"Moot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... first marked recognition of his skill as a workman; and he used afterwards to say that it was the biggest sum of money he had up to that time earned in one lump. Ralph Dodds, however, did more than this. He released the brakesman from the handles of his engine at West Moot, and appointed him engineman at the High Pit, at good wages, during the time the pit was sinking,—the job lasting for about a year; and he also kept him in ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... that the difference of the two cases lay in the fact, that as to the killing of the body there was no doubt about the matter, whereas mankind differed very widely as to the killing of the soul; and that as long as it remained a moot point whether priests did so or not, it would hardly be practicable or even politic to adopt ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Mr. E.A. Freeman, however, puts it more truthfully in saying: "The circumstances of New England called the primitive assembly (that is, the Homeric agora, Athenian ekklesia, Roman comitia, Swiss landesgemeinde, English folk-moot) again into being, when in the older England it was well-nigh forgotten. What in Switzerland was a survival was in New ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... January were all comitiales: but another law (lex Vatinia) ordered it to meet every day in February for the business of the legations. If this business was concluded or deferred it remained a moot point whether a magistrate was not still bound or, at least, allowed to summon it for other business ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Biggleswick which deserves mention. On the south of the common, near the station, stood a red-brick building called the Moot Hall, which was a kind of church for the very undevout population. Undevout in the ordinary sense, I mean, for I had already counted twenty-seven varieties of religious conviction, including three Buddhists, a Celestial Hierarch, five Latter-day ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... to discuss moot points upon the stage—to turn as it were the theatre into a debating society—will certainly not succeed. Audiences—especially Haymarket ones—have a taste for being amused rather than reasoned with; besides, those on that side of the question which the author chooses shall be the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... As there are moot points concerning the stones themselves and the conduct of the sport, so the chungke spears differ in the accounts of the early adventurers in this region. The length is variously given as eight, ten, twelve feet. The shape is sometimes ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... young woman was revolving round him. His looks, his wealth, his taste, his reputation, invested him with a certain sun-like quality; but his age, the recession of his locks, and the advancement of his waist were beginning to dim his lustre, so that whether he was moth or candle was becoming a moot point. It was moot to me, watching him and Miss Sabine Monroy at Charleston throughout the month of March. The casual observer would have said that she was "playing him up," as a young poet of my acquaintance puts it; but I was not casual. For me Vaness had the attraction of a theorem, and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... has been chosen of giving English readers this manual precisely as it appeared in French. And surely one would rather read what M. Langlois, an experienced teacher and a tried scholar, thought on a moot point, than be presented with the views of some English 'adaptor' who had read his book, as to what he would have said had he been an Englishman lecturing to English students. That the present translator has taken much pains to faithfully report his authors, ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... comes from the L.L. text, which is throughout shorter than that in L.U., and the lost opening of L.U. may have been fuller. The author of the Glenn Masain version kept nearer to the old story, adding, however, more modern touches. Where the new character of Bricriu comes from is a moot point; I incline to the belief that the idea of Bricriu as a mere buffoon is a later development. But in neither version is the story, as we have it, a pre-Christian one. The original pre-Christian idea of Flidais was, ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... Your leaves with Autographs—resplendent names Of Knights and Squires of old, and courtly Dames, Kings, Emperors, Popes. Next under these should stand The hands of famous Lawyers—a grave band— Who in their Courts of Law or Equity Have best upheld Freedom and Property. These should moot cases in your book, and vie To show their reading and their Serjeantry. But I have none of these; nor can I send The notes by Bullen to her Tyrant penn'd In her authentic hand; nor in soft hours ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... and their friends escaped unhurt, and the police and the guards chiefly expended their vigour on the spectators of the original disturbance. Whether this had been secretly engineered by the authorities for one of the purposes I previously indicated, must always remain a moot point. In any case it did not incline the Parisians to vote for the Government candidates. Every deputy returned for the city on that occasion was an opponent of the Empire, and in later years I was told by an ex-Court official that when Napoleon became acquainted ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... be found in the presence of the edible frog of the Continent at Foulmire, on the edge of the Cambridge Fans. It is a moot point still with some, whether he was not put there by man. It is a still stronger argument against his being indigenous, that he is never mentioned as an article of food by the mediaeval monks, who would have known—Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, as many of them were- -that he is as dainty as ever ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... Euylle moot suche fare, and harde. Who may best bygyle a man But suche as he tryst vpon? 544 [Th]er ys no man wel nye, y tryste, [Th]at can be waar of hadde wyste.— Mordred [th]is falss Man Muche sorw [th]o bygan; 548 He stuffed alle castelle Wy[th] armyre & vytelle, And strenghthed hym on ...
— Arthur, Copied And Edited From The Marquis of Bath's MS • Frederick J. Furnivall
... has been said by others, and will be said in every age in support of the conflicting opinions on government: and that wisdom and duty dictate an humble resignation to the verdict of our future peers. I doing this myself, I shall certainly not suffer moot questions to affect the sentiments of sincere friendship and respect, consecrated to you by so long a course of time, and of which I now repeat ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Commons have a 'double representation,' that is to say, have as many members as the Noblesse and Clergy united? Shall the States-General, when once assembled, vote and deliberate, in one body, or in three separate bodies; 'vote by head, or vote by class,'—ordre as they call it? These are the moot-points now filling all France with jargon, logic and eleutheromania. To terminate which, Necker bethinks him, Might not a second Convocation of the Notables be fittest? Such second ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... helm on this interesting occasion was shifted for sternboard I never inquired. Marryat tells us it was a moot point in his young days. Our captain was an excellent seaman, but had 'doxies of his own. Of these, one which ran contrary to current standards was in favor of clewing up a course or topsail to leeward, in blowing weather. Among the lieutenants was a strong champion of ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... "Eena, mena, mina, moot, Le'me catch you by the foot; Fill your eyes and mouth with soot, Pull a tree up by ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... One of the moot questions of the day is, "When is it proper to introduce people to each other?" The strictest etiquette forbids casual social introductions, or the introducing of any two people at any time without the consent of both parties. It is argued that people who meet in a drawing-room as ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... 3: The genuineness of the Prologues of these plays has long been a moot question. The tendency of the more recent investigators has been to hold that all were, at least in part, written ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... the great river, afterwards called the Amazon, and the country of Brazil. The fleet in which Vespucci took passage left Spain in the month of May, 1499, that commanded by Pinzon left in December; and it is still a moot question whether the first or the second was the first to arrive on the coast of Brazil. But Pinzon sailed beyond Vespucci on that voyage, though he was to be surpassed, the next year, in the generous rivalry that existed for making the ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... of age at twelve. A king of seven years of age has twelve Regents chosen in the Moot, in one case by lot, to bring him up and rule for him till his majority. Regents are all appointed in Denmark, in one case for lack of royal blood, one to Scania, one to Zealand, one to Funen, two to Jutland. Underkings and Earls are appointed by kings, ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the student as regards the ensemble of violin and piano will be recalled by all who have enjoyed the 'Sonata Recitals' he has given together with Mrs. Mannes. And as an interpreting solo artist his views regarding the moot question of gut versus wire strings ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... assertion as to the strict and uniform obedience of the company at its captain's word, requires, as we have seen, some qualification in a democratic sense. Whether Lincoln was ever beaten in wrestling is also one of the moot points of history. ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... believed his own prophecies is a moot point. It is said that he bought the lease of a house, which expired about twenty-five years after his date ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... especially, of his own trade. Martin Schongauer was dead, but under that master's brothers Duerer studied and helped to support himself by his art at Colmar and at Basle. Various wood-blocks executed by him at the latter place are preserved there. Whether he also visited Venice now or not is a moot point. Here or elsewhere, at any rate, he came under the influence of the Bellini, of Mantegna, and more particularly of Jacopo dei Barbari—the painter and engraver to whom he owed the incentive to study the proportions of the human body—a study which henceforth became the most absorbing interest ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... connected with the ceremony was regarded as the most sacred attestation of the engagement entered into between the newly-elected king or chief and his people. It was placed in some conspicuous position, upon the top of a "moot-hill," or the open-air place of assembly. Upon it was usually carved an impression of a human foot; and into this impression, during the ceremony of inauguration, the king or chief placed his own right foot, in token ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the invading germ, so in just the same degree does it adversely influence the functions of the tissues that are to fight against it. To our minds the question thus set up must always remain more or less a moot-point, and while we fully agree that cold undoubtedly checks the growth of septic material, we just as fully believe that warmth serves to place the healthy surrounding structures in a far better condition to maintain a vigorous phagocytosis against it. We thus continue ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... his works stand to nature, to historic precedent, and lastly, to inward consciousness or individual character. We have seen that the notion prevalent in Rome, that the living model was wholly discarded, is inaccurate; bearing on this moot point may be here told an anecdote. It is related how one morning, when the artist was engaged on the Tasso frescoes, in the Villa Massimo, he had need of the life for a muscular arm, and so sallied forth into ...
— Overbeck • J. Beavington Atkinson
... suspected book on the Therapeutic sect known by the title "On the Contemplative Life." Whether they received this generic name because they are suggestions for the Jewish cause, or because they are written to answer the insinuations ([Greek: kath' hypothesin]) of adversaries, is a moot point. But their general purport is clear: they were an apologetic presentation of Jewish life, written to show the falsity of anti-Semitic calumnies. The Jews are good citizens and their manner of life is humanitarian. The Essene sect is a living proof of Jewish practical ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... easy in moot cases. Most persons will awake naturally at the end of a few minutes, or will fall into a natural sleep from which in an hour or two they will awake refreshed. Usually the operator simply says to the subject, "All right, wake up now," and claps his hands or makes some other decided noise. ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... genuine oak was cut down at the close of the last century, or was preserved, carefully fenced in and labeled, in an utterly leafless and shattered state, to our generation, is a moot point. Certain it is that the most ardent Shakespearean must abandon the hope of securing for a bookmark to his Merry Wives of Windsor one of the leaves that rustled, while "Windsor bell struck twelve," over the head of fat ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... of executive routine the sheriff alone was responsible; he collected the revenue, he led the militia, he organised the Watch and Ward and Hue and Cry which were the medieval equivalents for a constabulary; finally, he presided over the shire moot in which the freeholders gathered at stated intervals to declare justice and receive it. The shires were periodically visited by Justices in Eyre (analogous to the Frankish missi) who heard complaints against the sheriff, inspected his ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... the conventional mouse. To educate Albert, to raise him above his groove in life and develop his soul, appealed to her romantic nature as a worthy task, and as a good way of filling in the time. It is an exceedingly moot point—and one which his associates of the servants' hall would have combated hotly—whether Albert possessed a soul. The most one could say for certain is that he looked as if he possessed one. To one who saw his deep ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... sibilantly, and other people had whispered, in the long intervals of the organ. She had removed him from the church before the collection for the Red Cross, and when they had eaten a sort of dinner she had borne him away to the Russian dancers in the Moot Hall. ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... insulted us and will hear of it. But for that, Con would have manoeuvred against his wife to send him downstairs at the lady's heels. The fellow was a perfect riddle, hard to read as the zebra lines on the skin of a wild jackass—if Providence intended any meaning when she traced them! and it's a moot point: as it is whether some of our poets have meaning and are not composers of zebra. 'No one knows but them above!' he said aloud, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... moot question which is the more fatally fascinating: the uniformed nurse or the weeded ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... system of land-tenure. It was he who defined the relations established between Church and State, and decreed that in England churchman as well as baron was to be held under the Common law. It was he who preserved the traditions of self-government which had been handed down in borough and shire-moot from the earliest times of English history. His reforms established the judicial system whose main outlines have been preserved to our own day. It was through his "Constitutions" and his "Assizes" that it came ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... down to the present time it has been a moot question whether a vegetable or meat diet was best for man. Each side can present equally strong arguments; each can point to exceptional instances of physical development under the different methods; each can point to ill results that ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... at all times and be hidden. Of all that he experienced within his heart at this time not any part was visible to the brother who was his idle visitor; or perhaps only the least part, and that not until the moot point between them ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... can be proved to have been evolved, evolution seems to me a noble and beautiful and true theory. But a careful search has not shown me a single instance in which such proof as would stand the first shot of a boy lawyer in a moot court, has been brought forward in support of an actual ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... thought that you had just to moot the question And say you felt the closing hour had come And we should simply jump at your suggestion And all the Hague with overtures would hum; You'd but to call her up, And Peace would follow like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... It is a moot point whether the rhinoceros is or is not the unicorn of Scripture, though it is by no means clear that the animal in question was a one-horned creature, but according to some might have been the great wild ox or urus of Macedonia. An Indian single-horned ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... under its combined enactments, and possess such an unlimited independence in their individual States, that although the exclusion of the Cabinet is now very generally admitted to be an error, I saw no inclination to moot the question; probably, lest other questions affecting the slave and non-slave-holding States might be brought on the boards, and again disturb the bonds ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... friends in all parts of the country; and we notice that at every port where we stop Mrs. MacDonald has friends to visit—a cousin here, and an auntie there. The fancy bag in which you carry your calling cards and little friendly gifts up here is a "musky-moot"; the more formidable receptacle, which gives your friends warning that you may stay a day or two, is a "skin-ichi-mun." Visiting a little on our own account, we note that we have penetrated to a latitude into which the gaudy calendars of the advertiser ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... of this is a square enclosure for the vestrymen, whose names are written on the north side of the building. The reader, if acquainted with Virginia pedigrees, will recognize in them some of the oldest and most honorable names of the State—Thomas Fitzhugh, John Lee, Peter Hedgman, Moot Doniphan, John Mercer, Henry Tyler, William Mountjoy, John Fitzhugh, John Peyton. On the north hall are four large tablets containing Scriptural quotations. Directly beneath is a broad flagstone, on which is engraved with letters of gold, 'In memory ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... moot question whether Mr. Harrihan resembled his dog, or whether his dog resembled him. That there was a marked similarity admitted of no discussion. If Corp's nose had been encouraged and his lower jaw suppressed, if his intensely emotional nature had been under better ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone's be uglier by day or by night, but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the more shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imagination is at all ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... contends that there were five hundred and eighty-five guests. This, I think, may be treated as a moot point. ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward
... not so clear about that," said Lord Valentine; "that is the very point at issue. I do not think the great majority are the best judges of their own interests. At all events, gentlemen, the respective advantages of aristocracy and democracy are a moot point. Well then, finding the question practically settled in this country, you will excuse me for not wishing to agitate it. I give you complete credit for the sincerity of your convictions; extend the same confidence to me. You are democrats; I am an aristocrat. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... The poore Pedler, by name Iohn Law, being in the Castle about the Moot-hall, attending to be called, not well able to goe or stand, being led thether by his poore sonne Abraham Law: My Lord Gerrard[R3a] moued the Court to call the poore Pedler, who was there readie, and had attended all the Assizes, to giue euidence for the Kings Majestie against ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... which I have distinguished as the Imperial Parliament, which, it will be remembered, consists of the British Parliament with the Irish representatives summoned thereto. Whether the British Parliament has or has not any further powers is a moot question which I purposely leave for the moment untouched. What is admitted on all hands is that a Parliament in which Irish representatives have no voice whatever can legislate on every matter affecting England, Scotland, or the British Empire, ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... to be settled before I go," Benjulia proceeded. "Here are some papers, which I have received from your lawyer, Mr. Moot. They relate to a slander, which your wife ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... comedy of manners—and classical tragedy admitted no comic intermixture. Whether tragedy should be in rhyme, after the French manner, or in blank verse, after the precedent of the old English stage, was a moot point. Dryden at first argued for rhyme and used it in his "heroic plays"; and it is significant that he defended its use on the ground that it would act as a check upon the poet's fancy. But afterward he grew "weary of his much-loved ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... done; and think that I have said quite enough for the spuriousness of the Annals never to be hereafter argued as a moot point, but accepted as an established fact. I need not go into further consideration; because further consideration cannot give more weight to what has been put forward. I, therefore, pause, assured ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... unrecognizable in towns; inhabit the fringe of settlements and the deep, quiet places of the country; rebellious to all labour, and pettily thievish, like the English gipsies; rustically ignorant, but with a touch of wood-lore and the dexterity of the savage. Whence they came is a moot point. At the time of the war, they poured north in crowds to escape the conscription; lived during summer on fruits, wild animals, and petty theft; and at the approach of winter, when these supplies failed, built great fires in the forest, and there died stoically by starvation. ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... himself, in watching and observing the behaviour of some plant, or animal, or gas, or metal; and after repeated experiments, carefully designed to exclude all possibility of mistake, so far as he can foresee it, he at last believes he has really settled some moot point, and triumphantly publishes his final conclusions in a scientific journal. Ten to one, the very next number of that same journal contains a dozen supercilious letters from a dozen learned and high-salaried professors, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... manuscript extant, namely, the Cathach Psalter, now in the Museum of the Royal Irish Academy. Whether the essential and peculiar features of this ornamentation are purely indigenous, as Professor Westwood contends, or whether they are of Gallo-Roman origin, as Fleury argues, is a moot point, calling for complicated discussion which would be ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... question of the proximate physiological conditions of sleep is still far from being settled. Whether during sleep the blood-vessels of the brain are fuller or less full than during waking, is still a moot point. Also the qualitative condition of the blood in the cerebral vessels is still a ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... wrote his remarkable drama, 'The Satire of the Three Estates'—Monarch, namely, Barons, and Clergy. It is made up in nearly three equal parts of ingenuity, wit, and grossness. It is a drama, and was acted several times—first, in 1535, at Cupar-Fife, on a large green mound called Moot-hill; then, in 1539, in an open park near Linlithgow, by the express desire of the king, who with all the ladies of the Court attended the representation; then in the amphitheatre of St Johnston in Perth; and in 1554, at Edinburgh, in the village of Greenside, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... they have life and wit; and yesterday, upon Charlotte's raving against me upon a related enterprise, I told her, that I had had in debate several times, whether she were or were not too near of kin to me: and that it was once a moot point with me, whether I could not love her dearly for a month or so: and perhaps it was well for her, that another pretty little puss started up, and diverted me, just as I was entering ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... however, would not agree to giving up the shirts; loudly declaring that they belonged to the skin; and after some discussion on this moot point, his claim was allowed; and our adventurers were spared the shame of entering the Arab ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... or Asia in his backyard, nor a lifetime of leisure for research, for special learning, on the moot questions of church-scholarship. Progress consists in each man's doing his best to advance the interests of the kingdom of God in his own special sphere. From others he must take something for granted. The ear ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... actually explored the great river to its mouth is, among historians, still a moot point. It is supposed that early in his adventures he retraced his steps and returned to Canada, where, as well as in France, he had numerous detractors, among whom was De la Barre, the then Governor ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... It is a moot question whether, in making an earthwork embankment, dependence, as far as stanchness is concerned, should be placed upon the puddle wall alone or upon the embankments on either side, and especially upon the up-stream side in addition. Supposing the former idea prevails, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... my self has; and yet it has been taken for Tarracino and Taranto. I have a project to joyn Sicily to my lands on the continent, that when I have a mind to go into Africa, I may sail by my own coasts. But prithee Agamemnon tell me what moot-point was it you argued to day; for tho' I plead no causes my self, yet I have had a share of letters in my time; and that you may not think me sick of them now, have three libraries, the one Greek, the other two Latin; ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... moots. Why they called them a silly name like that, when "conferences" would have done just as well, one can't imagine; but they had their notions and stuck to them. They would have called Parliament a moot; in fact they did. They called it a moot of wise ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... allowed—and of course there was no knowing what effect the resistance of Dublin might have on the country—it may be a moot point whether it might not have been advisable to separate the two questions of the sentence of death and the actual executions, and one can well imagine the conciliatory effect of a Royal Act of Clemency in the event of maturer consideration making it ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... of Haykar and crying, "Alas, for me and woe worth the day for thee, O Caretaker of my capital and Councillor of my kingdom! Where shall I find one like unto thee, O Haykar? Harrow now for me, O Haykar, Oh Saviour of my secret and Manifester of my moot-points, where now shall I fare to find thee? Woe is me for sake of thee whom I slew and destroyed at the word of a silly boy! To him indeed who could bring Haykar before me or who could give me the glad tidings ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... this was a civil or criminal trial, but there was no doubt whatever of the existence of a trial of some kind; neither did there exist any doubt as to the importance of this, the first case the prosecuting attorney had ever tried, outside of moot courts. It was the first speech he had ever made in public, barring college "orations," carefully memorized, and an occasional Fourth of July speech, which might have been better for more memorizing. ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... bravery; unmetrical line of; on man's wretched lot; on modesty; on advantages of music; order of different kinds of exercises according to; on intercourse between men and their wives; calls salt divine; epithets applied to liquids by; a moot point in third book of Iliad; essay on life and poetry of; biographical sketch of; the two works of; metre and dialects used by; epithets used by; tropes found in; figures of speech in; various styles used by; on constitution of the universe; natural philosophy ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Folk-Moot.—Still another common way for two boys to decide a question about which they differ is to "leave it to the boys," some of whom are knowing to the facts and others not. Each of the disputants tells his story, subject to more or less interruption, and calls upon other boys to corroborate ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... information given by a chart with which they had been furnished. [**] This "open passage" can hardly refer to anything else than Torres Strait. But in that case it is clear that Jansz. cannot have solved the problem, but must have left it a moot point. At all events he sailed past the strait, through which a few months after him Luiz Vaez de Torres sailed from east ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... "upper class" and now their name would be formally recorded in the Stud Book, their money joined to land. Whether this was a little late in the day, and those rewards of the possessive instinct, lands and money, destined for the melting-pot—was still a question so moot that it was not mooted. After all, Timothy had said Consols were goin' up. Timothy, the last, the missing link; Timothy, in extremis on the Bayswater Road—so Francie had reported. It was whispered, too, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... seems a moot point whether a balloon caught in a thunderstorm is, or is not, in any special danger of being struck. It has been argued that immunity under such circumstances must depend upon whether a sufficiently long time has elapsed since ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... more readily, perhaps, as it seemed to him to oppose the uniformitarian idea. Gradually others fell in line, and after the usual imbittered controversy and the inevitable full generation of probation, the idea of an ice age took its place among the accepted tenets of geology. All manner of moot points still demanded attention—the cause of the ice age, the exact extent of the ice sheet, the precise manner in which it produced its effects, and the exact nature of these effects; and not all of these ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... this poem, he knew that the mastership or pupilship of Fra Lippo to Masaccio (called 'Guidi' in the poem), and vice versa, was a moot point; but in making Fra Lippi the master, he followed the best authority he had access to, the last edition of Vasari, as he stated in a Letter to the 'Pall Mall' at the time, in answer to M. Etienne {a writer in the 'Revue ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... aristocracy, in the sense at least in which that word is usually understood. If it were not a bad habit to moot cases on the supposed ruin of the constitution, I should be free to declare, that if it must perish, I would rather by far see it resolved into any other form, than lost in that austere and insolent domination. But, whatever my dislikes may be, my fears are not ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... dark, graceful ghost through the city streets, and the sight sent his heart plunging against his side like an inward sledge-hammer. Would one pulse in her heart stir ever so faintly at sight of him? Just as he asked himself the question, and was stepping forward to moot her, feeling very like the country swain in love—"hot and dry like, with a pain in his side like"—he suddenly stopped. Another figure came forth from the shadow of an opposite house, and softly pronounced her name. It was a short figure—a woman's figure. He could not see the face, and that ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... requires the teachings of St. Thomas, "the Angelical Doctor," to be maintained. But St. Thomas opposed the belief and doctrine of the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin Mary. In Solana's day the dogma of the immaculate conception had not yet been defined by the Church; it then was a moot question. But in that day the belief in and teaching of the immaculate conception was common, though not (as said) of duty—Dominicans only, one may say, holding to the contrary. The pupils, then, of Santo Tomas had to swear to uphold what was not common ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... recalls the wonders of old-time. It will be our endeavour to tell of the old country houses that Time has spared, the cottages that grace the village green, the stern grey walls that still guard some few of our towns, the old moot halls and public buildings. We shall see the old-time farmers and rustics gathering together at fair and market, their games and sports and merry-makings, and whatever relics of old English life have been left for ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... of her and helped her and been good to her. Was it all over? and no more such kindly ministry and delightful sympathy to be ever hoped for any more? Had Pitt forgotten her? It gave Esther pain, that nobody guessed, to be obliged to moot this question; and it busied her a good deal. Sometimes her thoughts went longingly back beyond Pitt Dallas to another face that had always been loving to her; soft eyes and a tender hand that were ever ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... having this object among others of a very pressing nature on his mind. His saddler had to be seen,—and threatened,—on a certain matter touching the horses' backs. A draught of hounds were being sent down to a friend in Scotland. And there was a Committee of Masters to sit on a moot question concerning a neutral covert in the XXX country, of which Committee he was one. But the desire to punish Slide was almost as strong in his indignant mind as those other matters referring more especially to the profession of his life. "Phineas," he said, "you ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... recall all of the notable marriages we had in New York three years ago," said I, after she had most engagingly reduced me to a state of subjection in the matter of three or four moot questions that came up for settlement. "You don't seem to fit in with any of the international affairs I ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... Negro has been a moot question for a generation past. But even to-day what do we find the general reliance of the American mind in determinating this question? Almost universally the resort is to material agencies! The ordinary, and sometimes the extraordinary American is unable to see that the struggle of a degraded ...
— Civilization the Primal Need of the Race - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Paper No. 3 • Alexander Crummell
... pabulum. subject, subject matter; matter, theme, [Grk], topic, what it is about, thesis, text, business, affair, matter in hand, argument; motion, resolution; head, chapter; case, point; proposition, theorem; field of inquiry; moot point, problem &c. (question) 461. V. float in the mind , pass in the mind &c. 451. Adj. thought of; uppermost in the mind; in petto. Adv. under consideration; in question, in the mind; on foot, on the carpet, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... town—a long, somewhat narrow parallelogram, enclosed on its longer side by old gabled houses; shut in on its western end by the massive bulk of the great parish church of St. Hathelswide, Virgin and Martyr, and at its eastern by the ancient walls and high roofs of its mediaeval Moot Hall. The inner surface of this space is paved with cobble-stones, worn smooth by centuries of usage: it is only of late years that the conservative spirit of the old borough has so far accommodated itself to modern requirements ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... to rescind a land grant made by a preceding Legislature. On any of three grounds Marshall might easily have disposed of this case before coming to the principal question. In the first place, it was palpably a moot case; that is to say, it was to the interest of the opposing parties to have the rescinding act set aside. The Court would not today take jurisdiction of such a case, but Marshall does not even suggest such a solution of the question, ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... in the abortive attempt of Catiline at revolution in 65, is a moot point. He was now aedile, and acquired great popularity by the splendid shows which he gave to the people, and by his restoration of the statue and trophies of Marius. In 64, as president of the quaestio de sicariis, ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... office had begun to improve. I had had my salary raised, and I had ceased doing janitor work. I had become more of a clerk and less of an office boy. A number of us "kids" had got up a moot court, rented a room to meet in, and finally obtained the use of another room in the old Denver University building, where, in the gaslight, we used to hold "quiz classes" and defend imaginary ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... of cultivation are followed, hence the old system of sowing seed by hand is discarded, and seed-planting machines are now coming into general use. The distance apart which the seeds (about five or six in one hole) should be set, is still a moot question, but it is generally admitted to be unsafe to plant at greater distances than 12 inches. When sown, a light covering is put over, and in a few days—about twelve generally—the tiny plants make their appearance. Two or three days after, another leaf ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... its franklin-owner, was the unit; the "thing", or hundred-moot, the primal organisation, and the "godord", or chieftainship, its tie. The chief who had led a band of kinsmen and followers to the new country, taken possession of land, and shared it among them, became their head-ruler and priest at home, speaker and president of ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... to be the Fact, how absurd must appear the Praises of such an Editor? It seems a moot Point, whether Mr. Pope has done most Injury to Shakespeare as his Editor and Encomiast; or Mr. Rymer done him Service as his Rival and Censurer. Were it every where the true Text, which That Editor ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... institutions which freemen have always and everywhere held fundamental. For a long time there has been no sufficient opportunity of counsel among the people; no place and method of talk, of exchange of opinion, of parley. Communities have outgrown the folk-moot and the town-meeting. Congress, in accordance with the genius of the land, which asks for action and is impatient of words,—Congress has become an institution which does its work in the privacy of committee rooms and not on the floor of ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... before I was old enough to be told anything like this that I began to feel that the moor was in secret my companion and friend, that it was not only the moot to me, but something else. It was like a thing alive—a huge giant lying spread out in the sun warming itself, or covering itself with thick, white mist which sometimes writhed and twisted itself into wraiths. First I noticed and liked it some day, perhaps, when it was purple and ...
— The White People • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... poetical characters were on the whole well attuned and harmonised. In Churchill, they came to an open rupture. In Parnell, they were neither ruptured nor reconciled, but maintained an ambiguous relation, till his premature death settled the moot ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... the word? Salvation means being safe. Are you safe? Am I safe? Is anybody safe standing in front of that awful law that rules the whole universe, 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap'? I am not going to talk about any of the moot points which this generation has such a delight in discussing, as to the nature, the duration, the purpose, or the like, of future retribution. All that I am concerned in now is that all men, deep down in the bottom of their consciousness—and you and I amongst the rest—know that there is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... men hold warring opinions. We have not even raised the question of laid or wove paper, nor of the intermixture of different series or sizes of types. In short, every phase of the subject bristles with moot points, the settlement of one of which in a given way may determine the settlement of ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... dolour. Message I bare to king Marsiliun; By my cunning I held myself secure. To that fighter Rollant my challenge threw, To Oliver, and all their comrades too; Charles heard that, and his noble baruns. Vengeance I gat, but there's no treason proved." Answered the Franks: "Now go we to the moot. ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... is to state facts, rather than to moot theories, I leave this debatable ground to others, and here close a narrative, compiled with much care, of this interesting and instructive case. I was the rather disposed to examine it critically and report it in detail, because it seems to suggest valuable hints, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... money for the dog, which is what I never had refused before in the provinces north of Suse; but he declined the offer, saying he was more than recompensed already by the establishment of the port of Santa Cruz. "Myself, my family, my kabyl," said he, "hail you as a father; (e moot alik) they will die in your cause." No favour could have equalled that of re-establishing the commerce of Agadeer. These circumstances serve to show what reception might be expected from these people, if the British Government would negociate ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... the working hypothesis that Mrs. Hallam was a polished liar in most respects, but had told the truth, so far as concerned her statement to the effect that the gladstone bag contained valuable real property (whose ownership remained a moot question, though Kirkwood was definitely committed to the belief that it was none of Mrs. Hallam's or her son's): he reasoned that the two adventurers, with Dorothy and their booty, would attempt to leave London by a water route, in the ship, ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... wrestled better than I, the master, though a tall and tolerably robust fellow, found the feat considerably more difficult than he could have supposed. We swayed from side to side of the school-room, now backwards, now forwards, and for a full minute it seemed to be rather a moot point on which side the victory was to incline. At length, however, I was tripped over a form; and as the master had to deal with me, not as master usually deals with pupil, but as one combatant deals with another, whom he has to beat into submission, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... are regarded as small of stature, in Celtic countries the fay proper, as distinct from the brownie and such goblins, is of average mortal height, and this would seem to be the case in Brittany. Whether the gorics and courils of Brittany, who seem sufficiently small, are fairies or otherwise is a moot point. They seem to be more of the field spirit type, and are perhaps classed more correctly with the gnome race; we thus deal with them in our chapter on sprites and demons. It would seem, too, as if there might be ground for the belief ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... moot point whether the Browning or the Dickens is Chesterton's best work of literary criticism. The Dickens is the more popular, largely because Dickens is the more popular author. Most Dickens idolators read anything ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... attorney-general in 1864. A fearless and upright leader, and a good orator, he did much for the moulding of a united Canada. He is also famed as a writer of French lyrics, which were published in 1875, two years after his death. Whether the stamps ever got beyond the proposal stage is a moot point but at any rate a list of chosen subjects was ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... air "The Ash Grove" is but another version of the same tune; but whether the Welsh derived the air from England or vice versa is a moot point. The matter is discussed, at some length, in Chappell's "Popular Music of the Olden Time," p. 665, to ...
— The Morris Book • Cecil J. Sharp
... laid his theories regarding the interchange of mammalian life between America and Asia during the early Pleistocene period, before Meeteetse Ed, Old Man Rulison, Tubbs, and others, in the same language in which he would have argued moot questions with colleagues engaged in similar research. The language of learning was as natural to McArthur as the vernacular of the West was to Tubbs, and in moments of excitement he lapsed into it as a foreigner does into his native tongue under ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... during which we fixed up a good many moot points, went on to see General d'Amade. Unluckily he had just left to go on to the Flagship to see me. I did not like to visit the French front in his absence, so took notes of the Turkish defences on "V" and had a second and a more thorough inspection of the beach, ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... signature—and in an article espousing the side of France in the Alsace-Lorraine controversy? Perhaps not—unless you understand the feeling of the actual possessor and the aspirant to possession of border and other moot territories. "By their spelling ye shall know them!" is their cry. Later, I happened to be in America when that dear good faithful copy-reader changed my Bizerte to the dictionary's Bizerta in an article on Tunis, and was able to go to ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... Rosa, who had likewise unraveled it to mamma, and, as she kept nothing from Vincent, the Atterburys had that sort of interest in Kate that intimate spectators always show in love affairs, where there are no clashing interests involved. It was a moot question, however, between the three, when, after weeks of observation, Mrs. Atterbury declared that Jack was not in love with Miss Boone. "He can't be," she declared. "He doesn't seek her alone; he doesn't make up to her in the evening. Half the time ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... We do not know enough about what constitutes 'objective material reality,' nor about what are the laws of prophetic ecstasy and vision, to discuss such a question as that. Nor is there any need to moot it. It does not matter one rush whether bystanders would have seen anything or not. It does not matter in the least whether there was any actual excitation of auditory or visual nerves. It does not matter whether there was anything which people are contented to call material—a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... struck me as a man of great clearness of vision, middle-sized, straight as a dart, with an eagle face grained and coloured like an old walnut. The whole of the staff work is, as experts assure me, moot ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Witenagemot—a Council composed of "Witan" or "Wise Men."] were heard of no more. The life of the early English State had been in its "folk-moot," and hence rested upon the individual English freeman, who knew no superior but God, and the law. Now, he had sunk into the mere "villein," bound to follow his lord to the field, to give him his personal ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... 'at I had broucht her up the stair—an' says she, layin' her han' upo' my airm wi' a clap, as gien her an' me was to be freen's upo' sic a gran' foondation o' dirt as that!—says she, makin' a laich toot moot o' 't,—'He's Lord Lossie's!' says she, an' maks a face 'at micht hae turnt a cat sick—only by guid luck I had nae feelin's. 'An' nae suner's my leddy deid nor her man follows her!' says she. 'An' what do ye mak o' that?' says she. 'Ay, what do ye mak o' ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... have submitted this brain-wave, says that the first job to employ Snaggs on will be calling on the Bank Manager to arrange about the overdraft which neither of us has so far had the courage to moot. But that, I am afraid, would inspire him with foolish doubts as to the stability of his princely salary. Perhaps it will be best if, before actually engaging Snaggs, I convert myself into a limited company, "for the purpose of acquiring and enlarging the business and goodwill ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... the question of success.—When I moot that question—upon what reposes the success of Hungary, it always occurs to my mind that the last Administration of the United States sent a gentleman over to Europe during the Hungarian struggle, not with orders to ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... ignore the question of war. I have lived a longish life and have heard our ministers preach on universal peace hardly half a dozen times. Twenty years ago, in a drawing room, I dared in the presence of forty persons to moot the proposition that war was incompatible with Christianity; I was regarded as an arrant fanatic. The idea that we could get on without war was regarded as unmitigated weakness ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... and Will mechanically pushed down his spectacles and dipped a pen in ink, slewing the register round for the guest's signature. He says he knew at a glance that The Mysterious Stranger was no travelling man, but this is a moot point, Tracey's memory being minutely accurate and at ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance |
