"Bias" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... department of life, and so seldom put its phenomena in evidence, even when it seemed obvious that personal experience of some kind must have made their confidence in their own vision so strong. The logician's bias has always been too much with them. They have preferred the thinner to the thicker method, dialectical abstraction being so much more dignified and academic than the confused and unwholesome ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... 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 ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... myself to thy judgment, my dear Chamisso; I do not seek to bias it. I have long been a rigid censor of myself, and nourished at my heart the worm of remorse. This critical moment of my life is ever present to my soul, and I dare only cast a hesitating glance at it, with a deep ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... to polemics. Too often he is merely the emotional controversialist. Bias and Life are with him not always welded into the harmonious whole, which one is entitled to claim from ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... of the egg reveals a strong Aristotelian bias. Actually, Harvey attained to his conclusion that all animals derive ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... curtains sweep the floor with a slumberous sound when the sea breeze breathes in. Some of my visitors might say that this room was too empty. I should promptly disagree with them. To a person of correct taste, not to speak of a philanthropic bias, it must be painful to see, in warm weather, anything which calls up a vision of warm handmaidens, laborious with their brooms and dusters. Therefore I must persist in admitting here little furniture besides the oriental ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... School doctrine, according to this writer, concerning sin, makes it a state rather than an act. It is not merely the act of disobedience, but the wrong bias of the will, out of which the act proceeds. He thinks it wrong to call "sin a nature," for neither the substance of the soul, nor its faculties, are sinful. The depravity of nature is not choice, so much as tendency which ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... was spun it was dyed with dye made from "shoemake" (sumac) leaves, green walnuts, reeds, and copperas. One person cut and others sewed. The dresses for women were straight, like slips, and the garments of the small boys resembled night shirts. If desired, a bias fold of contrasting colour was placed at the waist line or at the bottom of dresses. The crudely made garments were starched with a solution of flour or meal and water which was ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... drawing to the full. I did so willingly enough; and that honest master of mine took marvellous delight in my performances. He had an only son, a bastard, to whom he often gave his orders, in order to spare me. My liking for the art was so great, or, I may truly say, my natural bias, both one and the other, that in a few months I caught up the good, nay, the best young craftsmen in our business, and began to reap the fruits of my labours. I did not, however, neglect to gratify ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... nothing further, but followed his wife to the gate. On his way to his office, he turned and looked after her with a frown as she rattled her team along the uneven road. She was a vain and covetous woman with a bias towards intrigue, but there had been times since her marriage when she despised herself, and as a natural consequence blamed her husband. Sometimes she hated Thurston, also, though more often she was sensible of vague regrets, ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... was from the outset considerable difference of opinion. Mark Driver, for instance, always showed a tendency to something more than tolerance, and even Carrissima Faversham, in spite of a manifestly unfavourable bias, strove to hold the balance even. It was her brother Lawrence who took the most adverse view; insisting that Miss Rosser was neither more nor less than an adventuress—"a pretty woman on the make" was his expression, ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... The practical moral is that we must read whatever stories, see whatever pictures, hear whatever songs and symphonies, go to whatever plays we like. We shall not like those which have nothing to say to us; and though everyone has a right to bias our choice, no one has a right to deprive us of it by keeping us from any work of art or any ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... praises. Augustus had given him the example, by the advice of Maecenas, who recommended Virgil and Horace to him; whose praises helped to make him popular while he was alive, and after his death have made him precious to posterity. As for the religion of our poet, he seems to have some little bias towards the opinions of Wickliff, after John of Gaunt his patron; somewhat of which appears in the tale of Piers Plowman: yet I cannot blame him for inveighing so sharply against the vices of the clergy in his ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... to furnish him with corroborative detail; but inasmuch as every traveller finds in a country only, so to speak, what he brings to it, he will gather statistics enough. Those persons who start with a certain bias of mind in one direction seldom notice any facts that would throw out of joint those previously amassed; they instinctively collect the ones that 'match,' all others having a tendency to disturb the harmony of the original scheme. The clergyman's travelling companion ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... nature of the brute. If anything—as a referee or a judge—he will give the decision against his own side, which is the reason why England has spread to the ends of the earth, and remained there at the express wish of the Little Peoples. Bias or favouritism are abhorrent to him; as far as in him lies the Englishman weighs the pros and the cons of the case and gives his decision without partiality or prejudice. He may blunder at times, but the blunder is honest and ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... self-consciousness and impertinence which detract so much from the value of most recent books of travel, it may be doubted whether, since the French Revolution gave birth to the Caliban of Democracy, there has been a tourist without political bias toward one side or the other; and now that the "Special Correspondent" has been invented, whose business it is to be one-sided, if possible, and at all events entertaining, the last hope of rational information from anywhere would seem to be cut off. And of all travellers, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... further precaution, Prince Maurice ordered all garrisons in the strong places to be doubled, lest the slippery enemy should take advantage of too much confidence reposed in his good faith. The preachers throughout the commonwealth, each according to his individual bias, improved the occasion by denouncing the Spaniard from their pulpits and inflaming the popular hatred against the ancient enemy, or by dilating on the blessings of peace and the horrors of war. The peace ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... him, or if that is too strong, that you see nothing to admire in him. What is there antipathetic in his nature to you, and in yours to him? He doesn't like you either. Yet you both seem to me such gracious, kindly men. Surely you have no bias against other nationalities—a man with a cosmopolitan ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... different tendencies, accident and corruption, however, joined to a variety of circumstances, may throw particular states from their bias, and produce exceptions to every general rule. This has actually happened in some of the later principalities of Greece, and modern Italy, in Sweden, Poland, and the German Empire. But the united states of the Netherlands, and the ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... belongs, in mood, situation, or utterance, to the loftier phases of human suffering. The sorrow of those who most attracted his sympathy was not theatrical or imposing. It has been well said of him, that his "bias was towards all that was poor and unregarded." And thus, while those who painfully moved the charity and compassion of his genius were considered by him the victims of artificial civilization, his own feeling for them was natural and instinctive; yet never did natural and instinctive ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... the Apostles and comes down to the crowds. For how could the crowds see Christ save in a lowly spot? They do not follow Him to the heights, nor rise to sublimities"—a notion altogether congenial to Patmore's aristocratic bias in religion as in everything else. Undoubtedly it was this mystical aspect of Catholic doctrine that appealed to his whole personality, offering as it did an authoritative approval, and suggesting an infinite realization, of those dreams that were so sacred to him. ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... unrecorded. And even as to autobiography, who, short of the Omniscient Himself, can take into just account the potency of outward surroundings, and still more of inborn hereditary influences, over both mind and body? the bias to good or evil, and the possession or otherwise of gifts and talents, due very much (under Providence) to one's ancient ancestors and one's modern teachers? We are each of us morally and bodily the psychical ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... endeavored to combine argument and evidence to refute the assertions of such writers as Schufeldt and agitators like Tillman and Vardaman. But although on the controversial order the author has tried to write "without bitterness and bias." The effort here is directed toward showing that humanity is one in vices and virtues as well as in blood; that the laws of evolution and progress apply equally to all; that there are no diseases ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... remedy for the effects of bias must be found in a rigorous and searching criticism. If misleading statements and unsound arguments are allowed to pass unchallenged the fault will not ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... the past and the future. What the land of Cooper and Mayne Reid was to my boyish fancy, the land of Washington and Lincoln, Hawthorne and Emerson, is to my adult thoughts. Does this mean that I approach America in the temper of a romantic schoolboy? Perhaps; but, bias for bias, I would rather own to that of the romantic schoolboy than to that of ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... occurring in the midst of desert solitudes, appealed strongly to the imaginations of early explorers, and their stimulated fancy connected the remains with "Aztecs" and other mysterious peoples. That this early implanted bias has caused the invention of many ingenious theories concerning the origin and disappearance of the builders of the ancient pueblos, is amply attested in the conclusions reached by many of the ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... has not lived with him, and of course can know but little how those sentiments or those passions will work; he must be ignorant of the various prejudices, propensities and antipathies, that always bias him and ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... phenomena to beings of like passions with himself, but vastly transcending him in power. Thus the notion of causality—the assumption that natural things did not come of themselves, but had unseen antecedents—lay at the root of even the savage's interpretation of Nature. Out of this bias of the human mind to seek for the causes of phenomena all ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... and first-hand information. The main facts were probably communicated to him by Malachy himself, though some particulars were no doubt added by other Irish informants. It is true, we must also allow for bias on St. Bernard's part in favour of his friend. Such bias in fact displays itself in Secs. 25, 26. But bias, apart from sheer dishonesty, could not distort the whole narrative, as it certainly must have been distorted in the Life, if the narrative ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... Addington, that is to say, in June 1800," are the opening words of the Quarterly article—an extraordinary blunder for a contemporary to make. The Quarterly was, of course, bitterly adverse to Addington's administration, in politics; but though party bias is responsible for strange behaviour, we shall be safe in attributing to lapse of memory this censure of a minister for the act of his predecessor. St. Vincent was in active service, as Admiral in command of the Channel Fleet, when the ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... the newspapers it may be seen how early was the bias of his mind towards politics. It was, indeed, the rival of literature in his affections during all the early part of his life, and, at length,—whether luckily for himself or not it is difficult ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... Leipzig), by our passing acquaintance the licentiate Roederer. Herr Roederer, with too much of an author's licence, makes a great figure of his hero—poses him, indeed, to be the centrepiece and cloud-compeller of the whole. But, with due allowance for this bias, the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... conditions supposed it could only encounter with instinctive antipathy. It is necessary, therefore, at this point to advert to the various influences which have contributed to form the mind of our time, and to give it its instinctive bias in one direction or another. Powerful and legitimate as these influences have been, they have nevertheless been in various ways partial, and because of their very partiality they have, when they absorbed the mind, as new ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... a peculiar ethnical study. Among the Latin races, the French were the first to move for emancipation. It appears that the infusion of Gallic blood, as well as the large influence of the Frankish nations in the production of the modern French, has given to that people a bias in favor of liberty. All the other Latin races have lagged behind; but, France foreran even Great Britain in the work of abolition. Scarcely had the great Revolution of 1789 got under way, until an act of abolition conceding freedom to all men without ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... kindness little less than paternal. His genius was originally inclined to poetry; and there are many natives of Penzance who remember his poems and verses, written at the early age of nine years. He cultivated this bias till his fifteenth year, when he became the pupil of Mr. (since Dr.) Borlase, of Penzance, an ingenious surgeon, intending to prepare himself for graduating as a physician at Edinburgh. As a proof ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction—Volume 13 - Index to Vol. 13 • Various
... Minister of the Household, and his office placed him at the head of all the theatres. M. de la Rochefoucauld was exceedingly polite to our countrymen, and gave permission to most of our dandies to go behind the scenes, where Bigottini, Fanny Bias, Vestris, Anatole, Paul, Albert, and the other principal dancers, congregated. One of our countrymen, having been introduced by M. de la Rochefoucauld to Mademoiselle Bigottini, the beautiful and graceful dancer, in the course of conversation with this gentleman, asked ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... 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 ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... noble character of Sir Thomas More stand out the best production of his time. The strong religious bias of the man made it inevitable that he should remain considerably under the influence of the old theological teachings, but in the intelligent man of the world, in the large-hearted philanthropist, in the honest patriot, appear the new and ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Christ owe any debt to India? Many of them were consciously endeavouring to arrest the progress of Christianity by transforming philosophy into a non-Christian religion. They gladly welcomed every proof that the higher life was not to be found exclusively or most perfectly in Christianity. Hence bias, if not accurate knowledge, led them to respect all forms of eastern mysticism. Apollonius is said to have travelled in India:[1141] in the hope of so doing Plotinus accompanied the unfortunate expedition of Gordian but turned back when it failed. We may surmise ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... you had the Old World bias—the idea that it is justice for the Pot to call the Kettle black—the idea that a man can do anything, but that a woman is lost forever if she happens to make one mistake. That all belongs, of course, right back where you came from. ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... Chamisso, is merely to submit myself to thy judgment, not to endeavor to bias it. I have long passed the severest sentence on myself, for I have nourished the tormenting worm in my heart. It hovered during this solemn moment of my life incessantly before my soul, and I could ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... of this book I have shown, I believe convincingly, why sex knowledge is even more important for women than it is for men. I have examined carefully the books that have been written for girls and women, and I know that it is not bias, nor carping criticism, but strict honesty that forces me to say that I have not found one satisfactory girl's or woman's sex book. There are some excellent books for girls and women on general hygiene; but on sex hygiene, on the general manifestations ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... saw Mr. Hill was in Eighteen Hundred Eighty. He was surely a dynamo of nervous energy. His full beard was tinged with gray, his hair was worn long, and he looked like a successful ranchman, with an Omar Khayyam bias. That he hasn't painted pictures, like Sir William Van Horne, and thus put that worthy to shame, is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... that Liberals attach a special importance to the liberty of the individual. The general relation of the individual to the State is rather outside my subject, but we start from the fact that the bias of Liberals is towards liberty in every sphere, on the ground that spiritual and intellectual progress is greatest where individuality is least restricted by authority or convention. Variety, originality in thought and action, are the vital virtues for the Liberal. ...
— Essays in Liberalism - Being the Lectures and Papers Which Were Delivered at the - Liberal Summer School at Oxford, 1922 • Various
... average "reader"; he always put himself into the report, and, of course, that meant a warm personal touch. If he could not encourage the publication of a manuscript, his reasons were always fully given, and invariably without personal bias. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... happier, calmer state of mind. Explanations of difficulties were desirable, but they were not the first or principal things required. The great, the one thing needful, at the outset, was a fitting state of mind,—a mind sufficiently free from irritation, painful excitement, and consequent unhappy bias, to enable me to do justice to the religion of Christ. And the circumstances in which I was placed in Nebraska were calculated to bring me to this desirable state of mind; and many things which befel me there were calculated to stimulate my return ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... Lord Chief-Justice summed up, with an evident bias in favour of the defendant. He said an undue apprehension of the rights of an audience had got abroad. Even supposing the object of the rioters to be fair and legal, they were not authorized to carry it by unfair means. In order to constitute a riot, it was not necessary that personal ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Meantime, I see no call for any change whatever. The ordinary use of the word commend, in any advantageous introduction of a stranger by letters, seems here to maintain itself—namely, placing him in such a train towards winning favour as may give a favourable bias to his opportunities. The opportunities are not left to their own casual or neutral action, but are armed and pointed towards a special result by the influence of the recommender. So, also, it is here supposed ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... shake ourselves free from the common sense and scientific bias towards substituting explanations for actual facts the more clearly we see that this continuous process of changing is the very essence of what we know directly, and the more we realize how unlike such a continuous process is to any series of stages ...
— The Misuse of Mind • Karin Stephen
... case of the adult Arab, there is a life's work to undo, and the facing of that fact it is which makes some of our bravest workers drop their hands in despair. With these young Arabs, on the contrary, it is only the wrong bias of a few early years to correct, leaving carte blanche for any amount of hope in youth, maturity, and old age. Being desirous of forming, for my own edification, some notion of the amount of the evil existing, and the efforts made to counteract ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... officers, without such a council: without something to which foreign states might connect themselves,—something to which, in the ordinary detail of government, the people could look up,—something which might give a bias and steadiness, and preserve something like consistency in the proceedings of state. Such a body kings generally have as a council. A monarchy may exist without it; but it seems to be in the very essence of a republican government. It holds a ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the Ante-Nicene Christian Library. All the Christian writings antecedent to the Nicene Council have been put into the hands of competent translators. These will make it their first and principal aim to produce translations as faithful as possible, uncoloured by any bias, dogmatic or ecclesiastical. They will also endeavour, in brief notes, to place the English reader in the position of those acquainted with the original languages. They will indicate important variations in the text; they will give different translations of the same passage where more ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... but in the end he dropped the idea of a regular quota system, judging it unworkable in the case of the officer candidate schools. He concluded that many commanders approached the selection of officer candidates with a bias against the Negro, and he recommended that a directive or confidential memorandum be sent to commanders charged with the selection of officer candidates informing them that a certain minimum percentage of black candidates was to be chosen. Hastie's recommendation was ignored, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... fellows, not a few, Who, turn'd by Nature with a gloomy bias, Renounce black devils to adopt the blue, And think when they are dismal they ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 3: New-England Sunday - Gleanings Chiefly From Old Newspapers Of Boston And Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... early period in 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 Idea,—the ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... mortal eye Is this great scene unveil'd. For, since the claims 80 Of social life to different labours urge The active powers of man, with wise intent The hand of Nature on peculiar minds Imprints a different bias, and to each Decrees its province in the common toil. To some she taught the fabric of the sphere, The changeful moon, the circuit of the stars, The golden zones of heaven; to some she gave To weigh ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... opinions it has since consistently maintained. Its prospectus is before me in his handwriting, but it bears upon itself sufficiently the character of his hand and mind. The paper would be kept free, it said, from personal influence or party bias; and would be devoted to the advocacy of all rational and honest means by which wrong might be redressed, just rights maintained, and the happiness and ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... truth has been obscured from many causes. The gap in history made by our educational tradition has been already mentioned. And our histories of the early Church are too often warped by an unfortunate bias. Christianity has been judged at its best, paganism at its worst. The rhetorical denunciations of writers like Seneca, Juvenal, and Tacitus are taken at their face value, and few have remembered the convention which obliged a satirist to be scathing, or the political ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... nearest the barracks, the 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 ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... 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 ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... write, for nobody will read his works. When Moliere reformed the stage he attacked modes and ridiculous customs, but he did not insult the public taste; he either followed or explained it." So far Rousseau was right. It is the public that gives the stage its bias—necessarily preceding it in taste and opinion, and pointing out the direction to its object. In return the stage gives the public a stronger impulse in morals and manners. Wherever the stage is found corrupted with bad morals, it may be taken for granted ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... said people whose memories ran back a generation, was due mainly to fine qualities inherited from his mother, for his father had been a good-natured, hearty, popular politician with no discoverable bias toward over-scrupulosity. In fact, twenty years ago there had been a great to-do touching the voting, through a plan of the elder Blake's devising, of a gang of negroes half a dozen times down in a river-front ward. But his party ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... given you a tale of hardships and privations which he claims occurred in this city, and which, coming from any other source, may well be doubted. It is left for you to decide whether his claim for an acquittal shall be granted or not. In my remarks I do not intend to bias you one way or the other. What my opinions are will be given after your decision is announced. To you I ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... great length, but on evidence collected later, and given under the Anti-Plot bias, that there was much more 'bloud' than was allowed for at the inquest. But the early evidence ought to be best. Again, the surgeons declared that Godfrey had been strangled with a cloth (as the jury found), and ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... them is thus imparted, and that facts otherwise dry may in this way be made attractive and indelibly impressed on the mind. He has tried throughout to be fair and national. He has neither introduced offensive allusions, nor invidiously attempted to bias the minds of the young on controverted questions connected ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... its inhabitants to-day, but why they themselves largely fail to understand it. They are not fully aware of being behind the times, and probably in many respects they no longer are so; only there is that queer mental attitude giving its bias to their view of life. Although very feebly now, still the momentum derived from a forgotten ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... a comical little sigh. "It's queer how things seem to be—cut on the bias, isn't it? Now to go to school, and see and know lots of people, and have libraries and hear music—why, I seem sometimes ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... character brought to light by the spread of British dominion in Asia, there is nothing more observable than the contrast between the religious bias of Eastern thought and the innate absence of religion in the Anglo-Saxon mind. Turk and Greek, Buddhist and Armenian, Copt and Parsee, all manifest in a hundred ways of daily life the great fact of their belief in a God. In their vices as ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... occasion to observe that the natural disposition of the Chinese should seem to have suffered almost a total change by the influence of the laws and maxims of government, an influence which, in this country more than elsewhere, has given a bias to the manners, sentiments, and moral character of the people; for here every ancient proverb carries with it the force of a law. While they are by nature quiet, passive, and timid, the state of society and the abuse of the laws by which they are governed, have rendered them indifferent, ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... 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 ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... circle he has drawn,) to transgress the boundary he has wisely prescribed to himself. The history is not far enough advanced to enable us to judge whether Mr Grote will preserve himself from a political bias, the opposite of that which has been so much censured in Mitford. A sufficient portion however, is published, to authorise us in saying that it is not in point of narrative that the present author will obtain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... his environment; and the stern Puritan bias of his nature refused to conform to the free and easy ways of the gay metropolis. He sighed for a sight of the sea, and longed for the fields and homely companionship that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... was a weak, vain man, and so full of the importance of his mission that he made no secret of his object in visiting Jackson at the Hermitage; and it was soon running through the country in the party press, each retailing the story as he had heard it, or as his imagination and party bias desired it. It was soon current that Mr. Clay had challenged General Jackson, and a duel was soon to occur between these distinguished men. General Jackson, however, gave as his author, James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania. In turn, Mr. Buchanan was called upon by Clay, but he denied ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... National News Exchange Bureau. Not only has the bureau its correspondents in every city and town of any size, but it covers the national sources of news with special reporters. Also the international. Theoretically it gives only the plainest facts, uncolored by any bias. As a matter of fact, it's pretty crooked. It suppresses news, and even distorts it. It's got a secret financial propaganda dictated by Wall Street, and its policies are always ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... than likely that he has the masculine bias toward wet-blanketism that tries sanguine women's souls more sorely than open opposition. Some Johns make it a point of manly duty to discourage at first hearing any plan that has originated with a woman. I am fond of John, but this idiosyncrasy cannot ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... but yet it is a greater extreme, when a little good of the servant, shall carry things against a great good of the master's. And yet that is the case of bad officers, treasurers, ambassadors, generals, and other false and corrupt servants; which set a bias upon their bowl, of their own petty ends and envies, to the overthrow of their master's great and important affairs. And for the most part, the good such servants receive, is after the model of their own fortune; but the hurt they sell for that good, is after the model of their master's ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... named Hugh. The elder Despenser, then nearly sixty years of age, had grown grey in the service of Edward I. A baron of competent estate, he inherited from his father, the justiciar who fell at Evesham, an hereditary bias towards the constitutional tradition, but he looked to the monarch or to the popular estates, rather than to the baronage, as the best embodiment of his ideals. Ambitious and not over-scrupulous, he saw more advantage to himself in playing the game of the ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... If he were angry now, Merely that Chremes has refus'd his daughter, He'd think himself in fault; and justly too, Before the bias of your mind is known. But granting you refuse her for a wife, Then all the blame devolves on you, and then ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
... the point of view of the critic. His imprisonment and attempted disgrace have been made the theme of indignant comment and of extenuating apology. His moral character and marital relations are subjects of irreconcilable differences of judgment. His deep religious bias, so manifest in nearly all his writings, has been praised as a mark of exalted merit by some writers, and stigmatized by others as cant and superstition. The last resting-place of his bones, even, is in doubt, which it required an elaborate investigation by the Royal ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... think that anyone who conscientiously and without bias examines the evidence relating to incense-burning, the arbitrary details of the ritual and the peculiar circumstances under which it is practised in different countries, can refuse to admit that so artificial a custom must have been dispersed ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... process with reference to the particular tenet before us, analyze it, discriminate the appropriate in it from the inappropriate, the true from the false, maybe difficult; but it is necessary for a satisfactory conclusion. To this task let us therefore now address ourselves, putting away all bias and prejudice, invoking in equal degree ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... dogmatic than aesthetic. But the feelings and ideas of an active animal cannot help uniting internal moral intensity with external physical reference; and the natural conditions of sensibility require that perceptions should owe their existence and quality to the living organism with its moral bias, and that at the same time they should be addressed to the external objects which entice that organism or ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... material result followed, the physical force of the active cerebral action has seemed to me a co-operating cause. A physician can observe this to best advantage in the sickness of children, as they are free from subjective bias, their constitutions are delicately susceptible, and the prayers for them are in their immediate vicinity ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... cases of violent death by gun-shot wounds, the expression is always that of languor, whatever the natural energy of the sufferer's character; but in death from a stab the countenance preserves its traits of feeling or ferocity, and the mind its bias, to the last. [According to Medwin (1824, 4to, p. 223), an absurd charge, based on the details of this note, was brought against Byron, that he had been guilty of murder, and spoke ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... degree when it was solicited[216], but of this there was not sufficient evidence; and let me not presume to charge Johnson with injustice, because he did not think so highly of the writings of this authour, as I have done from my youth upwards. Yet that he had an unfavourable bias is evident, were it only from that passage in which he speaks of Swift's practice of saving, as, 'first ridiculous and at last detestable;' and yet after some examination of circumstances, finds himself obliged to own, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... style and rank—identity of country and color—these powerful influences bias the magistrate toward the master, at the same time that the absence of them all, estrange and even repel him from the apprentice. There is still an additional consideration which operates against the unfortunate apprentice. The men selected for magistrates, are mostly officers of the army and ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... boys, and from the propinquity of that sliver of store and the natural loquacity of Miss Kirk, which would have overflowed a much more generous area, Lilly was to learn much of life as it is lived on that bias which is cut against the warp and woof of society. Miss Kirk had twice been up in night court. Her mother alternated under three aliases and was best known on the night boat that plied between New York and Albany. ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... convey a general notion of how the warlike operations round Paris appeared to a civilian spectator, and to give a fair and impartial account of the inner life of Paris, during its isolation from the rest of Europe. My bias—if I had any—was in favour of the Parisians, and I should have been heartily glad had they been successful in their resistance. There is, however, no getting over facts, and I could not long close my ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... the Weishaupts, the same twofold mystery confounded the public mind—the mystery of the HOW, and the profounder mystery of the WHY. Here, again, no atom of property was taken, though both the misers had hordes of ducats and English guineas in the very room where they died. Their bias, again, though of an unpopular character, had rather availed to make them unknown than to make them hateful. In one point this case differed memorably from the other—that, instead of falling helpless, ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... conceiving that his royal highness the commander-in-chief would esteem a report coming from such a high source more satisfactory, than if I were to undertake the task in my present situation, which may naturally be supposed, in some degree, to bias my judgment. ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... observed, in Le Sage's Gil Bias, that an exasperated author is not easily pacified. I have, therefore, very little hope of making my peace with the writer of the Eight Days' Journey; indeed so little, that I have long deliberated, whether I should not rather sit silently down, under his displeasure, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... 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 miserable ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... appointed by the legislature in 1899 to investigate rumors of renewed corruption. But the inquiry which followed was not as penetrating nor as free from partizan bias as thoughtful citizens wished. The principal exposure was of the Ice Trust, an attempt to monopolize the city's ice supply, in which city officials were stockholders, the mayor to the extent of 5000 shares, valued at $500,000. It was shown, too, that Tammany leaders were stockholders in corporations ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... in animal organisation to allow of our setting down its marvels to the accumulations of fortunate accident, undirected by will, effort and intelligence. Those who examine the main facts of animal and vegetable organisation without bias will, no doubt, ere long conclude that all animals and vegetables are derived ultimately from unicellular organisms, but they will not less readily perceive that the evolution of species without the concomitance and direction of ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... on almost every branch of astronomy by which the celebration of yesterday was preceded. The fact that beyond the acceptance of a graceful compliment I contributed nothing to these conferences relieves me from the charge of bias or self-assertion in saying that they gave me a new and most inspiring view of the energy now being expended in research by the younger generation of astronomers. All the experience of the past leads ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... the presidency, Mr. Chase, promptly discerning the signs of the times, took the initiative toward making the national attitude and tendency on the subject of slavery the touchstone of politics. Politic and prudent by nature, and with no personal disappointments or grievances to bias his course, he doubtless would have preferred to save and use the accumulated and organized force of one or the other of the political parties which divided the country, and press its power into the service of the principles and the political action which he had, ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts
... go to Arimathea again? And his second question was hardly less indiscreet: why did we leave Arimathea? His father answered: because it suited us to do so; and Joseph withdrew to Rachel who was never gruff with him. But despite her bias in favour of all he said and did she reproved him, saying that he should not ask as soon as he returned home when he was going away again. I am glad in a way, Granny, but there's no forest here. Dan left the room, and the boy would tell no ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... interest. It is from the mother, who moves constantly among her little ones, much more than the father, whose vocation necessitates his absence from home, and prevents his being much in their presence, that children receive their bias. Her gentle hand gives to our ductile natures the impress which we wear through life; her loving voice awakens in the soul those sweet echoes which never cease to sound; and her look and manner fill the mind with images which haunt our ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... and fit to bear sunlight, as if it had been God's work. So, again, they represent the foresight and kindly zeal of men by a most rueful figure of one chained down to a rock by the brute force and bias and methodical hammer-stroke of the merely practical Arts, and by the merciless Necessities or Fates of present time; and so having his very heart torn piece by piece out of him by a vulturous hunger and sorrow, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... safe for and made of real service to the world. Our American education must be made continually more keenly alive to the great moral, ethical and social needs of the time. Thereby it will be made religious without having any sectarian slant or bias; it will be made safe for and the hand-maid of Democracy and not ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... was perfectly truthful; nevertheless it had passed through Deronda's mind that under other circumstances he should have given way to the interest this girl had raised in him, and tried to know more of her. But his history had given him a stronger bias in another direction. He felt himself in no ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... boys do credit to their rations, and show by their bright faces and energy their good health and spirits. They are under strict military discipline, and both by training and heredity have a military bias. There is no compulsion exercised, but fully 90 per cent. of those who are eligible finally enter the army; and the school record shows a long list of commissioned and non-commissioned officers, and even two Major-Generals, who owed their early training to ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... animosity—that I will not offend in a similar way again. I hear, by mere rumour, that you have extended your operations to the other kingdom. I hope I have not been the means of inducing you to do so; but, advice, if not complied with, often gives a bias in an opposite direction. With regard to Miss Wyndham, I must express—and I really had thought it was unnecessary to do so, though it was certainly my intention, as it was Miss Wyndham's wish, that I should have written to you formally on the subject—but your own conduct—excuse ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... province, city, family), or an assemblage of doctrines or institutions (religion, school of philosophy, political theory), and was led to distort facts in such a manner as to represent his friends in a favourable and his opponents in an unfavourable light. These are instances of a general bias which affects all the statements of an author, and they are so obvious that the ancients perceived them and gave them names (studium and odium); from ancient times it has been a literary commonplace for historians to protest that they have ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... that large and increasing class of Americans, who, either from natural bias, or from the severe political shocks of the last twelve years, have accepted what we may call the politics of despair, by which is meant, not so much a belief in any definite ill fortune for the Republic, as a conviction that the United States are being borne ...
— The Indian Question (1874) • Francis A. Walker
... 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
... they love when they do not love. The business of a love affair, the emotion of mind that sentiment induces, the natural bias towards the pleasure of being loved, the difficulty of refusing, persuades them that they have real passion when they ...
— Reflections - Or, Sentences and Moral Maxims • Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld
... two I was undecided whether to respond to this call, or take no notice of it. I was not conscious of the slightest mysterious bias, influence, or attraction, one way or other. Of that I am as strictly sure as of every other statement that I make here. Ultimately I decided, as a break in the monotony of my ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... horse is only permitted to canter with the right leg. He should never be cantered circles to left, or turned at a canter to the left, as unless the horse shifts his leg it will be an unfair exertion to ask of him. Cantering circles to the right, in open ground, where the horse has nothing to bias him but the indications he receives from the rider, is an admirable practice for a lady. An occasional race—who can canter slowest—is also good practice both for horse and rider. This must not be often repeated, nor must the horse be forced from a fair canter ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... authority for her history. For English affairs we are reduced to the meagre accounts of William of Worcester, of the Continuator of the Crowland Chronicle, and of Fabyan. Fabyan is a London alderman with a strong bias in favour of the House of Lancaster, and his work is useful for London only. The Continuator is one of the best of his class; and though connected with the house of York, the date of his work, which appeared soon after Bosworth ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... as many men were killed at sea as would have fallen in a moderately important battle. The number of missing steamers was great, and there is no doubt but that most of these vessels foundered. The "Coquet" was built under the eye of a critic who did not suffer champagne to bias his ideas of solid workmanship. She is still earning heavy dividends for her owners. The steamers that broke in two and went down were not superintended on the stocks by a shrewd and vigilant overlooker: so ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... Sialkot. On his arrival there, December 29th, he heard of the defeat and flight of Allah-u-din.[2] Undismayed, he marched the following morning to Parsaror, midway between Sialkot and Kalanaur on the Ravi; thence to Kalanaur, where he crossed the Ravi; thence to the Bias, which he crossed, and thence to the strong fortress of Milwat, in which his former adherent Daolat Khan, had taken refuge. Milwat soon fell. Babar then marched through the Jalandhar Duab to the Sutlej, ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson |
