"Bias" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his career, Edwin Chadwick became possessed by an idea. It is a great thing to be thoroughly possessed by an idea, provided its aim and end be beneficent. It gives a colour and bias to the whole of a man's life. The idea was not a new one; but being taken up by an earnest, energetic, and hard-working man, there was some hope for the practical working out of his idea in the actual life of humanity. It was neither more nor less than the Sanitary ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... the organic, as He has done in the inorganic world." Thus, then, there is not only no necessary antagonism between the general theory of "evolution" and a Divine action, but the compatibility between the two is recognized by naturalists who cannot be suspected of any strong theological bias. ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... misrepresented in this matter, let us quote his own words as to "humour." A humour, according to Jonson, was a bias of disposition, a warp, so to speak, in character ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... a plain narrative, a consistent account, and has uniformly stated the same things. He is not contradicted, except by the testimony of Phippen Knapp. He is influenced, as far as we can see, by no bias, or prejudice, any more than other men, except so far as his character is now at stake. He has feelings on this point, doubtless, and ought to have. If what he has stated be not true, I cannot see any ground for his escape. If he be a true man, he must have heard ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... and with assuredly no bias against Mr. Darwin's views, it is our clear conviction that, as the evidence stands, it is not absolutely proven that a group of animals, having all the characters exhibited by species in Nature, has ever been originate by selection, whether artificial or natural. Groups ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... the bold and unique plan of having different classes of people in Rome and the various actors in the tragedy tell the story from their own point of view and thus reveal their own bias and characteristics. Each relation makes the story seem largely new. Browning shows that all this testimony is necessary to establish a complete circle of evidence in regard to the central truth of the tragedy. The poem thus becomes a remarkable ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... and the discussing of them, should be equally avoided. But the listeners' passions ought to be excited, and their attention diverted from its former bias, for it is the orator's business not so much to instruct as to enforce his eloquence by emotion, to which nothing can be more contrary than minute and scrupulously exact division ...
— The Training of a Public Speaker • Grenville Kleiser
... the substantive before the adjective? Ought we to say with the French—un cheval noir; or to say as we do—a black horse? Probably, most persons of culture would decide that one order is as good as the other. Alive to the bias produced by habit, they would ascribe to that the preference they feel for our own form of expression. They would expect those educated in the use of the opposite form to have an equal preference for that. And thus they would conclude ...
— The Philosophy of Style • Herbert Spencer
... "Receiving a gift, considered as a gift, brings the receiver under obligations to the benefactor, and has a natural tendency to draw the obliged into a party with the giver. To prevent difficulties of this kind, and to preserve the minds of judges from any bias, was the Divine prohibition: 'Thou shalt not receive any gift; for a gift bindeth the wise, and perverteth the words of the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... careful student of the theory of our Parliamentary constitution, and one whom party connection would notoriously have inclined to defend the line taken by Mr. Fox, had it been possible to do so. Indeed, he may be said to show his bias in that statesman's favor when he affirms that he would have been right in moving a resolution of censure on Pitt for "his acceptance of office," which he presently calls the result of "the success of a court intrigue,"[105] and, without a particle of evidence to justify the imputation, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... furnished by new conditions which reveal the influence and significance of forces not adequately known by the historians of the previous generation. Unquestionably each investigator and writer is influenced by the times in which he lives and while this fact exposes the historian to a bias, at the same time it affords him new instruments and new insight for ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... this sense, Julius Csar was naturally a despiser of superstition. Mere strength of understanding would, perhaps, have made him so in any age, and apart from the circumstances of his personal history. This natural tendency in him would doubtless receive a further bias in the same direction from the office of Pontifex Maximus, which he held at an early stage of his public career. This office, by letting him too much behind the curtain, and exposing too entirely the base machinery of ropes and pulleys, which sustained ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... caricature. However regular we may imagine a face to be, however harmonious its lines and supple its movements, their adjustment is never altogether perfect: there will always be discoverable the signs of some impending bias, the vague suggestion of a possible grimace, in short some favourite distortion towards which nature seems to be particularly inclined. The art of the caricaturist consists in detecting this, at times, imperceptible tendency, and in rendering ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... belonged to neither, I thought I could not have fair chance with my fellows, and therefore I crossed over to the other side of the hall. (The Courts of King's Bench and Chancery were at that time on the opposite sides of Westminster Hall.) Lord Mansfield, I believe, was not conscious of the bias; he was a good man." Mansfield's goodness was sufficiently questioned by his contemporaries; yet if he exhibited this bias, he could not have been a just man. The cause which first made Scott known was Acroyd v. Smithson. The question was—whether, in a property willed in fifteen shares to fifteen ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us; He knows each chord, its various tone, Each spring, its various bias. Then, at the balance, let's be mute, We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, But know ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... a lingua franca for the world. They seem to have given little attention to the various theoretical universal languages which were proposed to them. They wished to give as little trouble to hasty and simple people as possible, and the world-wide alstribution of English gave them a bias for it from the beginning. The extreme simplicity of its grammar was also ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... midnight at this time, and they had met with a number of men at a kind of social club which had no political bias. The leading people of the town were there, and Paul also noticed that Ned Wilson was among them. He fancied he had been drinking heavily. His eyes were bloodshot, and his voice was loud ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... whose principles he was prepared to carry to their extreme consequences, but being a man of energy and in possession of a good estate, he soon found followers, for the sympathies of youth are quick, and, even with an original bias, it is essentially mimetic. When Mr. Bertie Tremaine left the university he found in the miscellaneous elements of the London Union many of his former companions of school and college, and from them, and the new world to ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... pages, the concentrated essence of the wickedness of Italy. Platina wrote an angry and vindictive History of the Popes, and presented it to Sixtus IV, who made him librarian of the Vatican. Erasmus, who had a sort of clerical bias, warmly extols the light and liberty which he found at Rome in 1515, at the very eve ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... "duty" to the constituted authorities in one respect and another. All civilised governments take cognizance of Treason, Sedition, and the like; and all good citizens are not only content but profoundly insistent on the clear duty of the citizen on this head. The bias of loyalty is not a matter on which argument is tolerated. By virtue of this bias of loyalty, or "civic duty"—which still has much of the color of feudal allegiance—the governmental establishment is within its rights in coercively controlling and ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... would be said about this general movement in favor of social morality if the attitude of public opinion would not have that mistaken and dangerous bias which is given it by certain elements which at all times have been an obstacle to the instruction of the Filipino people. These elements, taking advantage of the preoccupation of public opinion to combat vice and purify public morals, instead of ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... situation in Cuba,—to that cold, bare, sober statement of the result of personal investigation, which produced a far deeper and more historical impression than all the impassioned rhetoric which had rent the air since the agitation began. He appeared to have no feeling on the matter, no personal bias; he told what he had seen, and he had seen misery, starvation, and wholesale death. He blamed the Spaniards no more than the insurgents, but two hundred thousand people were the victims of both; and the bold yet careful etching he made of the Cuban drama ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... soon healed up," continued Uncle Andy, "but she always found the absence of that paw most inconvenient, especially when she was digging burrows. She used to find herself digging them on the bias, and coming out where she did ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... report reached me, after I left the farm, that Hussey's machine cut the barley very much better than McCormick's. It came to me, however, through parties who might fairly be suspected of a bias, and therefore I kept my judgment in suspense until I could obtain information on which I could more implicitly rely. This I have now got. I have been to the farm again today, and made inquiries of persons who saw the completion of the trial. McCormick's ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... estimate of his own writings is another. I remarked before that in proportion to the poetical talent would be the justice of a critique upon poetry. Therefore a bad poet would, I grant, make a false critique, and his self-love would infallibly bias his little judgment in his favor; but a poet, who is indeed a poet, could not, I think, fail of making-a just critique; whatever should be deducted on the score of self-love might be replaced on account of his intimate acquaintance ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... horsehair frame she had learned to call a "Pompydore"; the front locks, usually confined in the iron cages called "curlers," frizzled wonderfully about her moist, crimson face. She had on a "voylet" delaine skirt, with three bias bands round the bottom, and a "blowse" of transparent muslin stamped with floral devices. Her shoes were of white canvas; her stockings pink and open-worked; her gloves were of white thread, and had grown grey in the palms with agitation. One of them firmly grasped a crimson "sunshyde," ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... to tell the court," said the judge, "why you shot Ruddy Boyd. If it is possible for you to justify that act I want you to do it. The court, representing, as it does, the justice of the land, has a leaning, a bias, toward mercy. Stand up and tell us ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... crimes of one, who is inevitably destined to fill so portentous a page on its records. At the present time, to speak of the good of which he may have been either the intentional or the involuntary instrument, without some bias of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... to review this, but declined on the ground that there was too strong a personal hostility between both Darwin and Grant Allen and himself to make it possible for him to review the book without a bias against it. ...
— The Samuel Butler Collection - at Saint John's College Cambridge • Henry Festing Jones
... and what for? you haven't told me."—"Why it's old Uncle Bias. Sen he's sick he's got something on his mind, never seemed to afore, and he's in a takin' to tell it. That's all." And he ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... this essay is to present in a concise form and without bias or prejudice, the most important facts in regard to consanguineous marriages, their effects upon society, and more particularly their bearing upon American social evolution. The problems to be considered are not only ...
— Consanguineous Marriages in the American Population • George B. Louis Arner
... of Damon was therefore speedily taken. Every motive that could have weight, served to counteract the bias of his inclination. He by no means wanted either firmness or spirit. He resolved to struggle, nor to cease his efforts till he had conquered. With this design he entreated, and, after some difficulties, obtained of his father leave to ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... benevolence of heart, the same nobleness of soul, the same detestation at everything dishonest, and the same scorn at everything unworthy—if they are not in the dependence of absolute beggary, in the name of common sense, are they not equals? And if the bias, the instinctive bias of their souls run the same way, why may ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... highest efficiency ratings and special commendations from commanders, failed to win promotions. "Almost uniformly," the office reported in 1965, "the reply comes back from the service that there had been no bias, no partiality, no prejudice operating in detriment on the complainant's consideration for promotion. They reply the best qualified was promoted, but this was not to say that the complainant did not have a very good record."[22-47] While black officers might well ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... Arabic studies in modern Italy, and he still remains the standard authority on the Mussulman domination in Sicily, though his judgment on religious questions is sometimes warped by a violently anti-clerical bias. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the necessary talent of knowledge to make amends for those imperfections. He had religion enough for this world. His own good sense, or else his inclination, always led him to the practice of virtue if his self-interest did not bias him to evil, which, whenever he committed it, he did so knowingly. He extended his concern for the State no further than his own life, though no minister ever did more than he to make the world believe he had the same regard for the future. In a word, all his vices were ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... But man is, while in this vale of tears, like an uninstructed bowler, so to speak, who thinks to attain the jack, by delivering his bowl straight forward upon it, being ignorant that there is a concealed bias within the spheroid, which will make it, in all probability, swerve away, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... simplest man of his time, drank off the whole chalice. The poison met in his composition with all the fear, all the credulity, and all the obstinacy of temper proper to increase its virulence and to strengthen its effect. The first had always a wrong bias upon him; he connived at the establishment, and indirectly contributed to the growth, of that power which afterwards disturbed the peace and threatened the liberty of Europe so often; but he went no further out of the way. The opposition of his Parliaments ...
— Letters to Sir William Windham and Mr. Pope • Lord Bolingbroke
... dark doubts from my own mind also. From that time, my desire to read the New Testament, that I might discover the best means of acting according to the doctrines of Jesus, was greatly increased. I endeavoured to divest myself of all selfish bias, and loved more and more to inquire into religious subjects. I saw, and continue to see, many of the doctrines of the Roman Catholic church, which I could not believe, and which I found opposed to the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... you it would be a farce, did I not? How could it be otherwise, when a man like Hubbard was the presiding magistrate? His sympathies were entirely with those who had violated the law; and though he made an effort to conceal his bias, the ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... the others. Looking back, indeed, from the advanced point where we are now arrived through the whole of his past career, we cannot fail to observe, pervading all its apparent changes and inconsistencies, an adherence to the original bias of his nature, a general consistency in the main, however shifting and contradictory the details, which had the effect of preserving, from first to last, all his views and principles, upon the great subjects that interested him ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... dealing in the fairest possible manner with my readers, I have looked into the various records of those events which might have escaped my memory. But I have not suffered them to bias opinions conceived long since, and conceived in the spirit of sincerity. Such is my design. It is given to the public with a perfect freedom from all party influence; with a total avoidance of all personality; with that calmness of retrospect which best becomes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... the case, guardedly enough, but with evident bias, Selenin became excited, and expressed his opinion with too much nervous irritation for an ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... them as an article of municipal policy, can not for a moment be compared with the mode practiced by Great Britain without a conviction of its title to preference, inasmuch as the latter leaves the discrimination between the mariners of the two nations to officers exposed by unavoidable bias as well as by a defect of evidence to a wrong decision, under circumstances precluding for the most part the enforcement of controlling penalties, and where a wrong decision, besides the irreparable violation of the sacred rights of persons, might frustrate the plans and profits ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 1: James Madison • Edited by James D. Richardson
... one suggestion to the special student of comparative literature—namely, that it is sometimes in the minor writings of an age, where the bias of personal genius is not strongly felt, that the general phenomena of the time are most clearly observed. The Amazon Queen is in rhymed verse, because in 1667 this was the fashionable form for dramatic ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... missionaries year after year, as I have indicated, would be bringing back something of sweetness and light to their stubborn, irascible folk. The powerful and exacerbated bias of this folk toward the echt Deutsch would be neutralized and mollified under the contact of its youths with dispositions making for kindliness and courtesy. Confessedly the stoutest race prejudices lie with those who have never stepped ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... acted towards Jack, under what, he acknowledged, might have been his stern sense of justice; yet he, as a father, could not but remember that he was indirectly the cause of Jack's loss. He felt this, but did not allow his feelings in any way to bias his conduct. Tom and Becky were therefore directed to make all necessary preparations to do honour to the guests present and expected. Mrs Askew and Margery were also not idle in arranging the provisions and the rooms for the guests. Tom was a man of a single idea; that was, that it was ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... error; often, as I think, misunderstanding, misquoting, omitting and even adding, but I have never once seen reason to suspect him of conscious misrepresentation, of knowingly giving a false impression. ... It is easy to show that Mr. Froude erred contrary to his bias on occasion, and it must never be forgotten that he did what no consciously dishonest historian could possibly do. He deposited at the British Museum copies, in the original Spanish, of the documents, very difficult of access, which he used in his History. By aid of these transcripts, ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... that the strong anti-feminist bias which Milton displays is exactly similar to the spirit in which you attributed the worst possible motives to Mrs. Lorimer. I'm not now entering on a discussion of the question of whether you and Milton are right or wrong in your view ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... on us can say of oursel," said Malcom, showing the doctrinal bias of his mind, "but I ken fra' yer ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... party. It is not the part of an historian, who is absolutely destitute of political principles, to pass judgment. Facts have crept into this history, it is true, but no one could regret it more than the author; yet there has been no bias or political prejudice shown, other than that reflected from the historical sources whence information was ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... the trammels of a society in which he had little faith or interest. Nor were his political opinions at this time matured. He had a just pride in the Swiss Republic as a free State (Etat libre), and his personal bias was towards the "Negatif" party, as those were called who maintained the authority of the Upper Council (Petit Conseil) to reject the demands of the people. To this oligarchic party his family belonged. In a letter written three years later, he confesses that he was "Negatif" when he abandoned his ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... other." Henslow's extensive knowledge of botany, geology, entomology, chemistry and mineralogy, added to his sincere and attractive personality, well-balanced mind and excellent judgment, formed a strong and effective bias in the direction Darwin was destined ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... told by a friend who has a bias for statistics, that all monuments above fifty feet high in England are to the honor of men who have defeated other men "with great slaughter." The only exceptions to this rule are the Albert Memorial—which is a tribute ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us, He knows each chord—its various tone, Each spring—its various bias: Then at the balance let's be mute, We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, But know ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... know that he did not do this, although he did reform not only the school of Rugby, but gave a bias to the education of the sons of what is still the most influential class in this country, which has lasted to the present day, and that in a direction and in a manner which surprised his opponents, and at one time provoked ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... have been checked and reduced in merit. For that bias I was myself encircled. I was in an agony of spirit when I knew that the thing was beginning to advance, but my very will to aid was at the ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... reminded, my Lord," said Colonel Archfield, bowing, "that I once incurred Mr. Holt's displeasure as a mischievous boy by throwing a stone which injured one of his poultry; but I cannot believe such a trifle would bias an honest man in a question ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... send a representative.) It was also open to seniors in college, and a splendid group it was, almost every one pledged to take up employment management as their vocation on graduation—no fear that they would take it up with a capitalist bias. Then—his friends and I had to laugh, it was so like him—the afternoon of the morning he arrived, he was in the thick of a scrap on the campus over a principle he held to tenaciously—the abolition of the one-year modern-language requirement for students in his ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... tried to avoid any such bias, and have sought to discover the source of the myths I have selected, by close attention to two points: first, that I should obtain the precise original form of the myth by a rigid scrutiny of authorities; and, secondly, that I should bring to bear upon ...
— American Hero-Myths - A Study in the Native Religions of the Western Continent • Daniel G. Brinton
... the inquiry was irrelevant, unless the district attorney expected to show from it a bias on the ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... Indeed, I have uniformly observed, that when no religious or political feeling influences the heart and principles of an Irish peasant, he is singularly sincere and faithful in his attachments, and has always a bias to the generous and the disinterested. To my own knowledge, circumstances frequently occur, in which the ebullition of party spirit is, although temporary, subsiding after the cause that produced it has passed ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... their way was plain before them." If extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances had not intervened, the case would more speedily have been disposed of, and we cannot doubt what would have been its issue. Whatever might be the bias or prejudice of the courts, or however they might have attempted to enforce their first decisions, there can be no question, that, in such a contest, the people would have finally prevailed. The committee were men competent to ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... stages I am persuaded there was no malice. He talked but for the pleasure of airing himself. He was essentially glib, as becomes the young advocate, and essentially careless of the truth, which is the mark of the young ass; and so he talked at random. There was no particular bias, but that one which is indigenous and universal, to flatter himself and to please and interest the present friend. And by thus milling air out of his mouth, he had presently built up a presentation of Archie which was known ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... chief is rather elective than hereditary, but the operation of the elective principle is affected by a strong bias in favour of the most capable son of the late chief; so in practice a chief is generally succeeded by one of his sons. An elderly chief will sometimes voluntarily abdicate in favour of a son. If a chief dies, leaving no son of mature age, some ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... American newspapers. Had a redress of grievances been at this late hour offered, though the honour of the States was involved in supporting their late Declaration of Independence, yet the love of peace, and the bias of great numbers to their parent State, would, in all probability, have made a powerful party for rescinding the Act of Separation, and for re-uniting with Great Britain; but when it appeared that the power of the Royal Commissioners was little ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... had evidently been drawn from the flower itself, and the whole performance was essentially different from that of a slightly earlier period. The materials of homespun linen and home-dyed crewels were the same. The thing which was different and showed either a cropping-out of original thought or a bias toward the style of embroidery lately introduced by the famous school of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was an over-and-over stitch instead of the old crewel method. This over-and-over stitch was apparent in all crewel embroidery devoted to personal wear, but ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... was not tossable if it might give great populations and great nations over into systems of government they abhorred; it was tossable only if the population involved had no very great bias ...
— The Golden Judge • Nathaniel Gordon
... towards what is best fitted for its growth and improvement, by laws akin to those which make the sunflower turn to the sun, or the willow to the stream. Ladies of this disposition, permanently thwarted in their affectionate bias, gradually languish away into intellectual inanition, or sprout out into those abnormal eccentricities which are classed under the general name of "oddity" or "character." But once admitted to their proper soil, it is astonishing what healthful improvement takes place,—how the poor ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... work covered all phases of life from those of society to the slums. She visited police courts, jails, and all places where humanity suffers and struggles, and it was no doubt her early work in the newspaper field that gave to her later work, both in poetry and fiction, its strong social bias. Probably no poet of the present time responds more keenly to the social needs of the period, nor has a keener sense of the opportunity for service. Miss Morgan was one of the delegates to the First International Congress of Women, ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... suicide. Never was a resolved and conscious aristocrat so free from the hereditary delusion. Good parents, he was convinced, are only an advantage in so far as they have made you good stuff, and bad parents are no discredit to a son or daughter of good quality. Conceivably he had a bias against too close an examination of origins, and he held that the honour of the children should atone for the sins of the fathers and the questionable achievements of any intervening testator. Not half a dozen rich and established ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... matter properly thrashed out, though feeling upon it is extremely strong. Everybody whom I asked about it began at once to address me as if I were a public meeting, so that I found it extremely difficult to get from either side a statement not free from electioneering bias. I think, however, that it may be fairly said that all but a few lunatics have abandoned the ideas of 1917, which resulted in the workmen in a factory deposing any technical expert or manager whose orders were in the least ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... of dresses should be stiffened with cotton or linen. In cutting bias-pieces for trimming, they will not set well unless they are exact. In cutting them use a long rule, and a lead pencil or piece of chalk. Welting-cords should be covered with bias-pieces; and it saves time, in many cases, to baste ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of political unity might be supposed, as in Germany, so in Italy, {372} to facilitate sectional reformation. Finally, the Renaissance, with its unparalleled freedom of thought and its strong anti-clerical bias, would at least insure a fair hearing for innovations in doctrine and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... was smiling placidly up at the colonel. He frowned at her, involuntarily. He was ready to accept Madame Beattie's knowing neither good nor evil, but she seemed to him singularly unpleasant in flaunting that lack of bias. She was quite conscious of his distaste, but it didn't trouble her. Unproductive opinions were nothing to her ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... on the scenes in Heaven; his political bias, and materialism; Milton's Deity; his Satan; the minor devils; Adam; Eve; personal memories; Adam's eulogy of Eve, criticised by Raphael; Milton's philosophy of love and beauty; the opinions of Raphael, of Satan, and of Mrs. ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... spirit—there it ends The all that's glorious from the heaven descends; As some sweet mistress loves us, freely still Come the spontaneous gifts of heaven!—Above Favor rules Jove, as it below rules love! The immortals have their bias!—Kindly they See the bright locks of youth enamored play, And where the glad one goes, shed gladness round the way. It is not they who boast the best to see, Whose eyes the holy apparitions bless; The ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... still to be a knave. The frauds he learnt in his fanatick years, Made him uneasy in his lawful gears: At least as little honest as he could; And, like white witches, mischievously good. To this first bias, longingly he leans; And rather would be great ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... he had often seen connexions of that sort, which having been planted in the infancy of the adherent, had grown up to a surprising pitch of fidelity and friendship, that no temptation could bias, and no danger dissolve. He therefore rejoiced in the hope of seeing his own son accommodated with such a faithful attendant, in the person of young Fathom, on whom he resolved to bestow the same education he had planned ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... repel force with. Examine whether a standing army, though in itself an evil, may not, from circumstances, become a necessary evil, and preventive of greater dangers. As to the latter, consider, how far places may bias and warp the conduct of men, from the service of their country, into an unwarrantable complaisance to the court; and, on the other hand, consider whether they can be supposed to have that effect upon the conduct of ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... (1905). Of contemporary writings none will give a more intimate view of politics than Senator William Maclay's Journal (1890). William Sullivan, Familiar Letters on Public Characters (1834), gives some lively sketches of notable figures, but he writes with a strong Federalist bias. ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... or if the eye is not directed towards it, it will not be distinctly seen. And though a demonstration be never so well grounded and fairly proposed, yet, if there is withal a stain of prejudice, or a wrong bias on the understanding, can it be expected on a sudden to perceive clearly, and adhere firmly to the truth? No; there is need of time and pains: the attention must be awakened and detained by a frequent repetition of the same ...
— Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics and Atheists • George Berkeley
... federal government; and he concluded with painting for them a vision of the real university which was now to arise at last, oldest, best passion of the people, measure of the height and breadth of the better times: knowing no North, no South, no latitude, creed, bias, or political end. In speaking of its magnificent new endowments, he dwelt upon the share contributed by the liberal-minded farmers of the state, to some of whom he was speaking: showing how, forgetful of the disappointments and failures of their fathers, they had poured out money ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... would say could he see this unconscious "wictim" walking up to the altar "and thinkin' in his 'art that it was all wery capital." The bride wore a dress of that peculiar sort of calico known as "furniture prints," without trimming or ornaments of any kind. Whether it was cut "bias" or with "gores," I'm sorry to say I do not know, dress-making being as much of an occult science to me as divination. Her hair was tightly bound up in a scarlet silk handkerchief, fastened in front with a little gilt button. As soon ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... for the term of his father's sojourn abroad in quest of allies, and he hastened to Holland to assume the reins of government, but he was speedily recalled to Lille to submit once more to paternal authority before being left to his own devices and to maternal bias. ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to take interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether human ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may not, by proper application, resolve. In fact, having ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... in ecclesiastical history known as the War of the Iconoclast; but that was only an embodiment of what had transpired before, and what has occurred often since. Iconoclasm is a bias of humanity. It grows out of the constitution of man. He is by heredity a breaker of images. If this view be not fictitious, we must not be surprised if there are developments of this spirit in our era or any ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... the son of an excellent musician, and as soon as the boy began to show his astonishing sensitiveness of ear and bias for music in every direction, his father commenced to give him instruction. His activity as a composer commenced when he could scarcely read, for before he was five years old he showed his father a manuscript of a violin concerto ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... of such an experience precisely what one wishes to pick out: the imbecile hatred in the Teuton—the perfidy of the British—the efficiency or the blundering of the German—or perchance the foolhardiness of the American, just as his nationalistic bias ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... propose to discuss the "preparedness" of the State to care for its unfortunates. And I propose to do this without any party bias and without blame upon any particular individual, but in just criticism ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... which appear to me all important to the permanency of your felicity as a people. These will be offered to you with the more freedom as you can only see in them the disinterested warnings of a parting friend, who can possibly have no personal motive to bias his counsel. Nor can I forget as an encouragement to it your indulgent reception of my sentiments on a ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... kind which deliberately rejects life-buoys when flung out to them. The second mistake, as it seems to me, in a novel which is in many ways a very clever piece of realism, is a strong feminist or, at any rate, anti-masculine bias. Against the cunning dissection of the character of Charles Giddey, a worthless and conceited egotist, I have no complaint to make. It is one of the best things of its kind that I have read for a long time. But it seems ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... he have departed from his uprightness, which was so constant that it often seemed to be almost impersonal. "His integrity was the most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known," writes Jefferson; "no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision." ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... remain had perhaps appeared to vaunt a heroism that was not true. He supposed that she had seen his selfishness of motive, and that it was her time now to let him see that she had not much admiration for him, so that he might make his choice without bias. ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... incident," writes Percival, "perhaps gave the first wrong bias to a mind predisposed to such impressions; and by operating with so much strength and permanency, it might possibly lay the foundation of the Dean's subsequent peevishness, ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... stimulate &c. (excite) 824; spirit up, inspirit; rouse, arouse; animate, incite, foment, provoke, instigate, set on, actuate; act upon, work upon, operate upon; encourage; pat on the back, pat on the shoulder, clap on the back, clap on the shoulder. influence, weigh with, bias, sway, incline, dispose, predispose, turn the scale, inoculate; lead by the nose; have influence with, have influence over, have influence upon, exercise influence with, exercise influence over, exercise influence upon; go round, come round one; turn the head, magnetize; lobby. persuade; prevail ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... never allowed the child to hear a fairy-tale or a line of poetry. Why not amuse his mind with facts, train him to the habit of scientific thought? For all he knew, he might be giving the child a bias which would result in a life's unhappiness; by teaching him to see only the hard actual face of things, would he not fit him far more surely ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... but there are many ancient writers, like Hesiod, Xenophon, and Catullus, whose chief value resides in their antiquity, and a much larger number of modern authors, such as Balzac, Victor Hugo, Freytag, and Ruskin, who have been over-estimated in their own time. Petrarch, and the author of "Gil Bias," might be placed on a level with Hawthorne, but certainly not above him. Those whom he most closely resembles in style and subject matter ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... capable of following the same course of study, and to enter into competition with them in all departments of learning. Even taking into consideration many brilliant achievements and an immense amount of creditable, and even distinguished work, the answer of those who have no personal bias in the matter for the sake of a Cause—is generally that they are not. Facts would seem to speak for themselves if only on the ground that the strain of equal studies is too great for the weaker physical organization. ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... and disciplined women. There is nothing hysterical, nothing fanatical about them. They are animated by the most serious and determined purpose, and, in order to effect this, all sectarian bias, all political preference, all fads and hobbies in any direction are rigidly barred. Woman suffrage—that is the sole object. The offices all represent hard work and no salary, therefore no unseemly scramble takes place to secure ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... restraint of Earth's civilization? Apparently so. He had killed, and someone had informed on him, and a judge had sentenced him to Omega. He was a murderer on a criminal's planet. To live here successfully, he simply had to follow his natural bias ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... given, and when the task has been scamped. It is a danger as to which he is bound to be severe with himself—in which he should feel that his conscience should be set fairly in the balance against the natural bias of his interest. If he do not do so, sooner or later his dishonesty will be discovered, and will be estimated accordingly. But in this he is to be governed only by the plain rules of honesty which should ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... parlance, and as our introduction so aptly put it, these good people wish to intend the domination of the ideas of their own time over all the past and into all the future. Marriage seems to them an everlasting institution, a godly regulation, through which they can lend to their individual bias, the dignity of that which is humanly purest and highest. Consequently it also seems to them that the present form of marriage and its accompanying conditions for motherhood, resting as these do on the mutual consent of God and man, that these are to be in all eternity ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 4, June 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... story with the deeds of the mighty men of old, it is not to be wondered at that the mind of young O'Neill seized with avidity every incident of the past connected with the condition and history of his fatherland, or that the bias of his future life was given by his meditations as he rambled along the slopes of Benburb, or traced the victorious steps of his ancient sept, through the classic region where his schoolboy days were passed. That it should be so is only natural; for he is a kinsman, as well as namesake, ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... inferior writers abstain from the familiar and trivial. On the contrary, as imitators, they imitate everything which great writers have shown to be sources of interest. But their bias is towards great subjects. They make no new ventures in the direction of personal experience. They are silent on all that they have really seen for themselves. Unable to see the deep significance of what is common, they spontaneously turn ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... daily passing of the troops, the constant blowing of trumpet-calls a furlong from her windows, coupled with the fact that she knew nothing of the inner realities of military life, and hence idealized it, had also helped her mind's original bias for thinking men-at-arms the only ones worthy of a ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... all in that way. There may be a bias, but it doesn't take the same form. Do sit down, girls, and take your tea, like reasonable creatures. She shall never enter the rectory, of course, if—and if you are sure Mrs. Warrender will do ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... bodies of the same group; viz. methylic, propylic, butylic, and amylic alcohols were tested purely from the physiological point of view. They were tested exclusively as chemical substances apart from any question as to their general use and employment, and free from all bias for or against their influence on mankind ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... Lucy. I observed it first when you were ill, when she and Decima were so much with you. She has betrayed it in a hundred little ways; her opinions are formed upon yours; your tastes unconsciously bias hers. It is only natural. She has no brother, and no doubt has learned to regard ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... may have been the temper of his associates in the aggregate, the hero of the book holds the scales between the rival parties with admirable evenness—and this notwithstanding the strong bias of his temper and upbringing. Indeed, until the time when he has become, not metaphorically, but literally maddened by the wrongs and outrages to which he has been subjected, the book, in so far as it constitutes an expression of his personal sentiments, is a perfect ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... imagine a novel with which I could sympathise deeply, based upon the theme of England's regeneration by means of the right type of Tory squire, but it would be a novel with a more credible hero and conceived in a less petty spirit of party bias than Mr. H. N. DICKINSON has given us in The Business of a Gentleman (HEINEMANN). For, in the first place, Sir Robert Wilton, who figured of course in Keddy and Sir Guy and Lady Rannard—he has, in fact, by this time married Marion, late Sir Guy's widow—is far too jumpy and nervy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... retreat, And see, once seen before, that ancient seat, 160 That ancient seat, where majesty display'd Her ensigns, long before the world was made! Mean narrow maxims, which enslave mankind, Ne'er from its bias warp thy settled mind: Not duped by party, nor opinion's slave, Those faculties which bounteous nature gave, Thy honest spirit into practice brings, Nor courts the smile, nor dreads the frown of kings. Let rude licentious Englishmen comply With tumult's ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... with a sigh. "But I don't think your father has given quite the bias to his mind that I should have liked best. I have always hoped that he would spend his strength in the service of the Church; but——You have not heard him say much about his future career, have ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... Rogers and Mr. Sharpe) have advised me not to risk at present any single publication separately, for various reasons. As they have not seen the one in question, they can have no bias for or against the merits (if it has any) or the faults of the present subject of our conversation. You say all the last of 'The Giaour' [1] are gone—at least out of your hands. Now, if you think of publishing any new edition with the last additions ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... and bringing a wide range of experimental work to bear upon it, I have, as far as is possible, divested my mind of bias toward any particular process, and I can honestly claim that the fact of the Van Steenbergh process showing such great superiority is due to the force of carefully obtained experimental figures, corroborated by an experienced and widely known ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... particular woman's happiness depended on him, with the belief in Woman Suffrage, which he early adopted and probably retained. Be that as it may, this part of his story points to something which runs through his whole character, something which perhaps may be expressed by saying that the natural bias of his qualities was towards the negative side. We hear, no doubt, of occasions when his vigour was instant and terrible—like that of Hamlet on the ship for England; but these were occasions when the right or the necessity of the case was obvious. We have seen ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... themselves. He had been a man of genial, social habits, glad to gather round him smiling faces and friendly voices; and this bias of his was stirring into life and shaking off its long stupor. He longed, with intense longing, for some mortal ear into which he could pour the story of his sins and sufferings, and for some human ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... might have put up a brazen defence, but now he seemed to have lost assurance. "I do no ill," was all he could stammer, "for I have no bias. I am for ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... that his uncle wished his presence, Trafford was gloomier and more forbidding than ever, those last days. The boy should be perfectly free to make his choice, he thought; he would use no influence to change or bias his decision in ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... liked me once, I knew, but still he had the Frenchman's temper, and had always to argue down his bias against my race, and to cherish a good heart towards me; for he was young, and most sensitive to the opinions of his comrades. I can not express what misery possessed me when I saw him leave Doltaire, and, coming to me where I ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker |
