"Immutability" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Beauchamp, Monck. Under the title of Leicester five different names have been merged—Beaumont, Breose, Dudley, Sydney, Coke. Under Lincoln, six; under Pembroke, seven. The families change, under unchanging titles. A superficial historian believes in immutability. In reality it does not exist. Man can never be more than a wave; ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and apostles of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in him, as their only Redeemer, might be at any time overclouded, yet it was never totally subverted; and that the noble grace of faith in the souls of believers cannot be totally lost; but that such is the immutability of God's decrees, and his unchangeable love; such the efficacy of their Redeemer's merit, and constant abiding of the spirit of holiness in them; and such the nature of the new covenant, that, notwithstanding of various temptations and afflictions, the prevailing of remaining corruption ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... with reversed arms and muffled drums and colours, escorted his body to the grave, singing, as they marched, that lofty and melancholy psalm in which the fragility of human life is contrasted with the immutability of Him to whom a thousand years are as yesterday when it is past, and as a ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the barrier, whether of solid rock or salt-water. (15/5. This is merely an illustration of the admirable laws, first laid down by Mr. Lyell, on the geographical distribution of animals, as influenced by geological changes. The whole reasoning, of course, is founded on the assumption of the immutability of species; otherwise the difference in the species in the two regions might be considered as superinduced during ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... conjunction with the Foreign Minister question. It must therefore be of importance to the Swedish government, to have the proposition worded in such a way that it would remove the doubts of the Diet regarding an isolated solution of the Consular question. In the matter of the immutability of the identical laws, it had sought an effectual guarantee that the independent Consular office would not disloyally—when the time was ripe for it—be provided by Norway with its own Minister for Foreign affairs. This question had been shirked by Norway. It was therefore necessary ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... finite many, to tie it to, to unify and anchor it. Something unexposed to accident, something eternal and unalterable. The mutable in experience must be founded on immutability. Behind our de facto world, our world in act, there must be a de jure duplicate fixed and previous, with all that can happen here already there in posse, every drop of blood, every smallest item, appointed and provided, stamped and branded, without ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... intelligence, independently of all supernatural teaching, at a certain stage of its development. But here, as in the former instance, the change is not effected suddenly; the human mind advances gradually from Polytheism to Monotheism, through the intermediate stage of the idea of Immutability or Destiny,—an idea suggested partly by the study of the invariable order of Nature, and partly by the irresistible domination of one great temporal power, such as the iron empire of Rome.[63] Historically, indeed, Monotheism is said to have spread in Europe through the Jews, who derived ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... The immutability of the constitution of France is a necessary consequence of the laws of that country. To begin with the most important of all the laws, that which decides the order of succession to the throne; what can be more immutable in its principle than a political order founded upon the natural succession ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... N. stability; immutability &c adj.; unchangeability, &c adj.; unchangeableness^; constancy; stable equilibrium, immobility, soundness, vitality, stabiliment^, stiffness, ankylosis^, solidity, aplomb. establishment, fixture; rock, pillar, tower, foundation, leopard's spots, Ethiopia's skin. permanence &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... impair the right itself, is at variance with sound theory. Between the effect of usage on rights, and on the exercise of rights, the law draws no precise distinction. A right derived from custom acquires no immutability or immunity from the fact that the practices out of which it grew were ancient and barbarous. We may therefore ascribe the dictum in question to the influence of preconceptions, and turn for the true theory of the law to an opinion ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... human energy; greater than the palpitating earth and the things growing thereon. Oh! I could weep at being left by the wayside; left with the grass and the clouds and a few dumb animals. True, I feel at home in the society of these symbols of life's immutability. In the procession I should feel the crushing feet, the clashing discords, the ruthless hands and stifling breath. I could not hear the rhythm ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... of nature, as we have shown, extend over infinity, and are conceived by us as, after a fashion, eternal, and nature works in accordance with them in a fixed and immutable order; therefore, such laws indicate to us in a certain degree the infinity, the eternity, and the immutability of God. ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part II] • Benedict de Spinoza
... words reflection, mind, and spirit in so indefinite a way, that they have confused his philosophy: thus by some ambiguous expressions, our great metaphysician has been made to establish doctrines fatal to the immutability of moral distinctions. Even the eagle-eye of the intellectual Newton grew dim in the obscurity of the language of Locke. We are astonished to discover that two such intellects should not comprehend the same ideas; for Newton wrote to Locke, "I beg your ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... tumbling and raging on from ledge to ledge in quivering cataracts of foam, then suddenly struck rigid by a power so instantaneous in its action that even the froth and fleeting wreaths of spray have stiffened to the immutability of sculpture. Unless you had seen it, it would be almost impossible to conceive the strangeness of the contrast between the actual tranquillity of these silent crystal rivers and the violent descending energy impressed ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... a rapturous declaration of the immutability of God's law, and the eternal destinies of man. The world was full of change, but man, who seemed to change most, changed least. The stars that hung above had seen the beginning and the end of ages. Before ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... Chaldæan shepherds watched it on their plains, it came up regularly, as it now does, in the morning, like a god, and again sank, like a king retiring, in the west, to return again in due time in the same array of majesty. We worship Immutability. It was that steadfast, immutable character of the Sun that the men of Baalbec worshipped. His light-giving and life-giving powers were secondary attributes. The one grand idea that compelled worship was the characteristic of God which ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... these destinies also must of necessity be immutable. Accordingly, the world is ruled for the best if this unity abiding in the Divine mind puts forth an inflexible order of causes. And this order, by its intrinsic immutability, restricts things mutable which otherwise would ebb and flow at random. And so it happens that, although to you, who are not altogether capable of understanding this order, all things seem confused and disordered, nevertheless ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... In the scholastic discussions of the 12th century the question came to the front again, for the doctrine as framed by Alcuin was not universally accepted. Thus both Abelard and Peter Lombard, in the interest of the immutability of the divine substance (holding that God could not "become', anything), gravitated towards a Nestorian position. The great opponent of their Christology, which was known as Nihilianism, was the German scholar Gerhoch, who, for his bold assertion of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... valley into the pass. We traveled a full mile along it before darkness forced us to make camp. The gorge was narrow. The far walls but a hundred feet away; but we had no quarrel with them for their neighborliness, no! Their solidity, their immutability, ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... personation whereto we are all liable, whether authors or not, is the having imputed to us divers forged or garbled sentiments, even in the immutability of print, I have now before me a Boston copy of my first Proverbial published by one Joseph Dowe in 1840, which, though stated to be "from the London edition," designedly omits all allusion to the Trinity, even my whole essay thereon, for Mr. Dowe ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and alchemists of old times. Their views appear foolish in the light of modern scientific knowledge, but they were not foolish in relation to what was known when they were entertained. Modern analysis goes far to demonstrate the immutability, and, consequently, the non-transmutability of the metals, though it is by no means so certain as many suppose that the present position of the metals in the list of elements is really correct. Certainly a chemist ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor |
