjust it upon a proper basis, President Washington caused a definite Code to be drawn up; but the rules were too arbitrary and exacting to give satisfaction, and society was not disposed to acknowledge so genuine an equality as the code required among its members. Frequent and bitter quarrels arose in consequence of the clashing of social claims, and at last a ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... companions. The late Mr. Froude offered an explanation of this general rule in a paper read before this Institution in 1878, and gave a curve of efficiency with varying true slip. In Mr. R E. Froude's paper last year there was a form of this curve, with an arbitrary abscissa scale for the slip, devised to illustrate in one diagram the wide conditions covered by his experiments. In the screws now under consideration, the values of the pitch/diameter vary only from 1.2 to 1.34, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 598, June 18, 1887 • Various
... the "Lombard incident," Mr. Chamberlain says:—[43] "As an instance of such arbitrary action the recent maltreatment of coloured British subjects by Field Cornet Lombard may be cited. This official entered the houses of various coloured persons without a warrant at night, dragged them from their ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... which I am sure is, that the distinction between the organic and inorganic is arbitrary; that it is more coherent with our other ideas, and therefore more acceptable, to start with every molecule as a living thing, and then deduce death as the breaking up of an association or corporation, than to start with inanimate molecules and smuggle life into ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... heaven would fly before the driving soul. In fear of this, the father of the gods Confined their fury to those dark abodes, And locked them safe within, oppressed with mountain loads; Imposed a king with arbitrary sway, To loose their fetters, or their force allay. DRYDEN, ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule ...
— Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader • John L. Huelshof
... however, none of these alternatives have been followed, the uniformity must be considered, in this case as in all others, evidence of subordination to some general law—implies what we call natural causation, as distinguished from arbitrary arrangement. ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... The Spanish population was concentrated in cities, and the country divided into great estates granted by the crown to the families of the conquistadores or to favourites at court. The immense areas of Peru, Buenos Ayres and Mexico were submitted to the most unjust and arbitrary regulations, with no object but to stifle growing industry and put them in absolute dependence upon the metropolis. It was forbidden to exercise the trades of dyer, fuller, weaver, shoemaker or hatter, and the natives were compelled ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... falls ten times per minute through an average height of 3.3 feet is thereby subjected to an influence equal to 22,400 horse-power. In this estimate the unit of the horse-power which has been adopted is Watt's arbitrary standard of "33,000 foot pounds per minute". The work done in raising the vessel referred to is equal to ten horse-power multiplied by the number of pounds in a ton, or, in other ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... was not formed until February 22, 1886, when the Switchmen's Mutual Aid Association was inaugurated. At the first annual session in September, 1886, the grand master declared that the purposes of the organization were "to wage war against discrimination made by arbitrary employers; to organize for benevolent purposes; to amicably adjust labor disputes by arbitration; and for mutual aid to its members."[30] The Association was forced by the defalcations of its treasurer to disband, and a new ...
— Beneficiary Features of American Trade Unions • James B. Kennedy
... authors hereinafter studied are examples: Meredith, Hardy and Stevenson. Hardy alone is now in the land of the living, Meredith having but just passed away. Yet to omit the former, while including the other two, is obviously arbitrary, since his work in fiction is as truly done as if he, like them, rested from his literary labors and the gravestone chronicled his day of death. For reasons best known to himself, Mr. Hardy seems to have chosen verse for the final expression ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... us to cease buying goods abroad, for thereby the money now sent away will be kept in Canada. What right has any government to pass such a law? With the money I get for my wheat may I not buy what I need where I see fit? Such an arbitrary law as he pleads for would undoubtedly help the manufacturer, but would it help me, who am a farmer? The question I ask, is not will the money stay in Canada, but will the money I have justly earned stay ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... derived from the pleasure or pain of their consequences. He has as yet little power of subordinating his lower impulses to an ideal end, and hence is not properly a moral being. Good conduct must, therefore, be secured principally through the exercise of arbitrary authority from without. ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education
... life. At this period many pious persons acted in this way when they gave their property to the Church. Church goods being unseizable, and exempt from taxation, this was a roundabout way of getting the better of fiscal extortion, whether in the shape of arbitrary confiscations, or eviction by force of arms. In any case, such souls as were tired of the world and longing for repose, found in these bequests an heroic method of saving themselves the trouble of looking after a fortune or a landed estate. ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... for the defendants, made a motion before Judge Tallmadge for an order to prevent the District Attorney from using the preliminary evidence taken at the private examinations. "It was a proceeding," he said, "arbitrary and subversive of the first principles of law and liberty,"—"which would have disgraced the reign of Charles and stained the character of Jeffries." The District Attorney was heard in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... would still be there in some shape, though possibly it might be a shape that would lack something that our thought supplies. That reality is 'independent' means that there is something in every experience that escapes our arbitrary control. If it be a sensible experience it coerces our attention; if a sequence, we cannot invert it; if we compare two terms we can come to only one result. There is a push, an urgency, within our very experience, against which we are on the whole powerless, and which ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... mortification I saw myself on the point of being transported to such a distant and unhealthy climate, destitute of every convenience that could render such a voyage supportable, and under the dominion of an arbitrary tyrant, whose command was almost intolerable; however, as these complaints were common to a great many on board, I resolved to submit patiently to my fate, and contrive to make myself as easy as the nature of the case would allow. We got out ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... of species agreeing in some one character or series of characters; usually considered as arbitrary and opinionative, though some consider it ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... said Dudley but instantly checking himself, he added, "Yet she shall not find in me a safe or easy victim of arbitrary vengeance. I have friends—I have allies—I will not, like Norfolk, be dragged to the block as a victim to sacrifice. Fear not, Amy; thou shalt see Dudley bear himself worthy of his name. I must instantly communicate with some of those friends on whom I can best rely; for, ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... David in hand and toyed with him and spanked him, and pelted and petted him, until finally she made him her favorite son. Dame Fortune went about this work in an abrupt and arbitrary manner. ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... mile of rock and mountain land, as well as some fertile valleys, in which reposed a hardy and contented peasantry. The old Count de Hugo de Verole had quitted life early, and had left his only son, the then Count Hugo de Verole, a boy of scarcely ten years, under the guardianship of his mother, an arbitrary ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... to Garry for a decision and as he was the leader his word always went, though he was never arbitrary and generally talked things over before ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... that the use of spies has been given up; and it is also known that the system of underselling is again privately resorted to by many, so that the injury arising from this arbitrary system, pursued by the great booksellers, affects only, or most severely, those whose adherence to an extorted promise most deserves respect. Note to the ...
— On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures • Charles Babbage
... arbitrary gentleman, I know will signify nothing; and most hardly do you use the power you so wickedly have got over me. I have heart enough, sir, to do a deed that would make you regret using me thus; and I can hardly bear it, and what I am further to undergo. But a ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... this, we think we have the privilege and power to live and do as we please. Indeed, the more learning and power we have and the more exalted our rank, the greater knaves we are; perpetrating every wicked deed, stirring up strife, discord, war and murder for the sake of executing our own arbitrary designs, where the question is the surrender of a penny in recognition of the hundreds of thousands of dollars daily received ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... of. Still, he had known the young man from childhood, and had seen, and often regretted, that his want of moral courage had rendered him peculiarly liable to all the bad effects arising from his father's severe and arbitrary mode of treatment. Dick would never have had "pluck" enough to be a hardened villain, under any circumstances; but, unless some good influence, some strength, was brought to bear upon him, he might easily sink into the sneaking scoundrel. ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... charged upon the fell Thing who had wrought this their first dissension, and, ah! most terrible thought, interposed between them so effectually, that Sweyn was wilfully blind and deaf on her account, resentful of interference, arbitrary beyond reason. ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... proceeds step by step, until it has eradicated every laudable principle. It has been remarked, that there is no prince so bad, whose favorites and ministers are not worse. There is hardly any prince without a favorite, by whom he is governed in as arbitrary a manner as he governs the wretches subjected to him. Here the tyranny is doubled. There are two courts, and two interests; both very different from the interests of the people. The favorite knows that the regard of a tyrant is as unconstant and capricious as that of a woman; ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... accordingly, a fleet was sent to take possession of New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant called out his troops and made ready to fight. But the people were tired of the arbitrary rule of the Dutch governors, and petitioned him to yield. At last he answered, "Well, let it be so, but I would rather be ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... for what he took to be hypocrisy, he did not see the high, practical wisdom of the race which little by little had built up for itself its grandiose idealism in order to suppress its savage instincts, or to turn them to account. Not arbitrary reasons, not moral and religious codes, not legislators and statesmen, priests and philosophers, transform the souls of peoples and often impose upon them a new nature: but centuries of misfortune and experience, which forge the life of peoples ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... man respects the rights even of brute matter and arbitrary symbols. If he writes the same word twice in succession, by accident, he always erases the one that stands second; has not the first-comer the prior right? This act of abstract justice, which I trust many of my readers, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in just as I had finished and we went over the matter together. He accepted my ideas with that singular amiability and open- mindedness which form so striking a contrast with the general idea of his brusque and arbitrary character. ...
— Theodore Roosevelt • Edmund Lester Pearson
... allusion to the decline of the Portuguese power in India, which began in the first decade of the sixteenth century, with the conquests of Albuquerque and others (see note 8 ante). The arbitrary and tyrannical rule of the Portuguese exasperated the natives, many of whom revolted. It will be remembered that in 1580 Portugal was subjected to the dominion of Spain—including, of course, its Oriental colonial possessions. The statement in the text ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume VI, 1583-1588 • Emma Helen Blair
... the creative process. But the individual's development as the specializing medium of the Universal Spirit will depend entirely upon his own conception of his relation to it. So long as he only regards it as an arbitrary power, a sort of slave owner, he will find himself in the position of a slave driven by an inscrutable force, he knows not whither or for what purpose. He may worship such a God, but his worship is only the worship of fear and ignorance, and there ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... of each of the units that enters into the economic structure must vary with the locality, with the industry, and so on, hence it will prove to be impossible to lay down any arbitrary rules concerning their organization. It is possible, however, to suggest certain characteristics that must be ...
— The Next Step - A Plan for Economic World Federation • Scott Nearing
... and Dutch have escaped this ingulfing process. The former, instead of retreating, seeks in the present to enlarge its circuit; and great are the complaints in Schleswig-Holstein of the arbitrary and despotic imposition of Danish on a State of the German Confederation. The present government of Holland has not remained inactive. Much has been done to encourage men of letters and counteract the Gallic influences which prevailed in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... had been at perpetual war among themselves or with some neighbour were reduced to quietude. Communities which had been liable to sudden invasion and to all manner of arbitrary changes in their conditions of life, in their burdens of taxation, and even in their personal freedom, now knew exactly where they stood, and, for the most part, perceived that they stood in a much more tolerable and a distinctly more assured position than before. If there ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... an errand that much pleased the doctor, and, characteristically perhaps, he went about it indirectly. He told his wife what Miss Thompson had said to him and asked her to speak to Mrs Davidson. The missionary's attitude seemed rather arbitrary and it could do no harm if the girl were allowed to stay in Pago-Pago another fortnight. But he was not prepared for the result of his diplomacy. The missionary came to ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... his country. In vain he led your victorious fleet: against the boasted Armada of Spain; in vain he defended and established the honour, the liberties, the religion—the Protestant religion—of this country, against the arbitrary cruelties of Popery and the Inquisition, if these more than Popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are let loose among us—to turn forth into our settlements, among our ancient connexions, friends, and relations, the merciless cannibal, thirsting ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... something arbitrary in this mode of valuation, it is, perhaps, on the whole the best; and its result is extremedy handy for the memory (as somebody has pointed ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... captious with his sisters "whiles," she acknowledged in secret; he was arbitrary with his little brothers when they neglected tasks of his giving; and tried his mother and his grandmother, now and then, as young lads always have, and always will try their mothers and grandmothers, until old heads can be ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... compare these periods with periods of the same name in Western history although, naturally, we find some similarities with the development of society and culture in the West. Every attempt towards periodization is to some degree arbitrary: the beginning and end of the Middle Ages, for instance, cannot be fixed to a year, because development is a continuous process. To some degree any periodization is a matter of convenience, and it should be ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard
... introduction to each other they had had When on board the Ballyshannon! And it drove them nearly mad To think how very friendly with each other they might get, If it wasn't for the arbitrary rule of etiquette! ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... intellectual powers and charms of style with which that feeling may be expressed, are informed and vitalized by the sympathy itself. But whether a man who writes verses has genius,—whether he be a poet according to arbitrary canons,—whether some of his lines resemble the lines of other writers,—and whether he be original, are questions which may be answered in every way of every poet in history. Who is a poet but he whom the heart of man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... only kind of government under which enterprises against the spirit of the law can be put down. Yes. Arbitrary rule is the salvation of a country when it comes to the support of justice, for the right of mercy is strictly one-sided. The king can pardon a fraudulent bankrupt; he cannot do anything for the victims. The letter of the law is ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... alone wherein the ualidity of verdicts and judgments in such cases stands and if a real and apparent murtherer be condemned and executed out of due form of law it is inditable against them that do it for in such case the law is superseded by arbitrary doings. ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... language of the New Testament, which, when studied by the light of unassisted Reason, does not appear to have been fully included, contemplated, intended by the language of the Old:—that the accommodation has not been arbitrary;—say rather, that here at least there has been no ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... as the Great Powers of Europe were using their best endeavours to induce the Sultan's Christian subjects to live peaceably under the Ottoman rule, they could not allow of such arbitrary acts of cruelty as that which had been perpetrated, and which was sufficient to rouse the whole of the Christian population against the Government. He understood, he said, that Sir Stratford Canning had asked for instructions from your Lordship in this matter, and that he trusted that they ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various
... Rollo's being alarmed at this, as another man might, it was answered by a certain humourous play of face; a slight significance of lip and air, quite difficult to characterize. It was not arrogant, nor arbitrary; I do not know how to call it masterful; and yet certainly it expressed no dismay and no apprehension. Perhaps it expressed that he intended to be in a different category from other men. Perhaps he thought Mrs. Bywank meant to ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner |
