"Categorical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... addresses of the ship's matron and of other persons who had been engaged on board at the date. To these Alwyn went in the course of time. A categorical description of the clothes of the dead truant, the colour of her hair, and other things, extinguished for ever all hope of a mistake ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... matters literary. It is in regard to the second and more important factor that failure waits most insistently on the librarian. What are the public's needs, as distinguished from its desires? What ought it to read? Here steps in the "categorical imperative" with a vengeance. The librarian, when he thinks of his duty along this line, begins to shudder as he realizes his responsibility as an educator, as a mentor, as a trainer of literary taste. Probably ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... the tonic in the choruses, "The Church is built," and "Awake, thou that sleepest." On these considerations it may become intelligible that to some hearers Mr. Paine's cadences have seemed unsatisfactory, their ears having missed the positive categorical assertion of finality which the 6/4 cadence alone can give. To go further into this subject would take us far ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... except under certain conditions, to announce to Mrs. Prettyman her coming ejection from the cottage at Wittisham, was unprofessional enough, as he himself felt; but it was final and categorical. Conveying as it did a sort of tacit remonstrance, this refusal had an unfortunate effect, for it only served to rouse Mrs. de Tracy's formidable obstinacy. She had seized upon one point only in their numberless and wearisome discussions of the matter: Mrs. Prettyman ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... objection to giving a categorical answer occurred, as I have been assured, in regard to a more profound question. A party travelling on a railway got into deep discussion on theological questions. Like Milton's spirits in ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... the rational gratification caused by the idea of adaptation to an end, Schiller takes up the questions of moral beauty and of the ideal of character. He deprecates Kant's strenuous insistence upon the categorical imperative of duty. A man, he urges, must be free; and the slavery of duty is no better than any other slavery. Virtue is inclination to duty, and the ideal is to be found in the perfect equipoise of the sensuous and the rational nature; in other words, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... accepted until then without examination, he pronounced for the first time against the restoration of an aristocratic and priestly Poland, and against the establishment of a unitary government in Italy, created for him a multitude of enemies. Most of his friends, disconcerted by his categorical affirmation of a right of force, notified him that they decidedly disapproved of his new publication. "You see," triumphantly cried those whom he had always combated, "this man is only ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... Eisagogae] of Porphyry, and the whole of Aristotle's Organon. He wrote a double commentary on the [Greek: Eisagogae] and commentaries on the Categories and the De Interpretatione of Aristotle, and on the Topica of Cicero. He also composed original treatises on the categorical and hypothetical syllogism, on Division and on Topical Differences. He adapted the arithmetic of Nicomachus, and his textbook on music, founded on various Greek authorities, was in use at Oxford and Cambridge until modern times. His five theological Tractates are here, together with ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... that his grandfather intended his great building to be adorned with mosaic work, and that one of his numerous disappointments was his inability, thanks to the ignorant opposition of the Commission, to carry out this intention. The categorical statement of the grandson is corroborated by (a) the text of various Acts of Parliaments, (b) other Renaissance Churches and notably St. Peter's, (c) the use of material softer than Portland stone for various surfaces.[103] Bishop Newton, who was Dean a hundred and twenty years ago, roundly ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... sometimes cause the greatest inconvenience. I have forgotten or lost my spectacles. Now, in this twilight, with the very poor eyesight that years of labor have left me, it will be absolutely impossible for me to read this most important letter—and an immediate answer is expected—most simple and categorical—a yes or a no. Times presses; it is really most annoying. If," added Rodin, laying great stress on his words, without looking at Djalma, but so as the prince might remark it; "if only some one would render me the service to read ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... be absolutely impossible to collect upon the inhospitable shores of the Red Sea an army sufficiently large to meet the Negus. In fact, this was almost categorically the collective demand of the three Powers which reached Eden Vale the same day. As categorical, however, was the rejection of the proposal, accompanied by the declaration that the Eden Vale government intended to carry on alone the war with Abyssinia which now seemed inevitable. Moreover, the allies were told that their armies could not ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... it impossible to go on without remarking to you how direct this Empire literature is, going to the point without any details, a characteristic, as it seems to me, of a primitive time. The literature of that period holds a place between the summaries of chapters in Telemaque and the categorical reports of a public office. It had ideas, but refrained from expressing them, it was so scornful! It was observant, but would not communicate its observations to any one, it was so miserly! Nobody but Fouche ever mentioned what he had observed. 'At that time,' to quote the words of one of the most ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... air with a jarring, hasty laughter, at which his goat-like beard began to tremble in an uncomely manner. It took Foma a long time to obtain a categorical answer; the old man, contrary to his habit, was restless and irritated; his speech, usually fluent, was now interrupted; he was swearing and expectorating as he spoke, and it was with difficulty that Foma learned what the matter was. Sophya Pavlovna Medinskaya, the wealthy architect's wife, who was ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... In making a categorical reply to the question which forms the title of his paper, Mr. Taylor replies—"No"—and gives various "surmises" to account for recognisable likenesses having been obtained. At the end of his paper ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... Russians, and proceed to Prussia. But General York had not yet made up his mind. Toward nightfall another messenger from General Diebitsch arrived at his headquarters. This messenger was Lieutenant-Colonel Clausewitz, whom Diebitsch had sent to insist again on a categorical reply. York received him sullenly, and said to him: 'Keep aloof from me. I do not wish to have any thing to do with you. Your accursed Cossacks have allowed a messenger from Macdonald to pass through your lines, and he has brought me orders to march upon Piktupohnen, ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... they were brought forth again and quoted with the authority of the church fathers. The ordeal is a question addressed to the superior powers in order to learn the truth. The question is always categorical: Is this man guilty or not? The irrationality is that there is a third possibility which cannot be tested; the superior powers may not answer at all. In the early Middle Ages the ordeal was in common use in all civil and ecclesiastical trials. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... They sat opposite each other, trying to talk. Suddenly he besought her not to throw him over.... She had to refuse to kiss him, and that was convincing, he said. Once a woman was not greedy for kisses, the end was near. And his questions were to the point, and irritatingly categorical. Had she ever been unfaithful to him? Did she love Ulick Dean? Not content with a simple denial, he took her by both hands, and looking her straight in the face, asked her to give him her word of honour that Ulick Dean was not her lover, that she had never kissed him, that she had never ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... would have answered him, as far as he could, in the same formal, argumentative manner. But Mr. Allgood was getting jaded; the stretch of attention required by the reasoning of Mr. Goose was telling upon his patience; so he slided away to talk with one who spoke in less categorical style: not ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... information. What he wishes is a clear, concise, and dogmatic statement of general results. Has the material and moral condition of the peasantry improved since the Emancipation? That is the simple question which he has to put, and he naturally expects a simple, categorical answer. ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Greeks, that name clung to him. Another of my questions was about the so-called spurious books; had he written them or not? He said that they were all genuine: so I now knew what to think of the critics Zenodotus and Aristarchus and all their lucubrations. Having got a categorical answer on that point, I tried him next on his reason for starting the "Iliad" with the wrath of Achilles. He said he had no exquisite reason; it just came into his ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... generally listened deferentially to what the others had to say, his attitude being that of a man who expected to be asked for his opinion. When he did speak in the end it was with a sort of rhetorical solemnity, in sharp and precise sentences, categorical and well accentuated, which forbade contradiction from the outset. Herr Ferdinand Hiller was among the invited guests, and he began to speak about Liszt. After some time Spontini gave his opinion in his characteristic fashion, but in a spirit which showed only too clearly, that from ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... skeleton of belief such as the Apostles' Creed was capable of no such reconstruction. One either believed it, or one did not. Unless—Did anybody ever believe any one thing in its unmodified entirety? Did anybody ever give a categorical denial to any clause of any creed? That was the worst of the whole matter. Half-doubts and half-beliefs crisscrossed and interlaced at every point. One day's doctrine was the next day's error. It was well-nigh impossible to draw ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... the Categorical Imperative is correct and valuable so far as it goes. But then it does not go far enough. The full notion of what a man ought, is what he must do under pain of sin. Sin is more than folly, more than a breach of reason. It is mild reproach to a great criminal to tell him that he is a very foolish ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... phrases lost in empty gossip. He collected what he wanted grain by grain from bushels of chaff. The whole sum of his new knowledge could have been expressed in a paragraph, took him a week to get, but was just what he wanted. If he had asked categorical questions, he would have received lies. If he had attempted to hurry matters, he would have ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... was as notable a man in his outside presentment as one will find among five hundred college alumni as they file in procession. His strong, squared features, his formidable scowl, his solid-looking head, his iron-gray hair, his positive and as it were categorical stride, his slow, precise way of putting a statement, the strange union of trampling radicalism in some directions and high-stepping conservatism in others, which made it impossible to calculate on his unexpressed opinions, his testy ways and his generous impulses, his hard judgments ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... "I did not ask you for a categorical explanation of your movements, Mr. Lorimer," she says lightly—"I'm sure I ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... set of names is preferable. 'Categorical' properly means 'predicable' and 'hypothetical' is a mere synonym ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... and the council to report upon the petition. The case was too plain for argument or dogmatism, but the attempt was made to take refuge in obscurity. The answer of the council was hesitating and equivocal. The Duchess insisted upon a distinct and categorical answer to the four cities. Thus pressed, the council of Brabant declared roundly that no inquisition of any kind had ever existed, in the provinces. It was impossible that any other answer could be given, but ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... categorical response I ought to have concluded that the misfortune had been consummated, but a certain hesitation in the intonation of his voice warned me that implicit reliance was not to be placed upon Engineer ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... to the usual onslaught from the strong-minded. A small but formidable committee entered my office one morning and demanded a categorical declaration of my principles. What my views on the subject were, I knew very well; they were clear and decided; and yet, I hesitated to declare them! It wasn't a temptation of Saint Anthony—that is, turned the other ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... Teutonic ass who said that women weren't beautiful), for I hate to be thought an ignorant duffer—and I have never come across in them anything worth knowing, thinking, or doing that I was not taught at my mother's knee. And as for her, dear, simple soul, if you had asked her what was the Categorical Imperative (having explained beforehand the meaning of the words), she would have said, "The Sermon on ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... may be considered to be an adverb, nor a conjunction, and none a noun, these two words, the direct categorical affirmative, and the direct categorical negative, are referable to none of the current parts of speech. Accurate grammar places them in a class ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... exercise of their religion. They addressed this demand, which was moreover couched in threatening language, to the Duke of Bavaria, as the head of the Roman Catholics, and they insisted on an immediate and categorical answer. Maximilian might decide for or against them, still their point was gained; his concession, if he yielded, would deprive the Roman Catholic party of its most powerful protector; his refusal would arm the whole Protestant party, and render inevitable a war in which they hoped to be the ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... is very transparent! "cries Bath." From any other man it would be an affront with the strongest emphasis, but from one of the doctor's cloth it demands a categorical answer." ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... a vivid and somewhat categorical account of his predilections, which were "gambling, duels, politics, writing pamphlets, the conception of colossal canal, railway, and commercial undertakings that never got far beyond the initial and rocky ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... there is room for an infinite variety of "categorical imperatives." The conscience of one personality is able to accept as its "good" the very same thing that another personality is compelled to regard as its "evil." Indeed it is conceivable that a moment might arise ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... spokesman of the moral consciousness. Our conscience and taste establish these ideals; to make a judgment is virtually to establish an ideal, and all ideals are absolute and eternal for the judgment that involves them, because in finding and declaring a thing good or beautiful, our sentence is categorical, and the standard evoked by our judgment is for that case intrinsic and ultimate. But at the next moment, when the mind is on another footing, a new ideal is evoked, no less absolute for the present judgment than ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... legislative power in man's life. To take a phrase from Professor Dewey, reason, for Spinoza, is reconstructive not constitutive. The power of the intellect is not some underived, original, independent power which can impose or, better, superimpose its categorical imperatives upon human conduct. The power of the intellect is wholly derivative, dependent upon the nature of the things ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... Wilson's note lies in the last half dozen words and proceeds. It remains to be seen what answer will be made to this categorical demand. The general opinion in the United States appears to be that it will not be a refusal. Germany, it is thought, will begin by making concessions enough to prevent the abrupt conclusion of conversations, and will finally extend ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... "That is not a categorical answer," I remarked. "Come, Emily, tell me, is there no one for whom you have more regard than for those unhappy gentlemen whom you refused?" I saw a gentle blush rise to her cheek. "Well," I said, "I shall ask Oliver Farwell to come and stay here. He keeps away far more than there is any necessity ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Practical Reason carefully and without blinkers will see that, in strict fact, the existence of God is therein deduced from the immortality of the soul, and not the immortality of the soul from the existence of God. The categorical imperative leads us to a moral postulate which necessitates in its turn, in the teleological or rather eschatological order, the immortality of the soul, and in order to sustain this immortality God is introduced. All the rest is the jugglery of the ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... her part, knew still more than that. With the swift intuition she inherited from her long line of Oriental ancestry, she said to herself at once, in categorical terms, "It was that man that did it. I know it was he. And he sees I know it. And he knows I'm right. And he's afraid of me accordingly." But an intuition, however valuable to its possessor, is not yet admitted as evidence in English courts. Elma also knew it was no use in the world ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... to make a categorical statement, that the perforated apex is a chimney to admit the air required for breathing. Every pupa breathes in its shell, however compact this may be, even as the unhatched bird breathes inside the egg. The thousands of pores ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre
... unlimited desire and an absolute want. The first fruits, therefore, that he reaps in the world of spirits, are cares and fear—both operations of the reason; not of sensuousness, but of a reason that mistakes its object and applies its categorical imperative to matter. All unconditional systems of happiness are fruits of this tree, whether they have for their object the present day or the whole of life, or what does not make them any more respectable, the whole of eternity, for their object. An unlimited ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... to go again to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and formally to intimate to his Excellency my just expectation that the Council will not delay to cause to be delivered to me through him a categorical answer, and, as I hope, a satisfactory answer to the demand of a Government sincerely friendly to the Porte. You will leave with him a copy of this instruction, and you will concert as to the time of its delivery with the Interpreter of the French Embassy, ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various
... drew my thoughts to the subject of idolatry, which was severely censured at the missionary meeting. I cross- examined my Father very closely as to the nature of this sin, and pinned him down to the categorical statement that idolatry consisted in praying to anyone or anything but God himself. Wood and stone, in the words of the hymn, were peculiarly liable to be bowed down to by the heathen in their blindness. I pressed my Father further on ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... undogmatic essence of religion. Schleiermacher was bred among the devoted followers of Zinzendorf. Even the radicalism of Kant retained from the teaching of his pietistic youth the stringency of its ethic, the sense of the radical evil of human nature and of the categorical imperative of duty. It would be hard to find anything to surpass his testimony to the purity of character and spirit of his parents, or the beauty of the home life in which he was bred. Such facts as these made ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... but with as little success. On looking to the other side of the road, I observed a mason at work repairing the opposite wall with some very suspicious-looking stones, and I immediately crossed over, and commenced a categorical examination of the supposed delinquent. I inquired whether he could explain to me the cause of the removal of the ancient cross, which used to be in the field exactly opposite to where we were then standing; but he said ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... to grow more and more bewildered. Your observations are wholly incomprehensible to me. Cannot you simplify them in some way? At first I thought perhaps I understood you, but I grope now. Would it not expedite matters if you restricted yourself to categorical statements of fact unencumbered with obstructing accumulations of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... xy are not-z"; and the assertion "(4) is true" is equivalent to "No xy exist." Hence the Contradictory to "All xy are z" may be expressed as the Alternative Proposition "Either some xy are not-z, or no xy exist," but not as the Categorical ...
— Symbolic Logic • Lewis Carroll
... enter into a categorical description of the hegemony or Protector system, under which the most powerful state for the time being held durbars "in camp," and in theory maintained the shadowy rights of the Emperor, we must first introduce the two coast states of the Yang-tsz delta, just mentioned as having asserted their ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... at him with sudden critical interest, missing an emanation from him. It was his enthusiasm. A cheerfulness had come upon him instead. Also what he said had something categorical in it, something crisp and arranged. He himself received benefit from the consideration of it, and she was aware that if this result followed, her own "conversion" was of very ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... and immediate. The problem, therefore, exclusively regards the intuitive perception of the qualities of matter. Now, says Hamilton, "if we interrogate consciousness concerning the point in question, the response is categorical and clear. In the simplest act of perception I am conscious of myself as a perceiving subject, and of an external reality as the object perceived; and I am conscious of both existences in the same indivisible ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... risk of telepathy is done away with? It would perhaps be rash to make a categorical assertion. The power and extent of telepathy are as yet, we cannot too often repeat, indefinite, indiscernible, untraceable and unlimited. We have but quite lately discovered it, we know only that its existence can no longer be denied; but, as for all the rest, we are ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... wife," said Alston, without committing himself by a categorical answer. "Would seem like Ol' Virginny ter have her an' the childun, but they's better off thar'. They couldn't pick cotton, I reckon. Her moster an' mistiss thinks a heap uv her: she's one the cooks. I don't ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... house today, and I have pledged myself to give him a categorical reply at that time, and to ensure its publication by some mode ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... unwilling to believe," he wrote, "that her Majesty's government will press for a categorical answer upon what appears to him to be only a partial record, in the making up of which he has been allowed no part. He is reluctant to volunteer his view of the case, with no assurance that her Majesty's government ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... thousand existences; for the young it is to desire all, and to possess all; for the old it is to live the life of the youthful, and to share their passions. Now how many answers have not the sauntering artists heard to the categorical question ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... consequence of all this, following the Palestinian Exemplar, he had from accurate copies furnished his own work with the Twelve Verses in dispute;—which is a categorical refutation of the statement frequently met with that the work of Victor of ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... was categorical. Madame de Montgeron bent her head; her jesting vein was quenched ...
— Zibeline, Complete • Phillipe de Massa
... Review, was being examined by the Committee. Suddenly he put his finger on the precise spot. Having expressed surprise at the non-appearance of Ministers, he went on: "One might have conceived that they would have appeared at its first sitting clamoring to state in the most categorical and emphatic manner that neither directly nor indirectly, in their own names or in other people's names, have they had any transactions whatsoever, either in London, Dublin, New York, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, or ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... and then I saw a chap who'd got his motor stuck, and helped him, and then ..." Here Miles looked down at his aunt, who looked up at him apprehensively. "I caught up with Miss Morton and the children, and walked back to Wren's End with them. There, Aunt Mary, that's a categorical history of ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... objections. He would be encouraged by the reflection, that if his opposition should prevail, it would embark in it a very respectable proportion of the legislative body, whose influence would be united with his in supporting the propriety of his conduct in the public opinion. A direct and categorical negative has something in the appearance of it more harsh, and more apt to irritate, than the mere suggestion of argumentative objections to be approved or disapproved by those to whom they are addressed. In proportion as it would be less apt to offend, it would be more apt ...
— The Federalist Papers
... consistency with the best and highest principles of their party. Let them put themselves in instant communication with their member, and, stating the character of the report which so generally exists to his prejudice, request a categorical answer regarding it,—let them request an avowal of his opinion of the Duke's policy, equally articulate with that opinion which the Hon. Mr. Fox Maule submitted to the public a few weeks ago in the columns of the Witness,—and then, as the ascertained circumstances ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... himself to Bailly, and that they should reside at Versailles, and have an apartment in common between them. It is difficult to avoid a smile when one compares the conduct of the eloquent and impetuous Abbe with the categorical declarations, so distinct and so progressive, of the ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... he built up the case against the accused man, classifying the points of evidence against him in categorical order for the benefit of the jury. The most important witness for the prosecution was a man known as James Hill, who had been in Sir Horace Fewbanks's employ as a butler. Hill's connection with the prisoner was in some aspects ...
— The Hampstead Mystery • John R. Watson
... Palestine with an inspired conductor. For some of our quaintly vicious contemporaries, we have the decline of the Roman Empire and the reign of Henry III. of France. But there are others not quite so vicious, who yet cannot look upon the world with perfect gravity, who have never taken the categorical imperative to wife, and have more taste for what is comfortable than for what is magnanimous and high; and I can imagine some of these casting their lot in the Court of Blois during the last twenty years of the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... entire nation. On December 12th—new style—Germany offered Russia a separate peace, and three days later the Foreign Minister, Pokrovsky, visited the Duma and announced that Russia would reject the offer. The Duma immediately passed a resolution declaring that "the Duma unanimously favors a categorical refusal by the Allied governments to enter, under present conditions, into any peace negotiations whatever." On the 19th a similar resolution was adopted by the Imperial Council, which continued to follow the leadership of the Duma. Before adjourning for the Christmas holidays the Duma ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... felt sufficient authority to form, even in my inmost conscience, a categorical judgment on so complex a phenomenon as the French Revolution. To-day I find it even more difficult to form a brief judgement. Causes, facts, and consequences seem to me to be still ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... I do not care for dogs. Besides, I do not often walk so far as this; but I felt the valley stifling to-day," answered Leam, in her matter-of-fact, categorical way. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... revolution beyond all previous experience, and it is possible the old practice is no longer a safe guide. Driven by the same necessities, every naval Power is following the same course. It may be right, it may be wrong; no one at least but the ignorant or hasty will venture to pass categorical judgment. The best we can do is to endeavour to realise the situation to which, in spite of all misgivings, we have been forced, and to determine its relations to ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... his native soil. The splendid practice afforded by translating from one language into another, which so improves and fertilises one's artistic feeling for one's own tongue, is, in the case of German, never conducted with that fitting categorical strictness and dignity which would be above all necessary in dealing with an undisciplined language. Of late, exercises of this kind have tended to decrease ever more and more: people are satisfied to know the ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE, Kant's name for the self-derived moral law, "universal and binding on every rational will, a commandment of the autonomous, one and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... and then the paper published the famous letter, so precise and categorical in its conclusions, in which Arsene Lupin furnished the solution of the problem. I quote it ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... evening of July 23d, Austria sent an ultimatum to Serbia, presenting eleven demands and stipulating that categorical replies must be delivered before six o'clock on the evening of July 25th. Although the language in which the ultimatum was couched was humiliating to Serbia, the answer was duly delivered within ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... adviser. There was a general feeling of dislike in the minds of the English public to the German influences that were supposed to be brought to bear on the Queen; and Lord Melbourne found it necessary to make a public and categorical denial of the statement that Stockmar was acting as the Queen's private secretary. But the statement, if not technically, was virtually true. Stockmar lived at Court, had interviews with the Queen and her Ministers, and ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... precedents, in what he falsely imagines to be similar cases; whereas two cases never were, since the beginning of the world, exactly alike; and he would be capable, where he thought spirit and vigor necessary, to draw a circle round the persons he treated with, and to insist upon a categorical answer before they went out of it, because he had read, in the Roman history, that once upon a time some Roman ambassador, did so. No; a certain degree of learning may help, but no degree of learning will ever make a skillful ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... and I were concerned, our belief was based after all chiefly on supposition; and so craftily had the whole scheme been phrased and manoeuvred that, if you got down to categorical testimony, even Blodgett and Davie Paine would have been hard put to it to prove anything culpable against the other party. Actually we were guilty of mutiny, ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... virtues' CATalogue along; No CATaplasm could lengthen out her years, Though mourning friends shed CATaracts of tears. Once loud and strong her CATachist-like voice It dwindled to a CATcall's squeaking noise; Most CATegorical her virtues shone, By CATenation join'd each one to one;— But a vile CATchpoll dog, with cruel bite, Like CATling's cut, her strength disabled quite; Her CATerwauling pierced the heavy air, As CATaphracts ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... will have been put under such restrictions that the greatest embarrassments are inevitable. Intelligence is already come that the Manchester people have curtailed their orders, and many workmen will be out of work. Yesterday a deputation from Coventry came to Auckland, and desired a categorical answer as to whether Government meant to resume the prohibitory system, because if they would not the glove trade at Coventry ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... brought back a roar. The British envoy was ordered to demand an explicit and categorical reply ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... be said to condition the object in general. Their principles condition the process of making something out of the manifold of sensation. But similarly, every moral experience recognizes what Kant calls the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative is the law of reasonableness or impartiality in conduct, requiring the individual to act on a maxim which he can "will to be law universal." No state of desire or situation calling for action means ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... what is the value of categorical assertions of this kind in presence of the fragments of pottery found at different levels in Kent's Hole? One of these fragments was so rotten that when placed in water it formed a black liquid mud ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac
... people must prevail. What? Who said it is not so? Come out you counter-revolutionary, you monarchist, you royal carrion,—come out and say it to my face, don't hide, you...." Nobody came out. This categorical imperative could surpass the Kant's.... Kaganitzky's face, smiling, and with moving flappy ears, was in accord with this understanding, and when Khokhriakov barked ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... 1714, complained that he was "put out of humour by the most horrible precipices." There is huge comfort to be drawn from Stephen's pages descriptive of the "simple-minded abhorrence of mountains," and from his categorical declaration that love of the sublime shapes of the Alps springs from "a delicate and cultivated taste." But we are puzzled by the presence outside the pale of some who cannot rightly be called "pachydermatous." I am turning over the ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... galleons, nor destroyed the Spanish fleet. Nor have they enslaved Portugal, nor you made a triumphant entry into Naples. My dear sir, you see how lucky you were not to go thither; you don't envy Sir James Grey, do you? Pray don't make any categorical demands to Marshal Botta,[1] and be obliged to retire to Leghorn, because they are not answered. We want allies; preserve us our friend the Great Duke of Tuscany. I like your answer to Botta exceedingly, but I fear the Court of Vienna is shame-proof. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... whatever is affirmed or understood as the condition, or concomitant, or consequence of the same. This will be best explained by an instance or example. That I am conscious of something within me peremptorily commanding me to do unto others as I would they should do unto me; in other words a categorical (that is, primary and unconditional) imperative; that the maxim (regula maxima, or supreme rule) of my actions, both inward and outward, should be such as I could, without any contradiction arising therefrom, will to be the law of all moral and rational beings. ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of this book is to be sought in the point of view of the writer rather than in a sequence of chapters developing a single theme and arriving at categorical conclusions. Literature in a civilization like ours, which is trying to be both sophisticated and democratic at the same moment of time, has so many sources and so many manifestations, is so much involved with our social background, and is so much a question of life as well as of art, that many ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... up, he sometimes avenged himself by wondering if his wife was still sorry that they had not called her Muriel. Jane was not ugly; she developed, indeed, a kind of categorical prettiness that might have been a projection of her mind. She had a creditable collection of features, but one had to take an inventory of them to find out that she was good-looking. The ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... thrown no light upon the future movements of Gallia, and Rosette was disposed apparently to evade, or at least to postpone, the subject. When, therefore, Lieutenant Procope was about to press his inquiries in a more categorical form, Servadac, thinking it advisable not prematurely to press the little savant too far, interrupted him by asking the professor how he accounted for the earth having suffered so little from such a ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... said that the Delegate of the United States, Commander SAMPSON, puts a question which seems to be somewhat categorical. ...
— International Conference Held at Washington for the Purpose of Fixing a Prime Meridian and a Universal Day. October, 1884. • Various
... "is this language to a clergyman? Mr Supple is a man of sense, and gives you the best advice; and the whole world, I believe, will concur in his opinion; but I must tell you I expect an immediate answer to my categorical proposals. Either cede your daughter to my disposal, or take her wholly to your own surprizing discretion, and then I here, before Mr Supple, evacuate the garrison, and renounce you ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... but made no categorical reply. They glanced at the wrecked pantry window, and they looked with more intentness at the long sliding footprints which led away, down the half-bare sand-slope. Then ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... insoluble riddle to Leigh's mind. On the contrary, he had met his type before and knew it well; but with Miss Wycliffe the case was different. He recognized now the reason of Cardington's inability to describe her, for a categorical account of her features, or of what is commonly called her "good points," would have left the essential quality untouched. Yet this quality was the woman herself, and had fired Leigh's blood with a fever of longing that made him reckless of his judgment. In fact, he was not now absorbed ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... decide, set at rest, " make assurance double sure " [Macbeth]; know &c. (believe) 484. dogmatize, lay down the law. Adj. certain, sure, assured &c. v.; solid, well-founded. unqualified, absolute, positive, determinate, definite, clear, unequivocal, categorical, unmistakable, decisive, decided, ascertained. inevitable, unavoidable, avoidless[obs3]; ineluctable. unerring, infallible; unchangeable &c. 150; to be depended on, trustworthy, reliable, bound. unimpeachable, undeniable, unquestionable; indisputable, incontestable, incontrovertible, indubitable; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... significance in their doctrine, which have reference almost exclusively to a definite practice; probably to a complete setting to work of the consciousness of duty, which is what Kant claims to do with his categorical imperative: "An unreasoning, though not unreasonable, obedience to an experienced, imperious sense of duty, leaving the result to God; and this I am disposed to call ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... Twiggs resented this, but the merchant again affirmed it, and gave names. As soon as General Twiggs reached his office, he instructed his adjutant-general, Colonel Bliss—who told me this—to address a categorical note of inquiry to Major Waggaman. The major very frankly stated the facts as they had arisen, and insisted that the firm of Perry Seawell & Co. had enjoyed a large patronage, but deserved it richly by reason ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... the sacred fire in the Temple of Vesta was looked upon as a categorical warning that the behavior of the Romans or of some part of them or the conduct of the government was so displeasing to the gods that the Empire would come to a sudden end unless matters were at once corrected. All Romans believed that as implicitly as they believed ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... them. He acquired at this time a knowledge of French and Italian literature too; but the philosophy of Kant and the writings of Goethe and Schiller roused him to greater enthusiasm. From Kant he learnt that the guiding principle of conduct was not happiness, but the 'categorical imperative' of duty; from Goethe he drew such hopefulness as gleams occasionally through his despondent utterances on the progress of the human race. He translated Goethe's novel, Wilhelm Meister, in 1823, and followed it up with the Life of Schiller. ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... whole inquiry, which it was almost impossible for me to conceal from men who saw me day by day, who heard my familiar conversation, who came perhaps for the express purpose of pumping me, and having a categorical yes or no to their questions,—how could I expect to say any thing about my actual, positive, present belief, which would be sustaining or consoling to such persons as were haunted already by doubts of their own? Nay, how could I, with satisfaction ...
— Apologia Pro Vita Sua • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... waving verdure of rich corn-fields and meadows, not pretermitting phatie-fields in full blossom—a part of rural landscape which, to my utter astonishment, has escaped the pen of poet, and the brush of painter; although I will risk my reputation as a man of pure and categorical taste, if a finer ingredient in the composition of a landscape could be found than a field of Cork-fed phaties or Moroky blacks in full bloom, allowing a man to judge by the pleasure they confer upon the eye, and ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... beginning" should be observed. Every question is to be asked and every answer demanded which is necessary to convince the examiner that the party examined is acquainted with what he ought to know, to entitle him to the appellation of a Brother. Nothing is to be taken for granted—categorical answers must be required to all that it is deemed important to be asked. No forgetfulness is to be excused, nor is the want of memory to be accepted as a valid excuse for the want of knowledge. The Mason, who is so unmindful of his duties as to have forgotten the instructions he ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... Walt Whitman, and in a few of his finest lyrics, such as Out of the Cradle endlessly rocking, one gets the perfection of structure and form. But he spoilt his vehicle by a careless diffuseness, by a violent categorical tendency, and by other faults which may be called faults of breeding rather than faults of art—a ghastly volubility, an indiscretion, a lust for description rather than suggestion; and thus he has numbered no followers, and only a ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... absolutely separated from it, and is its own (human) experience by itself. This practical reason says to us: you ought to do good. The crowd call it conscience; I call it in a general way practical reason, and I call it the categorical imperative when I take it in its principle, without taking into account the applications which I foresee. Why this name? To distinguish it clearly; for we feel ourselves commanded by other things than ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... principle of the pure reason insists that the mere form of a universal legislation must constitute the ultimate determining principle of the will. Here is the only possible practical principle which is sufficient to furnish categorical imperatives, that is, practical laws which make action ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the action itself is sometimes concentrated. But this would lead me too far afield; moreover, since the most glaring differences of opinion usually crop up precisely on this subject, I could not avoid the dangerous ground on which, according to Goethe's profound saying, the categorical imperative and the authority of the man who pronounces it, form the last court of appeal. Or if some one, with a liking for gaudy paint and iridescent rags, should prefer a puppet show to the living figures of the piece, vital to their very finger tips, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... not unnatural that some thoughtful intuitionists, dissatisfied with a considerable number of independent moral principles, should aim at a further simplification. Such a simplification Kant finds in the Categorical Imperative, or unconditional command of the Practical Reason: "Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law." [Footnote: Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, Sec 2.] And ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... day the question who is the chief discoverer of the law of the conservation of energy is not susceptible of a categorical answer that would satisfy all philosophers. It is generally held that the first choice lies between Joule and Mayer. Professor Tyndall has expressed the belief that in future each of these men will be equally remembered in connection with this work. But history gives us ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... make a categorical list of the things that existed or were made for our amusement in Palestine, it would, I think, consist of no more than four items, viz.: sea-bathing, military sports, sight-seeing, and concert parties; and I am not sure that the ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... his majesty the King of Prussia in an autograph letter to accept my resignation," said Mueller, evasively; "I want, above all, a categorical reply whether I ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... performances, and on one occasion at least, Elizaveta Petrovna improved upon the Scripture parable; when an insufficient number of spectators presented themselves at the French comedy, she forthwith dispatched mounted messengers to numerous persons of rank and distinction, with a categorical demand to know why they had absented themselves, and a warning that henceforth a fine of fifty rubles would be exacted for such dereliction ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... rigid principles enacted into the spoken and printed law, but they have also become closely connected with religion and theological elements. Especially is this true in the ethics of barbarous and savage peoples, who accredit the "categorical imperative" to some supernatural power, as we are to see in a later section. The one point that comes out clearly is that the systems of conduct and duties have evolved so as to be very different among various races, and that in the history of any one people, ethics has passed ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... that is why bearded faces at St. Petersburg crack open and emit rumbles of genuine merriment every time Sir Edward Grey stands up in the House of Commons and explains to his countrymen that he has most ample and categorical assurances from Russia that her sole purpose in sending two or three armies into Persia is to show her displeasure with an American ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the case of the English Government presented to the world by the king and his ministers. Let us now hear what the personages so heartily reviled by them had to say for themselves. The Rev. C.P. Meehan has brought to light the categorical narratives, which the earls dictated, and which had lain unpublished among the 'old historic rolls,' in the Public Record Office, London. These documents are of great historic interest, as are many other state-papers now first published in his valuable work.[1] O'Neill's ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... the debate, and proposed that the question be met in a categorical form, thus:—Were the laws of the different states which make gambling a Penitentiary offence unjust and impolitic? Were they formed in good policy ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... naturalist's asseveration, that myriads of living things might co-exist on the point of a needle? That the Earth is to be burned by fire, is, if true, as large a fact as that huge monsters once played amid its depths; that Antichrist is to come, is as categorical a heading to a chapter of history, as that Nero or Julian was Emperor of Rome; that a divine influence moves the will, is a subject of thought not more mysterious than the result of volition on our muscles, which we admit ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... that we had another occasion." This time he behaved more creditably, told "Belinda" that it was necessary for him to go to England, explained the inevitable delays and told how he should conduct himself until his return. He says that he asked no questions which would admit of a categorical answer—there was something of the lawyer in this wooing! He assured Miss Rebecca that such a question would one day be asked. In this letter she is called "Adinleb" and ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... his own showing: for if that critical portal of pure reason had indeed been sufficient, as it gave itself out to be, for all the purposes of a human philosophy, what need was there of the "practical back-door" which, at the categorical command of conscience, was afterwards laid open to all men in the "Metaphysic of Ethics?" As little will you allow your philosophical need to be satisfied with any thing you can get from SCHELLING; for however well it sounds to "throw yourself from the transcendental ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... two or three days. One night, at a party, I became utterly bewildered in an attempt to converse, after long desuetude, with a fascinating woman. I went stumbling on, amazing her more and more, until finally I covered myself with glory by the categorical statement that in my opinion General McClellan could 'never get across the Peninsula without a fattle; I beg pardon, Madam! what I mean to say is, without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... the difficulties involved in attempting to state in categorical terms the cost of wool production and the great differences in cost as between different regions and different types of wool. It is found, however, that, taking all varieties in account, the average cost of production for the whole American clip is higher than the cost in the chief ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... effect that probably the answer should be "Yea," but that, as we are at present passing through "a period of transition," as all our creeds are "in the melting pot," we must wait a little while for an absolutely categorical reply, preserving, in the meantime, an open mind and a trusting heart. For purposes of consolation, and to encourage them to this trustfulness of spirit, they are told, so they relate, that "devout men are at work upon the sacred ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson |
