"Justify" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stations kept up for the protection of our foreign commerce exclusively, together with the Mediterranean, Levant, and Spanish coast naval expenditure, to no inconsiderable extent for the same object, will sufficiently justify this estimate. We have apportioned one million of the naval and ordnance estimates for colonial purposes; one million more may be safely placed to the account of the slave trade; the remainder, L.3,175,000, is certainly an ample allowance ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... mistake to say—though this also has been said—that 'Paul's problem was not that of the possibility of forgiveness; it was the Jewish law, the Old Testament dispensation: how to justify his breach with it, how to demonstrate that the old order had been annulled and a new order inaugurated.' There is a false contrast in all such propositions. Paul's problem was that of the Jewish law, and it was also that of the possibility ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... triumphant day when probably he felt that his reward had come to him after the long and faithful service of years. Death stills disappointment as well as rage, and Falieri is said to have acknowledged the justice of his sentence. He had never made any attempt to justify or defend himself, but frankly and at once avowed his guilt and made no attempt to escape from its penalties. His body was conveyed privately to the Church of St. Giovanni and St. Paolo, the great "Zanipolo"—with which all visitors to Venice are familiar—and was buried in secrecy and silence ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of Poetry Humility of the Amiable Temper in Argument Patriarchal Government Callous self-conceit A Librarian Trimming Death Love an Act of the Will Wedded Union Difference between Hobbes and Spinosa The End may justify the Means Negative Thought Man's return to Heaven Young Prodigies Welch names German Language The Universe Harberous An Admonition To Thee Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry Definition of Miracle Death, and grounds of belief in a Future State Hatred of Injustice Religion The Apostles' Creed ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... in the higher country. Whether the funny little narrow-gauge railroad exists for Nairobi, or Nairobi for the railroad, it would be difficult to say. Between Mombasa and this interior placed-to-order town, certainly, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, either in passengers or freight, to justify building the line. That distance is, if I remember it correctly, about three hundred and twenty miles. A dozen or so names of stations appear on the map. These are water tanks, telegraph stations, or small groups of tents in which dwell ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... which time did not justify. Just as the dawn had put new life into us, so it had steeled the hearts of this derelict crew and nerved it for any desperate act. For long we watched the rogues rowing hither, thither; now in the island's ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... request that you will inform Mr. Perry from me, that I wonder he should permit such an abuse of my name in his paper; I say an abuse, because my absence, at least, demands some respect, and my presence and positive sanction could alone justify him in such a proceeding, even were the lines mine; and if false, there are no words for him. I repeat to you that the original was burnt before you on your assurance, and there never was a copy, nor even a verbal repetition,—very much to the discomfort of some zealous ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... consequences of his acts; nor did he care to become a martyr for the sake of science, his submission to the Inquisition having probably saved him from a fate similar to what befell Bruno. Though it would be impossible to justify Galileo's want of faith in his dealings with the Inquisition, yet one cannot help sympathising deeply with the aged philosopher, who, in this painful episode of his life, was compelled to go through the form ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... reference to the above poems, justify calling Keats "the apostle of the beautiful," in both thought and language. Give examples of his felicitous use of words and phrases. Show by illustrations his mastery in the use of the concrete. To what special senses do his images appeal? Was he at all affected by the new human movement? ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... that the task of practical acquisition is, if not impossible, extremely difficult, 'the work of a lifetime,' as the objectors say, do the results justify the ...
— The Roman Pronunciation of Latin • Frances E. Lord
... exceptional case. You might do that, Evelyn, for the sake of the Society. The people over here don't know what a ruffian he is, and how he is beyond the ordinary reach of the law, or how the poor people have groaned under his iniquities. Don't seek to justify me; I shall be beyond the reach of excuse or execration by that time; but you might break the shock, don't you see?—you might explain a little—you might intimate to our friends who have joined us here ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... entered it with the intention of exposing it, had spent ten years in his researches, and now stepped forward with his results. The office of a spy is not usually clean or wholesome, but occasionally such services are valuable, and in some cases there may be certain ends which justify the use of means which would in other cases be questionable, so that until we can prove the contrary, it will be reasonable to accept the solemn declaration of this witness that he acted with a good intention, and that what he did was in ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... Leutasch and Scharnitz by Ney in 1805; finally, the capture of a post not even fortified, but used as a great depot of provisions and munitions much needed by the enemy;—such are the enterprises which will justify the risks to which a detachment engaging ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini
... Marquis Wellesley, as well as by Canning and other ministers, on the simple ground of military necessity. Napoleon himself never ceased to denounce it as an international outrage of the highest enormity. This did not prevent his doing his best to justify it and to imitate it by sending Junot's expedition to Portugal, with instructions to seize the Portuguese fleet at Lisbon. It is strange that in the debates on this subject, peace with France was still treated on both sides as a possibility; but Canning declared that ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... were stationed at Okehampton, Liskeard and Exeter. Taunton and Salisbury also, as "great thoroughfares to and from the west," had each its gang, and a sufficient number of sailors escaped the press at the latter place to justify the presence of another at Romsey. Andover had a gang as early as 1756, on the recommendation of no ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... hundred and fourteen bodies, when they were obliged to fill it up, the bodies being then come to lie within six feet of the surface. I doubt not but there may be some ancient persons alive in the parish who can justify the fact of this, and are able to show even in what place of the churchyard the pit lay, better than I can: the mark of it also was many years to be seen in the churchyard on the surface, lying in length, ...
— History of the Plague in London • Daniel Defoe
... Germans want an excuse to resume reckless submarine war and an American correspondent has taken the job of making bad feeling to justify such a course. ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... account you wish to justify in my eyes the extraordinary declarations you have chosen to make me, and your persistency in tormenting a woman of my age, whose only wish is to see her daughter married, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Davenant—one who, in general, never spoke of herself, or unveiled her private feelings, even to those who lived with her on terms of intimacy. Helen felt responsible for the confidence granted to her thus upon credit, and a strong ambition was excited in her mind to justify the high opinion her superior friend had formed of her. She determined to become all that she was believed to be; as the flame of a taper suddenly rises towards what is held over it, her spirit mounted to the point ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... were not consulted on a measure of such importance might have furnished a reason for its rejection by the Upper Chamber, but would scarcely justify the Secretary of State in advising its disallowance even if it were admitted as a general principle of constitutional government in Newfoundland that the Legislature has no right to entertain any measure of first importance without an ...
— The Story of Newfoundland • Frederick Edwin Smith, Earl of Birkenhead
... slumber-wear. For years I have hungered for silk ones, but have had no conscientious excuse for appeasing my appetite. To buy silk pyjamas in cold blood has hitherto seemed to me to be sheer cynical extravagance; but now I feel that circumstances justify me in my action, for it would be a very sorry thing for me to encounter a burglar or cope with a fire clad in apparel that would not be up to the standard of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... commendable. This is proved from its origin and from its end. From its origin, because swearing owes its introduction to the faith whereby man believes that God possesses unerring truth and universal knowledge and foresight of all things: and from its end, since oaths are employed in order to justify men, and to put an ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... youthful beauty and animal spirits? Affection requires a firmer foundation than sympathy, and few people have a principle of action sufficiently stable to produce rectitude of feeling; for in spite of all the arguments I have heard to justify deviations from duty, I am persuaded that even the most spontaneous sensations are more under the direction of principle than weak ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... him their servant; but his extraordinary genius and disposition have obliged me to look upon him in a superior light; perhaps I may incur the censure of many people, by giving him so many advantages, and treating him as the companion of my children; his merit must justify or condemn my partiality for him; however, I trust that I have secured to my children a faithful servant of the upper kind, and a useful friend ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... Africa.' (22) But it is one thing to make an assertion, and another to produce the grounds for making it. I believe it would require a far greater stock of information than has hitherto been possessed by any one who has written on the subject of the Gypsies, to justify him in asserting positively that after traversing the west of Europe, they spread themselves over Northern Africa, though true it is that to those who take a superficial view of the matter, nothing appears easier and more natural ...
— The Zincali - An Account of the Gypsies of Spain • George Borrow
... then, expressed her sense of appreciation, and accepted the invitation. She further privately told madame Wang in clear terms, that every kind of daily expense and general contribution would have to be entirely avoided and withdrawn as that would be the only thing to justify her to make any protracted stay. And madame Wang aware that she had, in her home, no difficulty in this line, promptly in fact ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... said enough to justify both Sexes, in the gratifying of their Amorous Desires, tho' they be married; for 'tis not strange at all to hear that Men and Women have been married, and yet have been uncapable of answering the Ends of Marriage, or satisfying ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... dilettanteism, and the cruel records of this pastime are among the most discreditable pages in modern literature. It is true that in India and other tropical countries, the number and ferocity of the wild beasts not only justify but command a war of extermination against them, but the indiscriminate slaughter of many quadrupeds which are favorite objects of the chase can urge no such apology. Late official reports from India state the number of human victims of the tiger, the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... without a care in the world, seeking somehow to justify his constant idleness, I have always found such festive mornings in a country house universally attractive. When the green garden, still moist with dew, shines in the sun and seems happy, and when the terrace smells of mignonette and oleander, and the young people have just returned from church ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... trembling sensitiveness of a woman who weighs the merits of a lover when passion is having one of its fatal pauses, he looked at himself, and compared himself with the class of persons he had outraged, and tried to think better of himself, and to justify himself, and sturdily reject comparisons. They would not be beaten back. His enemies had never suggested them, but they were forced on him by the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not easily supply. A letter has been kept as written by him while engaged on one of his "expresses;" but it is less for its saying anything new, than for its confirming with a pleasant vividness what has been said already, that its contents will justify mention here. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... silent ride he looked back carefully, but he could not see where he had been to blame; and, if he were, he hoped to strike a balance with his own conscience for having been friendly to Boonda Broke, and to justify himself in his father's eyes. If he came through all right, then "the Governor"—as he called his father, with the friendly affection of a good comrade, and as all others in Mandakan called him because of his position—the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the task of identifying the tune, and its author, in the case of every hymn, would have required more time and labor than, perhaps, the importance of the facts would justify. ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... said the Rector, severely. "I will request all the witnesses to be in attendance, and we must hope to find Mr Wentworth's witness of sufficient importance to justify the change. At eight o'clock this evening, in my house, gentlemen," said the Rector. He collected his notes and went outside, and began talking to his witnesses, while the others collected together round the table to consult over this new phase of the affair. The three Mr Wentworths ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... wasn't, if he found a fool to listen to him. I decline to hear another word. You needn't excuse yourself for changing your name; I excuse it, and that is enough. But the boat is waiting, and we can't stay to hear you justify a felony." ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... Hell, but this is enough to provoke even immortals. What have I done, said, or thought, to justify such treatment?' ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... these Chinese, together with the others, who had remained in those islands where they had been seized, were sent back, so that they might return to their own country. I was exceedingly sorry that such an injury should be inflicted upon men who had neither offended us nor given us occasion to justify this action; and what grieves me most in this affair is the news which the Chinese will carry to their own country about us, and about the good deeds which were done to them, and which they saw done to others, for ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair
... are immeasurably far from being worth it. But one does not justify these fancies by ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... little. More old forgotten keys were probably lying about among the lumber in the sheds. What if she collected all she could find, and tried them, one after another, in the locks of the cabinets and cupboards now closed against her? Was there chance enough that any one of them might fit to justify her in venturing on the experiment? If the locks at St. Crux were as old-fashioned as the furniture—if there were no protective niceties of modern invention to contend against—there was chance enough beyond all question. Who could say whether the very key in her hand might not be the lost ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... about a mile round, on which newly-acquired hunters were always tried, and the old ones regularly exercised. He generally made a point of being present on these occasions, sometimes riding over the course himself. If a horse, bought as a hunter, failed to justify its character by its ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... principle of the criminal law, that no one can be guilty of crime unless a criminal intent exists; but was also a palpable violation of the statute under which the conviction was had; not on the ground that good faith could, in this, or in any case, justify a criminal act, but on the ground that bad faith in voting was an indispensable ingredient in the offense with which your petitioner was charged. Any other interpretation strikes the word "knowingly" out of the statute, the word which alone describes the essence of the offense. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... his Divine Source, or as the term came so naturally to him, with God, his Father—God, our Father, for that was his teaching—my God and your God. The many times that we are told in the narratives that he went to the mountain alone, would seem to justify us in this conclusion. Anyway, it would be absolutely impossible for anyone to have such a vivid realisation of his essential oneness with the Divine, without much time spent in such a manner that the real life could ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... Nevertheless, to justify such monstrous opinions, they assert that ideas are only the objects of thought. But according to the last analysis, these ideas can only reach man from exterior objects, which in giving impulse to his senses modify his brain; or from the material beings contained within the interior ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... It is said, however, that he affected the simplicity, and even silliness of manner, which procured him that appellation. If, as we hope, the unedited memoirs left by Rene d'Argenson will be given to the world, they will be found fully to justify the opinion of Duclos, with regard to this Minister, and the ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 2 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... therefore, which might appear sufficient unto the heathens, to justify killing themselves to avoid what they thought greater evils, if they had any force then must have totally lost it now. Indeed, the far greater number of instances which history has transmitted us, show that self-murder, even then, proceeded from the same causes as at present, ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... press by a committee of seal-breakers? And have we not seen a sworn Postmaster-general formally avow that, though he could not license this cut-purse protection of the peculiar institution, the perpetrators of this highway robbery must justify themselves by the plea of necessity? And has the pillory or the penitentiary been the reward of that Postmaster-general? Have we not seen printing-presses destroyed; halls erected for the promotion of human freedom levelled with the ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... looked at me and her face still wore a questioning expression. It was evident to me that I must further justify myself. ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... saint's life in twenty small pictures full of little figures, on a gold ground. He afterwards undertook a large picture for the monks of Vallombrosa in their abbey of S, Trinita at Florence. This was a Madonna with the child in her arms, surrounded by many adoring angels, on a gold ground. To justify the high opinion in which he was already held, he worked at it with great industry, showing improved powers of invention and exhibiting our lady in a pleasing attitude. The painting when finished was placed by the monks over the high ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... doctrine of our Constitution, completely taken over, ex post facto, by Sir Robert Peel, as the person who consented, on the call of the King, to take Lord Melbourne's office. Thus, though the act was rash, and hard to justify, the doctrine of personal immunity was in no way endangered. And here we may notice, that in theory an absolute personal immunity implies a correlative limitation of power, greater than is always found in practice. It can hardly be said that the King's initiative left to Sir R. Peel a freedom ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... were in fact only a humbugging disguise of the inexorable conventions that tied things together and bound people down to the old pattern. But here he was pledged to defend, on the part of his betrothed's cousin, conduct that, on his own wife's part, would justify him in calling down on her all the thunders of Church and State. Of course the dilemma was purely hypothetical; since he wasn't a blackguard Polish nobleman, it was absurd to speculate what his wife's rights would be if he WERE. But Newland Archer was too imaginative ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... and me was interested, but neither of us wasn't tempted into making parallel revelations about ourselves. Your private life's your own business, I felt, as close as your guts, and no joke's good enough to justify revealing a knot ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... to be a lie, but she did not think she was sufficient an authority on the game to justify her in saying so. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... that rural communities will respond to national assistance and greatly benefit by it. Even if only a small beginning could be made very soon, increased demand and local initiative would undoubtedly justify the project. ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... upon some subjects, comprizes with great tenderness in the following expressions, "our copies of the New Testament by the lapse of time, have suffered some literal alterations, which may have fallen occasionally on the quoted texts (he is trying to justify the writers of the New Testament, for quoting the Old Testament otherwise than it is written) and thus made them to differ from the reading of the Old ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... He himself also felt a strange and painful sense of guilt. Was not he to a great extent the cause of this, though the unwilling cause? Ah! he thought, remorsefully, can wrong be right? and can any thing justify such a desecration as this both of marriage and of death? At that moment Chetwynde faded away, and to have saved it was as nothing. Willingly would he have given up every thing if he could now have said to this ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. She found her epos in the ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... are great distinctions between true sexual propagation and this foreshadowing of it in conjugation I do not deny. The question, however, is whether they be so great as to justify any argument against an historical continuity between them. What, then, are these remaining distinctions? Briefly, as we have seen, they are the extrusion from egg-cells of polar bodies, and the occurrence, both in egg-cells ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... of Crispus was so universally acknowledged, that the modern Greeks, who adore the memory of their founder, are reduced to palliate the guilt of a parricide, which the common feelings of human nature forbade them to justify. They pretend, that as soon as the afflicted father discovered the falsehood of the accusation by which his credulity had been so fatally misled, he published to the world his repentance and remorse; that he mourned ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... explanation, will come in the fulness of time. The soul is ready for anything; ready for nothing. All that is true comes from God; what is not true, from the creature. The soul does not seek to justify itself, nor produce humiliation, but passes on, disregarding self, ...
— Letters of Madam Guyon • P. L. Upham
... perseverancediscernment is as common a word as any of the like length in the English language. To omit the examples that might be cited out of Hawes's Pastime of Pleasure, I will adduce a dozen other instances; and if those should not be enough to justify my assertion, I will undertake to heap together two dozen more. Mr. Dyce, in his Critique of Knight and Collier's Shakspeare, rightly explains the meaning of the word in Cymbeline; and quotes an example of perseverance from The Widow, to which the reader is referred. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... others. In this case it was known that responsibility and punishment would fall on thy people. If thou give thy people the idea of evil spirits, they will say at once that they saw such with their own eyes, because that will justify them in thy sight. Ask one of them, as a test, if he did not see spirits carrying off Lygia through the air, he will swear at once by the aegis of Zeus ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... speech they needed to justify themselves. To be good made women hateful! Their dumb-crambo to each other showed that anyone who said so wild a thing stood ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... growin' still more candid in his excitement, "we are makin' a powerful effort to change the laws now so as to take the tax off of whiskey, so it can be sold cheaper, and obtained in greater quantities by the masses. Any such great laws would justify a change in the Constitution and the laws; but for any frivolous cause, any trivial cause, madam, we male custodians of the sacred Constitution stand as walls of iron before it, guarding it from any shadow of change. Faithful we ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... lend them the originals, as I am apt to scribble notes in the margins of all my books that interest me at all. Pray let me know if Baker's Life is among the additions, and whether you are satisfied with it, as there could not be events enough in his retired life to justify ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... addressed to the Home Secretary, advancing the circumstances which appeared to justify a request for a reconsideration of the sentence. It was not "numerously signed" by the inhabitants of Casterbridge, as is usual in such cases, for Boldwood had never made many friends over the counter. ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... can be, any poetry in slavery. Since time began no true poet has undertaken to write a line in praise of slavery. Poets have always been, and they must necessarily forever be, the prophets and priests of freedom. Multitudes of men have undertaken to justify slavery by the Bible, by expediency, by history, by necessity, by philosophy, by the constitution of the country; but no man ever undertook to justify it by poetry. The most brilliant prize offered by a national committee for the best poem in praise of human slavery, ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... century was called the century of man, the nineteenth century, of women, and the twentieth, that of the child. What facts justify ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... seams of brown lignite; with a rhomboidal cleavage. In the bed of the stream were carbonaceous shales, with obscure impressions of fern leaves, of Trizygia, and Vertebraria: both fossils characteristic of the Burdwan coal-fields (see Chapter I), but too imperfect to justify any conclusion as to the relation between these formations.* [These traces of fossils are not sufficient to identify the formation with that of the sewalik hills of North-west India; but its contents, together ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... any right to know. No love of his for any woman could ever justify betrayal of what ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... "is a thing a man should come by honestly; a thing the possession of which a man should justify; a ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... COULD pull himself together for the effort required, how justify his action in the eyes of the world? His motives would be double-dutch to the hard-headed crew around him; nor would any go to the trouble of trying to understand. There was John. All John would see was an elderly and not over-robust man deliberately throwing away the fruits of year-long ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... law, To keep her still, and men in awe, That whoso ask'd her for his wife, His riddle told not, lost his life: So for her many a wight did die, As yon grim looks do testify. What now ensues, to the judgement your eye I give, my cause who lest can justify. ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... moods, I had returned to my first suspicion—the attraction and possibly the passion of the handsome secretary for herself. I had very little reason for entertaining such a possibility. I had seen nothing on his part to justify it and ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... are instances which appeared at first to indicate a gradual transition, yet which instances have been shown by further investigation and discovery not to indicate truly anything of the kind. Thus at one time the remains of Labyrinthodonts, which up till then had been discovered, seemed to justify the opinion that as time went on, forms had successively appeared with{135} more and more complete segmentation and ossification of the backbone, which in the earliest forms was (as it is in the lowest fishes ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... we were traversing was sterile and poor—worse even than that in the neighborhood of Andersonville. Farms and farmhouses were scarce, and of towns there were none. Not even a collection of houses big enough to justify a blacksmith shop or a store appeared along the whole route. But few fields of any kind were seen, and nowhere was there a farm which gave evidence of a determined effort on the part of its occupants to till the soil and to ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... to congratulate him. He thanked us absently, and it was evident that there was something on his mind, some problem which, in his new office, he felt that he must solve if for no other purpose than to justify his reputation. Craig said nothing, preferring to let the commissioner come to the point ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... to think of, much more horrible to do, but the situation of Rosemary and Floyd was desperate indeed. The end seemed to justify the means. ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... two or three times, but always the other fellow aimed poorly. I was being shot at because I was a newspaper man, and I should have been shot at. There must be public concern in what is printed, as well as its truth, to justify it. That is something that newspapers should get to know in this country. After the earthquake in San Francisco, I saw walls topple out upon a man. And I have had more intimate glimpses still of the picturesque and of the prosaic ways by which men ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... things I did know in London—and I was observing with interest the wondrous livery of the two menials motionless behind the glass of its portals, when a tandem equipage drew up in front of the pile, and the menials darted out, in their white gloves, to prove that they were alive and to justify ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... political revolution stopped short with the bourgeois revolt which was made without any appeal to religion whatsoever. It is evident that this is not entirely true, for in the English-speaking countries, at all events, not only the bourgeois but frequently also the proletarian movements attempt to justify themselves from Scripture. The teachings of the Bible and the Sermon on the Mount are frequently called to the aid of the revolutionary party; Christian Socialists, in the English and American, not the continental sense of the term, as such are admitted ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... that I speak only of trifles. Why go to a mountain-top to look at warblers and thrushes? I am not careful to justify myself. I love a mountain-top, and go there because I love to be there. It is good, I think, to be lifted above the every-day level, and to enjoy the society—and the absence of society—which the heights afford. Looking over ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... might observe the effect of the messenger's news upon the citizens. In a few streets the narrow footways were thronged with people in their churchgoing clothes, and many of these had already gathered into startled groups, where the rider who came in such un-Sabbath-like haste had stopped to justify himself, and satisfy the curiosity of observers, and ask the whereabouts of certain gentlemen of the provincial assembly, to whom he had letters. We heard details repeated, and opinions uttered guardedly, ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... that monarch: If female succession were admitted, the right had devolved on the house of Mortimer: Allowing that Richard the Second was a tyrant, and that Henry the Fourth's merits in deposing him were so great towards the English, as to justify that nation in placing him on the throne, Richard had nowise offended France, and his rival had merited nothing of that kingdom: It could not possibly be pretended that the crown of France was become an ...
— King Henry the Fifth - Arranged for Representation at the Princess's Theatre • William Shakespeare
... linger in the dark regions of fatality, which is the supreme mystery, the desolation of every effort and every thought of man. What is clearest amid this incomprehensibility is that the spiritualistic theory, at first sight the most seductive, declares itself, on examination, the most difficult to justify. We will also once more put aside the theosophical theory or any other which assumes a divine intention and which might, to a certain extent, explain the hesitations and anguish of the prophetic warnings, at the cost, however, of ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... ordered them to resign; he had withdrawn apostolic powers from the thirteen who had refused to tender their resignations; to all, even to those who refused, he had appointed their successors. He assigned to the new titularies dioceses of a new pattern and, to justify novelties of such gravity,[5206] he could allege no other reasons than circumstances, the exigencies of lay power, and the welfare of the Church. After that the Gallicans themselves, unless accepting the risk of a schism and of separating ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and delicate body, often adorned with colours exquisite as those of the foliage amongst which they live concealed. In some of the South American species the tints vie in brilliancy with those of the humming-birds; whilst their forms are so flexible and slender as to justify the name conferred on them of "whip-snakes." The Siamese, to denote these combinations of grace and splendour, call them "Sun-beams." A naturalist[1], describing a bright green species in Brazil (Philodryas viridissimus), writes: "I am always delighted when I find that another tree-snake has ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... I've just been told I'm butting in on something that's none of my business. So, having been accused, I'm going to justify it. ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... the sea, mother, after mischief as usual," replied Tommy, whose bald head and wrinkled brow repudiated, while his open hearty smile appeared to justify, ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... somehow came. His actions and his simple happiness of face and manner—both in some sense the raw material of speech perhaps—may have operated as potently suggestive agents; but no adequate causes to justify the result, apart from the fantastic theories I have mentioned, have ever yet come within the range of my understanding. I can only give you the ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... parlor" are still kept? Does the early life in New York appear to you attractive or uninteresting? Does the description seem like ridicule? The descendants of the old Dutch families resented Irving's way of making fun of their ancestors. Point out passages which might justify this complaint. Compare this sketch with "A Pine Tree Shilling" in the style of writing, method of ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... Volmar. Six o'clock had not yet struck, and she was going off, hoping that nobody would notice her, with the intention of showing herself at the hospital, and there spending this last morning, in order, in some measure, to justify her journey to Lourdes. When she perceived Pierre, she began to tremble, and, at first, could only stammer: "Oh, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... coming forward with long strides, and touching the hilt of the dress-sword hanging at his side—"your highness, I have come to justify myself against the calumnies of my enemies. Will you be pleased to hear me patiently, and not impugn my honor as a gentleman and a count of the empire before you have listened ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... reign, and Yorkist intriguer, was executed, apparently without further trial, in 1513. The Dukedom of Suffolk was bestowed on Brandon whom Mr. Froude's imagination has somehow developed into "the ablest soldier of the age," but he never did anything to justify a high estimate of his abilities.] Duke of Suffolk, an intimate personal friend of Henry's and a stout man-at-arms, who was also personally devoted to the Princess Mary, was selected by Wolsey as a better negotiator than one of the anti-French ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... no more, sir; I should not have said so much. Oh, Grandad, I wouldn't have hurt you for all the world, yet I had to let you know why I could not do what you had planned—and I was fool enough to think I could justify myself to you!" ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... 'Then we must teach the children very exactly what faith is, that they may know how to tell true faith from false, and may be able to judge every day and hour whether they have the right sort of faith which will justify them, or some wrong sort which will not.' And many wise and good men in those times did say so, and tormented their own minds, and the minds of weak brethren, with long arguments and dry doctrines ...
— Sermons for the Times • Charles Kingsley
... people's business, there could not possibly be a more congenial sphere than the Liverpool Consulate. For myself, I had never been in the habit of feeling that I could sufficiently comprehend any particular conjunction of circumstances with human character, to justify me in thrusting in my awkward agency among the intricate and unintelligible machinery of Providence. I have always hated to give advice, especially when there is a prospect of its being taken. It is only one-eyed people who love to advise, or have ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the great advantage to foot-people of letting them see the fox found. Larkhall Hill was, therefore, a favourite both with horse and foot. So much good—at all events, so much well-farmed land would seem to justify a better or more imposing-looking house, the present one consisting, exclusive of the projecting garret ones in the Dutch tile roof, of the usual four windows and a door, that so well tell their own tale; passage in the middle, staircase in front, parlour on the right, best ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... How sprawling in your terror on the wine-press beam you lay? Ay! never more, I trow, you wore the mantle of that day. There is no choice; the issue now the sword alone can try; The daughters of my Cid ye spurned; that must ye justify. On every count I here declare their cause the cause of right, And thou shall own the treachery the day we join in fight." He ceased, and striding up the hall Assur Gonzalez passed; His cheek was flushed with wine, for he had stayed to break ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... Emperor calls on his God to justify him. So does the German; while we in turn call on our God to ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... quite within the bounds of realization. But even as the possible Lord Redin, her father's existence did not interest the Romans at all. They were not accustomed to people who thought it necessary to justify their social position by allusions to their parentage, and since Francesca Campodonico had assured them that Dalrymple was a gentleman, they had no further questions to ask, and raised their eyebrows when Gloria volunteered information on the subject ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... young man, I was gay and thoughtless. But I married young, and we lost our first child through a terrible accident. Two children we have lost through sudden and violent death. (WINIFRED goes out unnoticed.) It made me reflect. And when I came to reflect, Anabel, I could not justify my position in life. If I believed in the teachings of the New Testament—which I did, and do—how could I keep two or three thousand men employed and underground in the mines, at a wage, let us say, ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... lady of the house, was of noble presence, which almost seemed to justify the claim of royal blood which was made for her. Tall and commanding, age had not bent her form, although her locks were already white. Her beauty, which must have been marvellous in her younger days, had attracted the attention of a younger son of the reigning house, ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... servants time to carry out his instructions and remove themselves. That cottage, which he had bought on the spur of the moment, fitted out with elaborate care and used only twice, for two weeks since, was to justify itself, after all. Who knows? He might have bought it two years before under an inspiration. Even then, months and months before he met Joan or knew of her existence, this very evening might have been mapped out He was a fatalist, and it fell into ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... desire to explain myself to you, you understand; are we not as brothers? Oh, I realise well that when one loves a woman one always thinks that the faults are the husband's: believe me I have had much to justify my attitude. Snakes, dirt, ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... never been used as a threat, or turned to the purposes of an aggressive colonial policy. Rightly or wrongly, we have refused to make possible intentions a case for an ultimatum. We have held by the position that only a breach of public law would justify us in abandoning our efforts for ...
— Why We Are At War (2nd Edition, revised) • Members of the Oxford Faculty of Modern History
... reference to Castile, where the facts do not warrant us in imputing any other motive for its adoption than religious zeal. The general character of Ferdinand, as well as the circumstances under which it was introduced into Aragon, may justify the inference of a more worldly policy in ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... an argotier; you have violated the privileges of our city. You must be punished unless you are a capon, a franc-mitou or a rifode; that is to say, in the slang of honest folks,—a thief, a beggar, or a vagabond. Are you anything of that sort? Justify yourself; announce ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... in her anxiety to justify the enormous outlay said, "Well, anyhow, these improvements are not entirely for me, they will make the house all the nicer for my New Daughter ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... "I beg I may hear no more of knocking down. Don't add to your fault by working yourself into a passion with me. Some provocation you certainly have had, but nothing can justify such unrestrained fury. Consider what would have been your condition at present, if your rage had been fatal to your cousin; it would have availed you little to have pleaded the aggravation; your whole life would have been embittered ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... same to grass, after a certain period, in an improved state, or at least without injury. The general report, based on the information derived from these essays, states that no high price of corn or temporary distress would justify the ploughing up of old meadows or rich pastures, and that on certain soils well adapted to grass age improves the quality of the pasture to a degree which no system of management on lands broken up and laid down can equal. In spite of this, the cupidity of landowners and farmers, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... believe God's word; and if we be mistaken or err in our general belief, as [6497]Richardus de Sancto Victore, vows he will say to Christ himself at the day of judgment; "Lord, if we be deceived, thou alone hast deceived us:" thus we plead. But for the rest I will not justify that pontificial consubstantiation, that which [6498]Mahometans and Jews justly except at, as Campanella confesseth, Atheismi triumphat. cap. 12. fol. 125, difficillimum dogma esse, nec aliud subjectum magis haereticorum blasphemiis, et stultis irrisionibus politicorum reperiri. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... importance in literature, as every question must be that involves the claims of authors and their respective titles to reputation. Nor is the public often impatient in listening to evidence on such subjects, if the merit contended for be sufficiently great to justify solicitude as to its being rightly conferred. That it is so in the case of the question, Who was the author of this work? no one can doubt, that is capable of relishing its excellencies; or is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... affair of extreme difficulty, and which Nathan was reluctant to undertake until he should have gathered a "load" that would justify him in making it. In his estimation, Hosmer did not meet such requirement, even taken in company with the solitary individual who had been sitting on his horse with Egyptian patience for long unheeded moments, ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... Mate, I may give you and Jack a glad surprise and justify Sada handing me that letter addressed ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... example of the pinch of poverty than these is to be found in railway travelling; no lady of any sense or spirit objects to travel by the second, or even the third class, if her means do not justify her going by the first. But when she meets with richer friends upon the platform, and parts with them to journey in the same compartment with their man-servant, she suffers as acutely as though, when the guard slams the door of the carriage with the vehemence proportioned to its humble ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... especially when, like Charles de Vandenesse, the visitor is handsome or clever. And similarly there are not many young men who would fail to base some secret wish on one of the thousand and one ideas which justify the instinct that attracts them to a beautiful, witty, and unhappy woman like the ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... London detective tactics, Sir Donald is becoming pessimistic. To Esther he says: "Indeed, there is little in results to justify further employment of this much vaunted agency. That there have been perplexities I am fully aware. Having given the subject such careful thought, I am not disposed either to minimize obstacles or to cavil ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... limit my question?" he said, pleasantly. "He is voluminous, and what a sensible book he has written. I wish all authors had given us so much information. But I meant, is that all he says about hotels? Doesn't he justify your friend just a little bit ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... of it. If you infer that he means insurrection at any future time, you must also suppose that the insurrection he contemplates is conditional, and in speculation of conduct in the government that may justify it. Is there any extrinsic evidence to show that he means something beyond the words? None—and the words themselves are a literal disclaimer of any intention of insurrection. And it is by the words then that you will judge of his design, and not take it from the vague ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... Cleopa'tra had been prepared for this interview, and made use of every art to propitiate the conqueror. She tried apologies, entreaties and allurements, to obtain his favour and soften his resentment. She began by attempting to justify her conduct; but when her skill failed against manifest proofs, she turned her defence into supplications. She reminded him of Caesar's humanity to those in distress; she read some of his letters to her, full of tenderness, and expatiated upon the intimacy that subsisted between them. "But of ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... faith, then; let what we have said concerning these be not alone for the skeptic, but for the Christian who has faith but cannot fully justify and confirm it, or who feels it faltering under some heavy burden, or who is overwhelmed by the magnitude of the truths to which it attaches, or who wishes, with a kind of half-doubt, that these things might be seen and felt. They are great, they are incomprehensibly ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... further, and, leaving the tent, we walked in silence to the lines farthest from Etampes. Raoul's horsemen were already there, and presently Turenne himself, attended by two officers, rode up. In a few stirring words he addressed the troopers, bidding them justify his choice, and speaking in high terms of their young leader. Then he gave Raoul his final instructions, and my friend pressed my hand ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... are apt to darken truth and to cripple the powers of those who engage in them. For though it is possible that the secondary effect of these barbarous scuffles may sometimes have been salutary in deterring impostors from 'taking up' history, I am not aware of any positive examples to justify this opinion. There is this, however, to be said, that fully conscious of their own fallibility, M. Langlois and his excellent collaborator have supplied in their canons of criticism and maxims the best corrections of any mistakes into which they may have fallen by the way. Is not the House of Fame, ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... you. Is that enough, sir? Do you understand me now?" "Oh, entirely, Miss Ainslie," said Hesden, in a quick, husky tone, taking his hat from the table as he spoke. "But in justice to myself I must be allowed to state some facts which, though perhaps not sufficient, in your opinion, to justify my conduct, will I hope show you that you have misjudged me in part. Will ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee |
