"Justifiable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... transpontine districts south of the Thames. It will be an interesting task for our Legislature to ascertain whether there is any actual law to account for the transfer, as it inevitably will have to do when the delicate choice is forced upon it between justifiable infanticide, wholesale Hospices des Enfants Trouves, and possibly some kind of Japanese "happy despatch" for high-minded infants who are superior to the slow poison administered by injudicious "farmers." At all events, one fact is certain, and ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... with a mass of brown hair under a felt traveling hat, took the corner seat at the man's right. That was all the detail of her appearance which the brief glance that John allowed himself revealed to him at the moment, notwithstanding the justifiable curiosity which he had with regard to the people with whom he was likely to come more or less in contact for a number of days. But though their faces, so far as he had seen them, were unfamiliar to him, their identity was made plain ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... horrors of this barbarous war against our brethren? My Lords, these enormities cry aloud for redress and punishment. But, my Lords, this barbarous measure has been defended, not only on the principles of policy and necessity but also on those of morality; "for it is perfectly justifiable," says Lord Suffolk, "to use all the means which God and nature have put into our hands." I am astonished!—I am shocked! to hear such principles confessed;—to hear them avowed in this House, or in this country. My Lords, I did not intend to encroach ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... England members of Congress. The temper of this Federalist majority may be seen in a succession of addresses and speeches in the Massachusetts legislature. On June 15, 1813, Josiah Quincy offered a resolution that "in a war like the present, waged without justifiable cause and prosecuted in a manner which indicates that conquest and ambition are its real motives, it is not becoming a moral and religious people to express any approbation of military or naval exploits which ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... seventeen men being killed in each army. Some writers who have not the slightest objection to war, very gravely express doubts as to whether the expedient of destroying the crops of the Indians was justifiable. It is generally treated by these men as if it was a wanton display of a vindictive spirit, when in reality it was dictated by the soundest policy; for when the Indians' harvests were destroyed, they were compelled to subsist their families altogether ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... The very justifiable surprise which Virchow's Munich address has excited in many circles is due only in part to his opposition to the theory of descent; for the rest, and in much greater part, it is due to the astounding arguments which ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... his forces in the presence of an enemy of twice his strength, Lee is not entitled to commendation. It is justifiable only—if at all—by the danger of the situation, which required a desperate remedy, and peculiarly by the success which attended it. Had it resulted disastrously, as it ought to have done, it would have been a serious blow to Lee's military prestige. The ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... given from the Jamieson-Brown MS. It was first printed by Scott, with the omission of the second stanza—perhaps justifiable—and a few minor changes. He notes that he had seen a copy printed on ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... however, he could not refuse to contribute to Colonel Fitz Gibbon's list; and it is recorded that when one of his sons called upon him for the amount which he had subscribed, he handed over the sum with justifiable petulance, saying: "There, go and make one great fool of yourself again."[85] Such of the rioters as were possessed of means contributed to the fund according to their respective ability, but the others were not allowed to bear ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Tyrol is like a well-filled bomb which needs only the application of a spark to burst and scatter confusion around it, and in the minds of individuals patriotism has increased to a fanaticism which deems even murder a justifiable means to rid Europe from the shameful yoke of the tyrant. If we cannot execute our plan, if we do not succeed in abducting Napoleon, perhaps the dagger of an assassin will he raised against him—an assassin who does not regard his deed as a crime, ...
— A Conspiracy of the Carbonari • Louise Muhlbach
... shall be on the continent as fast as conveyances can take me, therefore, should you entertain any romantic notions of calling me to an account for a course of proceeding I think perfectly and fully justifiable, you ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... away from you! put it away from you!" exclaimed Capitola earnestly; "suicide is never, never, never justifiable! God is the Lord of life and death! He is the only judge whether a mortal's sorrows are to be relieved by death, and when He does not Himself release you, He means that you shall live and endure! That proves that suicide is never right, let the Roman pagans have said and ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... regulations of Governor Phillip; that is to say, that their overplus grain and stock should be purchased from them at a fair market price. Being, however, well stocked with that article already, the lieutenant-governor did not think himself justifiable in putting the crown to so great an expense (nearly three thousand pounds sterling) ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... have affectionately underrated his snobbery, mentioning only the pardonable and indeed justifiable side of it; the love of fine names and distinguished associations and luxury and good manners.[2] You say repeatedly, and on certain planes, truly, that he was not bitter and did not use his tongue to wound people. But this is not true on the snobbish plane. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not 'abolished.' It dies out. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase 'a free State,' both as to its justifiable use at times by agitators, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the demands of the so-called anarchists for the abolition of the State out ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... cruelty might always be perpetrated on the right side, are conspicuously displayed. If Froude spoke of the Roman Catholic Church, he always seemed to fancy himself back in the sixteenth century, when the murder of Protestants was regarded at the Vatican as justifiable. The Irish rebellion of 1798 was led by Protestants, like Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and free thinkers, like Wolfe Tone. But for the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam, the Catholics would have taken no part in it, and it would not have been more dangerous than the rebellion of ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... action was hardly justifiable, perhaps, but I thought it better that the police shouldn't get on the track of matters that haven't much bearing on Clarke's death. I found two things, and they're both of interest to us. We'll take ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... had kept her mother working like a galley-slave, so Rose told Jack, with the familiarity that was now justifiable in one who was almost of the family, and that Eddy had told her, with much disgust of demeanor, that its financing had eaten pretty deeply into his mother's shrunken means. Rose made no open denunciation; she, ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... A.M.), and that for any reason, such as personal feeling against you, or that I lost my way, or took the wrong road, or lingered on the march, making but five miles in seven hours, it must be admitted that you were justifiable in any, even the most extreme judgment against me; and I must confess that your moderation was greater than mine would likely have been, had our positions been reversed. I do not flinch from that conclusion, at all; ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... enquiry should satisfy us that to our predecessors we are indebted for much of what we thought most our own, and that their errors were not wilful extravagances or the ravings of insanity, but simply hypotheses, justifiable as such at the time when they were propounded, but which a fuller experience has proved to be inadequate. It is only by the successive testing of hypotheses and rejection of the false that truth is at last elicited. After all, what we call truth ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... was the writer of Darton's "Peter Parley series." George Mogridge wrote several tales under the name of Peter Parley. How far such "false pretences" are justifiable, public ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... to the architrave. Thus treated, it bears a certain family likeness to the Doric column; and one understands how Jomard and Champollion, in the first ardour of discovery, were tempted to give it the scarcely justifiable ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... loved peace. He hated to thwart the boy, because he knew that it would arouse the ire of the mother, whose love had run away with her commonsense. Love is beautiful—soft, yielding, gentle love—but the common law of England upholds wife-beating as being justifiable ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... well-informed and clever writer like the late Harold Frederic in the hands of Christian Scientists (a sort of sealing with his blood of the contemptuous disbelief in and dislike of doctors he had bitterly expressed in his books), the scathing and quite justifiable exposure of medical practice in the novel by Mr. Maarten Maartens entitled The New Religion: all these trouble the doctor very little, and are in any case well set off by the popularity of Sir Luke Fildes' famous picture, ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... the problems involved in such a career as Smith's, we must be struck by the necessity for able and unprejudiced research into the laws which govern apparent marvels. Notwithstanding the very natural and sometimes justifiable aspersions which have been cast upon the work of the Society for Psychical Research, it does appear that the disinterested service rendered by its more distinguished members is the only attempt hitherto made to aid people of the so-called "mediumistic" temperament to understand rather than ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... all this was that we all felt ourselves well led, and had the most absolute confidence in our chief, and I myself was particularly fond of him. It really was a fine sight both from the picturesque point of view and from that of a justifiable national pride, when our twenty white-sailed ships manoeuvred all together, under the admiral's signal, on the blue Mediterranean waters, with no sound to break the silence except the shrill voices of the officers ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... done preyed on his mind, I cannot say; but a high fever coming on, he used to rave about the savages, and the way he had blown them up. At the moment he committed the deed I daresay he had persuaded himself that he was only performing a justifiable act of vengeance. The day before we entered the harbour to which we were bound he died, and poor Green did not long survive him, so that I alone was left of all the crew of the ...
— Tales of the Sea - And of our Jack Tars • W.H.G. Kingston
... Phoebe Cary's on "Maud Muller" not justifiable; Grace Greenwood on Mrs. Sigourney IX. 186 Lilian Whiting's on Kingsley's ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... theory of evolution is contradicted as we believe by the data of experimental science, by the history of civilization, by the facts especially of religion, more especially of Christianity, then the question is justifiable: Why do scientists uphold the evolutionary theory in some form or other, in spite of such absence of proof and such insufficiency ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... in America justified in being excited about our action. It would be erroneous to suppose that the step made a particularly deep impression abroad. It is regarded as what it is—justifiable defensive action in the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, and men were not to learn war any more. And this was on the eve of the Crimea—the most ruinous, the most cruel, and the least justifiable of all campaigns. In one corner of the world or another, the war-drum has throbbed almost without intermission ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... motive from which it springs. In Champlain's case patriotism and piety were the groundwork of a conspicuous and long-tested courage. The patriotism which exacted such sacrifices was not one which sought to define itself even in the form of a justifiable digression from the recital of events. But we may be sure that Champlain at the time he left Port Royal had made up his mind that the Spaniards, the English, and the Dutch were not to parcel out the seaboard of North America to the exclusion ...
— The Founder of New France - A Chronicle of Champlain • Charles W. Colby
... order there still was in the province. To him fell the task of keeping order, of preventing the insurgent visiting upon the Spaniard his own terrible wrongs, of preventing the taking of that revenge which to his wild nature seemed eminently justifiable, the preserving of the rights of property, of keeping unharmed the people who had been pacific, and yet of gradually giving over the administration of the island to the people who had fought for its freedom, just as fast as, and no faster than, they proved that they could ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... assimilation are presumptive; but when we couple the absence of any corresponding difficulty in digesting the increased supply of food, with the increase before alluded to in the weight of the body, their assumption becomes fully justifiable. It is these combined influences that make the electric bath so valuable a remedy in ...
— The Electric Bath • George M. Schweig
... prevailing uneasiness was compounded of all the secret fear which sincerity always causes, of all the distress of the bribe-taking deputies who felt that they were rolling into an abyss, and also of the embarrassment which the others felt at thought of the more or less justifiable compromises of politics. Something like relief, therefore, came when Monferrand started with the most emphatic denials, protesting in the name of his outraged honour, and dealing blow after blow on the tribune with one hand, while with the other he smote his chest. Short and thick-set, with his ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... themselves their almoners are. Only to-day my volunteer secretary told me that he honestly expected to meet "a bearded old fogey in spectacles," not a man who can shoot his own dinner from the wing or who enjoys the justifiable pleasures of life. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... love was not strong enough to cast out fear! She was justifiable if she hesitated to entrust herself and her happiness to the keeping of one she had known but two months. It was prudent—not false—in her to weigh, to the finest grain, the evidence furnished by her brother ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... laid her hand in his with an acceptance as simple as if he had been her own brother. It was a very pretty little hand, in which its owner felt a justifiable pride, and it lay like a white snowflake in the strong brown palm ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... had been on the Stock Exchange of the city for many years and had amassed enormous wealth, without exceeding the limits of what was generally considered justifiable, or at any rate, permissible dealing; but at length on several occasions he had become aware of a desire to make money by fraudulent representations, and had actually dealt with two or three sums in a way which had made him rather uncomfortable. He had unfortunately made light ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... that I am taking exceptions to the opinions advanced in this case, neither is it because I delight in criticizing, differing from or finding fault with authority; I have a more laudable reason—one that I consider humane and justifiable—namely, to point out to the few who happen to read this book, a safe and life-preserving plan of treating one of the most talked about, and (because of bad—decidedly bad—treatment) one of the most fatal maladies of this age. To do this it is necessary to point out and teach these few how ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... Duchess of Sutherland and her tenants, and forming a judgment on it very unlike the decision of political economists in our own country, who have not hesitated to characterize her great and singularly harsh experiment, whose worst effects we are but beginning to see, as at once justifiable in itself and happy in its results. It is curious to observe how deeds done as if in darkness and a corner, are beginning, after the lapse of nearly thirty years, to be proclaimed on the house-tops. The experiment of the ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... clear recognition of the fact that it is rebellion, and nothing less. To say, or admit, this is not necessarily to condemn it; for there are few persons to-day, I suppose, who would contend that rebellion is never justifiable. All it asserts is that passive resistance has to be judged by the same measures and according to the same standards as any other kind of revolt against constituted political authority. It is all the more needful to make ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... Miss Cobbe with a not unnatural impatience wrote to him and others saying that "the supporters of vivisection having refused to accept a reasonable compromise or to permit any line to be drawn between morally justifiable painless experiments and those which are heinously cruel and involve the torture of the most sensitive animals" she intended to endeavour to induce the Society "to condemn the practice altogether ...
— Great Testimony - against scientific cruelty • Stephen Coleridge
... result of this panic, cannot be charged to anything unfair or dishonourable that you have done. Bob, oh, Bob, answer! Answer no, or my heart will break; or if, Bob, you have made a mistake, if you have done that which in your great desire to aid me and my father seemed justifiable, but which you now see was wrong, tell it to me, Bob dear, and together we will try to undo it. We will try to find a way to atone. We will give the millions to the last, last penny to those upon whom you have brought misery. Father's loss will not matter. Together we will go ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... but a small part of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of slavery is still onward, and we give it the aid of our prayers and all justifiable means in our power, we must leave the progress as well as the result in His hands, who sees the end and who chooses to work by slow things, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. The abolitionist must know this, and must see that he has ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... he rose and groped for his tobacco. A precious lot of good that would do him! It would have been a pity, too, because murder, even such justifiable murder, had not yet received the sanction of society as represented in the New York Department of Police. He paced the floor restlessly and brought up before his desk, where the janitor of the building had ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... than he was again thrown into prison. He appealed vehemently against this arrest to the English Consul, and also to the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg, Lord Levison Gower; but they both declined interfering, as they considered his arrest legal and justifiable. On his release he came to Liverpool, whence he went to Dublin, where he met his future wife, Miss Neville, a native of Newry. Having become possessed of a legacy of 400 pounds, left him by his aunt, Mrs. Daw, ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... so atrocious to persecute a man who has rendered such services to the cause of liberty. His conduct has been so open and his accounts so clear, that he is perfectly justifiable in avoiding the last outrages of envy and malice. Just as Aristides and inflexible as Cato, he is indebted to his virtues for his enemies. Let them satiate their fury upon me. I defy their power, and devote myself to death. He ought to save ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... easy to follow the process of reasoning by which the CHANCELLOR convinced himself that the Excess Profits Tax, which last year he described as a great deterrent to enterprise and industry, only, justifiable as "a temporary measure," should now be not merely continued but increased ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 28, 1920 • Various
... amount of the property of the Hawkins heirs in the Knobs, some seventy-five thousand acres Mr. Buckstone said. But Mr. Washington Hawkins (one of the heirs) objected. He was, indeed, very reluctant to sell any part of the land at any price; and indeed—this reluctance was justifiable when one considers how constantly and how greatly the property ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... purely instinctive and malignant criminal; indeed it is a weakness in the consistency of the play. On two occasions Iago states explicitly that Othello is more than suspected of having committed adultery with his wife, Emilia, and that therefore he has a strong and justifiable motive for being revenged on the Moor. The thought of it he describes as "gnawing his inwards." Emilia's conversation with Desdemona in the last act lends some colour to the correctness of Iago's belief. If this belief be well-founded it must greatly modify ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... to send us to Uncle Alec and Aunt Janet down on the homestead; and our housekeeper, who belonged to the Island and was now returning to it, took charge of us on the journey. I fear she had an anxious trip of it, poor woman! She was constantly in a quite justifiable terror lest we should be lost or killed; she must have felt great relief when she reached Charlottetown and handed us over to the keeping of Uncle Alec. Indeed, she said ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... fussy about such a traveller, though robbers undoubtedly were to be feared, even in the eighteenth century,[405] and though inns were undoubtedly dirty. A repugnance to dirt and discomfort is justifiable enough, but there is something especially peevish in the tone of many Georgian travellers. Sam Sharp's Letters from Italy breathe only sorrow, disillusion and indignation. Italian beds and vermin, Italian post-boys and their sorry nags ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... however, demands an acknowledgment that I do not think the claim of the governor to a right of nomination well founded. Yet it is always justifiable to reason from the practice of a government, till its propriety has been constitutionally questioned. And independent of this claim, when we take into view the other considerations, and pursue them ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... is in a tighter place than any man would care for. I brought him up to Sheriff Gillelands' this afternoon. Perhaps he can make it out a case of 'justifiable homicide'—hope he can. He's about as likely a young man as I ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... America and England are not quite identical and I believe it to be a justifiable statement that British industry is better able to stand so high a tax than American industry, for reasons inherent in the ...
— Government Ownership of Railroads, and War Taxation • Otto H. Kahn
... seven years (i.e., three years mental retardation) or less would, for the present, be given the benefit of the doubt, and classed among the possibly normal. Such a procedure, in dealing with intelligence, is necessary and justifiable, but its adoption must not blind students, as it often does, to the fact that the distinction made is an arbitrary one, and that there is no more a hard and fast line of demarcation between imbeciles and normals than there is between "rich men" and ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... the most part, justifiable ones were caused by an immoral request being made of friends, to pander to a man's unholy desires or to assist him in inflicting a wrong. A refusal, though perfectly right, is attacked by those to whom they refuse compliance as a violation of the laws of friendship. ...
— Treatises on Friendship and Old Age • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... devious transactions in the Orient, and came to grief in Paris, much as Jansoulet did. He survived the Empire, and his relatives are said to have been incensed at the treatment given him in the novel, an attitude on their part which is explicable but scarcely justifiable, since Daudet's sympathy for his hero could not well have been greater, and since the adventurer had already attained a notoriety that was not likely to be completely forgotten. Whether Daudet was as ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... conclusion is not in itself highly improbable, but certainly premature, as the facts upon which it is built are so scanty and doubtful as to authorize no such structure. On an island of the vast size of Borneo, races radically distinct might exist; and at any rate, the opposite conclusion is hardly justifiable, from the specimens of language or the physical appearance of the tribes of the southern portion of the country. We have Malay authority for believing that there are many large tribes in the interior, differing ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... where economic conditions will be such that every woman can support a dozen children in comfort if she wants to, the volitional limitation of offspring will be completely justifiable. For even parents in the most comfortable circumstances should have the right to determine how many children they want. Of all things in the world this is a matter for the individual and not for ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... therein Impeaching, Arraigning, condemning, and Executing many pretended notorious Enemies, to the publick Peace; when the Lawes in being, and the Ordinary Courts of Justice could not reach them: By strange and unknown practises in this Nation, and not at all Justifiable by any known Lawes and Statutes, But by certain diabolical principles of late distilled into some person of the Army, and which he would entitle to the whole, who (abating some of their Commanders, that ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn
... against his oppressors. This took place at 12 o'clock. Next evening an inquest was held. Of thirteen jurors, summoned by the coroner, nine said it was murder; two said it was manslaughter, and two said it was JUSTIFIABLE! He was bound over to court, tried, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... not expect that any one will say that this course was justified or justifiable; but, if anything can excuse it, the terrible difficulty of our position ought to be considered in mitigation, if not excuse. Pressed upon from without, and wounded by blows dealt in the dark from within; ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... her questions as though she was slashing his face. He became dead-white and grimly civil, answering every question as though it was the sanest, most justifiable inquiry. ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... while to obtain the concession, but still seemed to think that by extending the time, we should permit the transportation of a very large number of slaves, of whom many might be destroyed by ill-treatment, and that it was hardly justifiable with a view to a distant advantage, to sacrifice immediately and certainly a ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... constitution and the general government protect us in maintaining it. The right of our servants to leave us at pleasure, which could not of course be done without violence, on both sides, implies the right of insurrection. It is impossible to define the cases in which insurrection is justifiable, but the general rule is that it is wrong. Government is a divine ordinance; men cannot capriciously overthrow or change it, at every turn of affairs which proves burdensome or even oppressive. God is jealous ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... not sufficient to say, "The right of property is demonstrated by the existence of property; the function of the civil law is purely declaratory." To say that, is to confess that there is no reply to those who question the legitimacy of the fact itself. Every right must be justifiable in itself, or by some antecedent right; property is no exception. For this reason, M. Cousin has sought to base it upon the SANCTITY of the human personality, and the act by which the will assimilates ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... remained firm; and Herder went away, indignant that one to whom he had offered to be reconciled—very much against his own feelings—should have refused to join what, in his smaller knowledge of the gospel plan, he considered right and justifiable. Herder had become a Protestant, and knew enough about the truth to be aware that Christians are bound to forgive their enemies. He also was convinced that the saints cannot hear prayer, that purgatory is a fiction, and that confession should be made to God and ...
— The Woodcutter of Gutech • W.H.G. Kingston
... event, {7} considers the Kiratas (Ciratas) in the year 1769 as being an independent nation. Now, although this would not appear to be strictly exact, as the Kirats had then been long subject to Rajput princes; yet the Father is abundantly justifiable in what he has advanced; for the Kirats formed the principal strength of these Rajput chiefs, their hereditary chief held the second office in the state, (Chautariya,) and the Rajputs, who were united with them, did not ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... without that, despise her for marrying Grandcourt? His possible judgment of her actions was telling on her as importunately as Klesmer's judgment of her powers; but she found larger room for resistance to a disapproval of her marriage, because it is easier to make our conduct seem justifiable to ourselves than to make our ability strike others. "How can I help it?" is not our favorite apology for incompetency. But Gwendolen felt some ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... Come back!" shouted Gwyn; and the dog obeyed at once, but muttering protests the while, as if not considering such an interruption justifiable. ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn
... surprise of Captain Garcao—now a prisoner of war—I offered to release him and his vessel on condition of his carrying sealed letters to the Governor and Junta in the city—a proposition gladly accepted. Previous to his departure—by a fiction held justifiable in war, and, indeed, necessary under our peculiar circumstances, as having only a single ship to reduce a province—he was duly impressed by the relation of an imaginary number of vessels of war in the offing, accompanied by transports filled with troops, which the superior ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... the Rescue Expedition now becomes confused. It appears that Widgery was extremely indignant to find Mrs. Milton left about upon the Fareham platform. The day had irritated him somehow, though he had started with the noblest intentions, and he seemed glad to find an outlet for justifiable indignation. "He's such a spasmodic creature," said Widgery. "Rushing off! And I suppose we're to wait here until he comes back! It's likely. He's so egotistical, is Dangle. Always wants to mismanage ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... life,—no; but I risked the count's. There was one moment when my hand was on my trigger, and my soul very near the sin of justifiable homicide. But my tale is done. The count is now on the river, and will soon be on the salt seas, though not bound to Norway, as I had first intended. I could not inflict that frigid voyage on his sister. So the men have orders to cruise about for six days, keeping aloof from shore, and they ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with justifiable pride that the native of Hingham looks back through the two and one-half centuries of ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 4 • Various
... did his utmost not to believe these things. They contradicted his habitual world. They produced horrible strains in his mind. They might, he hoped, be misreported so as to seem more violent or less justifiable than they were. They might be the acts of stray criminals, and quite disconnected from the normal operations of the war. Here and there some weak-minded officer may have sought to make himself terrible.... And as for the bombardment of cathedrals ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... lost or not lost. Once stranded, you have to do your best by her. She may be saved by your efforts, by your resource and fortitude bearing up against the heavy weight of guilt and failure. And there are justifiable strandings in fogs, on uncharted seas, on dangerous shores, through treacherous tides. But, saved or not saved, there remains with her commander a distinct sense of loss, a flavour in the mouth of the real, abiding danger that lurks in all the forms of human existence. It is an ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... you of all its wonders,[1] but I would like to give you such an exalted idea of its importance that you would look upon it with reverence and take a justifiable pride in keeping it in perfect working order. I would like to make you feel your personal responsibility in ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... the glories of this life, and some Sigh for the Prophet's Paradise to come: Ah, take the cash and let the credit go, Nor heed the rumble of a distant drum. Justifiable Homicide ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... better, in fact, than he had expected, for he was relieved from the strain of "dancing attendance" on his betrothed—a thing which he, even more than most men, found silly. In the chivalrous days of tournaments, troubadours and crusades this romantic exercise of seeming enslaved was, he held, justifiable, even interesting. But in modern life it had ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... the point is reached at which providing for this through traffic in addition to the local freight entails additions to the permanent plant and involves costs that exceed the return from the through business, is it justifiable, in the interest of social efficiency, to advance such charges. In preventing such an advance under other conditions a government helps to secure an approach to a natural economy and a ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark
... it's a rifle. If I only get a sight at Grinstuns, I'll commit justifiable homicide. Then I wish the Squire would punish me by sending me down here ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... St. Augustine himself, who at one period of his life was a diligent student of Plotinus. It would be hardly justifiable to claim St. Augustine as a mystic, since there are important parts of his teaching which have no affinity to Mysticism; but it touched him on one side, and he remained half a Platonist. His natural sympathy with ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge
... anxiously effaced this record of their ancestors' less successful invasions. A few still remain, notwithstanding the pains taken by the Burgundians for ages (all who passed that way removing a bone to their own country), and the less justifiable larcenies of the Swiss postilions, who carried them off to sell for knife-handles; a purpose for which the whiteness imbibed by the bleaching of years had rendered them in great request. Of these relics I ventured to bring away as much as may have made a quarter ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... made his acquaintance; I took him on his own explicit terms; and when I learned details of his life, they were, by the nature of the case and my own PARTI-PRIS, read even with a certain violence in terms of his writings. There could scarce be a perversion more justifiable than that; yet it was still a perversion. The study indeed, raised so much ire in the breast of Dr. Japp (H. A. Page), Thoreau's sincere and learned disciple, that had either of us been men, I please myself with thinking, of less temper and justice, the difference might have made ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... read in some treatise on physiology that the hymen in a virgin is the great obstacle to be overcome. He is apt to conclude that this is all, that some force will be needed to break it down, and that therefore an amount of urgency even to the degree of inflicting considerable pain is justifiable. This is usually wrong. It rarely constitutes any obstruction, and, even when its rupturing may be necessary, it alone seldom ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... something quite just about the untidiness of her hair, follow it up by a generalisation on her unworthiness, and then bang the door, but not too loudly, as if he had good-humouredly administered a sharp rap over the knuckles to a really justifiable piece ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... Mrs. Belgrave and Mrs. Woolridge, since the trouble in the Cyprus bay, and after all that has been said since that event, would not permit their sons to go to sea again in the Maud; and I must say that their prudence is perfectly justifiable." ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... grievances which are used, by means of blue books, to stir up and excite the altruistic and humane feelings of the British public are for the most part imaginary, and that even if they were perfectly genuine, they nevertheless afford no ground for a justifiable interference in the internal affairs of the Republic. It is therefore necessary to have recourse to ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz
... subscribers as well. If other men's bodies are my sensations, may not other men's minds be my imaginings? But doubts may be felt also by those who are willing to admit a real external world. How do we know that our inference to the existence of other minds is a justifiable inference? Can there be such a thing as verification in ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... of reasoning which Mr. Hill took he was justifiable in feeling as he did. Everything about the little farmhouse reminded him of the woman he had loved. He never came to the house without a pang of painful loneliness at her absence. He felt himself incapable of caring for the children. She had always done that, and he did not ...
— The Hero of Hill House • Mable Hale
... never does wrong, even in defence of that which is inherently his due, without the secret consciousness that "evil may not be done, that good may come of it"; and Ithuel had a certain inward monitor to remind him that, much as he had in the way of justifiable complaint, he had carried the war into ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... such an appropriate coat of arms: Exitus Acta Probat, "The end justifies the means." Here we have a man whose noble life of self-sacrifice and true devotion to his country accomplished the "greatest end by the most justifiable means." He had an Alpine grandeur of mind that towered far above the sordid lowlands of selfish ambitions to those sublime heights of whole-souled devotion to public duty and incorruptible integrity, where the great soul of the man shone forth like the lovely Pleiades on a ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... attainder and corruption of blood ever a proper punishment?" "Ought the public expenses to be defrayed by levying the amount directly upon the people, or is it expedient to contract national debt for that purpose?" "Was the execution of Charles I. justifiable?" "Should the slave-trade be abolished?" In the next session, previous to his call to the Bar, he spoke in the debates of which these were the theses:—"Has the belief in a future state been of advantage to mankind, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... public proceeding had been the inquest of Deede Dawson, and that the coroner, at the request of the police eagerly searching for Walter Dunsmore, had made as brief and formal as possible. Under his direction the jury had returned a verdict of "justifiable homicide," and Ella's illness had had at least one good result of making it impossible for her to attend to ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... of General Bilassa's army," returned William Jarvey. "They were probably some detachment out for whatever they could lay their hands on," and he chuckled coarsely. Evidently he considered that such guerrilla warfare under certain circumstances was perfectly justifiable. ...
— Dave Porter and His Double - The Disapperarance of the Basswood Fortune • Edward Stratemeyer
... remain strictly within the constitutional limitations of his authority; and whenever the boundary became indistinct, or when the dangers of the situation forced him to cross it, he was equally careful to mark his acts as exceptional measures, justifiable only by the imperative necessities of the civil war, so that they might not pass into history as precedents for similar acts in time of peace. It is an unquestionable fact that during the reconstruction period which followed the war, more things were done capable of serving as ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... for silence, reasons which we thought quite justifiable. But they don't hold good if we are to be brought into conflict with the police. Mr. Duclos told me this morning that if we were driven to speak we must do so with complete honesty and without quibble. What ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... Shepherd now were such as rendered him abundantly justifiable in entering into the married state. On the 28th April 1820, he espoused Miss Margaret Phillips, the youngest daughter of Mr Phillips, late of Longbridgemoor, in Annandale. By this union he became brother-in-law ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... the unsatisfactory state of affairs we have experienced? The answer is a more practical system of working from the inception. Although it may evoke some difference of opinion I consider it both justifiable and desirable that the State should take some oversight of mining matters, at all events in the case of public Companies. It would be a salutary rule that the promoters of any mining undertaking should, before they are allowed to place it on the market, obtain and pay for the services ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... had all been killed was justifiable even though, fortunately for me, it was an erroneous one. So I am glad for other motives than those of mere courtesy to be able here ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... for those already resident and duly registered. Two other safeguards, often proposed, were deliberately omitted from the bill. There was no provision for a state endowment of catholic priests, or for a veto of the crown on the appointment of catholic bishops. These omissions, whether justifiable or not, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... as was presented by a Romfrey mildly accounting for events and smoothing them under the infliction of an offence, he could not but feel that Nevil had challenged him: such was the reading of it; and he waited for some justifiable excitement to fetch him out of the magnanimous mood, rather in the image of an angler, it must ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his notions of honesty and of truth are lax. But then, from bitter experience, he assumes that the stranger will try to cheat him, and it is not surprising that he should consider a certain amount of finesse justifiable. He is comparatively free from that drunkenness which is the besetting vice of the low-class ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... investigate; that is, the advance made in the arts of living among these people. This is one of the principal objects of our present research. We are here slightly departing from the prehistoric field, and entering the domain of history. But the departure is justifiable, as it serves to light up an extensive field, that is, the manner of life among the civilized nations just before the coming of the Spaniards. And first we will examine their customs in regard to property. We have in a former chapter reverted to the ...
— The Prehistoric World - Vanished Races • E. A. Allen
... for a reasonable cause. If the punishment is excessive, or the cause not sufficient to justify it, he is answerable; and the jury are to determine, by their verdict in each case, whether, under all the circumstances, the punishment was moderate, and for a justifiable cause. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... relied upon the support of the Federalists, he was defeated by Hamilton, who made no secret of his opposition. Smarting under the failure of his intrigue, Burr determined to challenge the honest man who stood in his way to power. He had no ground of personal offence bringing Hamilton within any justifiable pretensions even of the lax code of the duellist. The expressions which he called upon him to avow or disavow, were vague, and were based upon the report of a person who specified neither time, place, nor the words. It was a loose matter of hearsay which was alleged—evidently ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... material sense they are irreparable—according to my ideas, at least. This career has been fortunate. I have reached the highest rank that a soldier can attain to-day. But my rapid promotion, however justifiable it may be, has none the less awakened jealousy. The nature of my services being above all possibility of suspicion, calumny has sought another quarter at which to strike, and at this moment it is ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... I were you," I added, anxious to have him renew his efforts; for an idea had just flashed across my mind, which, although it involved a breach of faith on my part, I nevertheless believed to be good and justifiable, since it might relieve ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... complaining of the British Association for refusing to examine the production. I suppose that the author, finding his first proof wrong, invented the second, of which the Association never had the offer; and, feeling sure that they would have equally refused to examine the second, thought it justifiable to {13} present that second as the one which they had refused. Mr. Upton has discovered that the common way of finding the circumference is wrong, would set it right if he had leisure, and, in the mean time, has solved the problem of the ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... virtue as a calculation of pleasure, an opinion which he afterwards repudiates in the Phaedo. What then is his meaning? His meaning we shall be able to illustrate best by parallel notions, which, whether justifiable by logic or not, have always existed among mankind. We must remind the reader that Socrates himself implies that he will be understood or ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... the problem of the relation between the material and the mental worlds by asserting their thoroughgoing correspondence and substantial identity, was philosophically justifiable and important, though many evident objections obtrude themselves upon us. The required assumption, that there is a mental event corresponding to every bodily one, and vice versa, meets with involuntary and easily supported opposition, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... taught to revere as his Guide and Instructor; the perversion of Temper before him leads to a corruption of his own, and when that is depraved, vice quickly becomes habitual, and, though timely Severity may sometimes be necessary & justifiable, surely a peevish harassing System of Torment is by no means commendable, & when that is interrupted by ridiculous Indulgence, the only purpose answered is to soften the feelings for a moment which are soon after to be doubly ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... wholly insufficient; and secondly, that no suggestion respecting the causes of transmutation assumed, which had been made, was in any way adequate to explain the phenomena. Looking back at the state of knowledge at that time, I really do not see that any other conclusion was justifiable. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... fascinating about him which even Stephen must confess was compelling. What if she had been captivated by him, by his engaging personal qualities, by his prepossessing appearance, by his habit of gentle speech, by his dignity and his ease of manner! His irritation was justifiable. ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... as a supposed immediate means of relief, that my pamphlet against the Earl and the Bishop was printed; and I thought the revenge more than justifiable: it was a necessary vindication of my own honour and claims. I was indeed forty pounds in debt: twenty to Belmont; and twenty more to I knew not whom: though I suspected, and partly hoped partly feared, it was Olivia. I hoped it, because it might be affection. ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft |
