"Negative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the service of the Holy Sepulchre had become a legend, and the name of Crusade a byeword for whatever enterprises are most impractical and visionary, the answer must be, that they affected Europe chiefly in a negative sense and through indirect channels. They helped to discredit the conception of the Church militant; they relieved Europe of a surplus population of feudal adventurers; and they accelerated the impoverishment of those other feudal families which took ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... from the other Church authorities, it would be known that he had been selected for political office by "the mouthpiece of the Almighty." I cited the case of Apostle Moses Thatcher as proof that the Church did exercise power openly to negative an apostle's ambition. If it failed now to rebuke Smoot, this very failure would be an affirmative use of its power in his behalf; all Mormons who did not wish to raise their hands "against the Lord's anointed," would have to support Smoot's legislative ticket, ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... bestowers of unmerited deformity, the framers of advertisements for the apprehension of delinquents, a sincere desire of promoting the end of public justice induces me to address a word to them on the best means of attaining those ends. I will endeavor to lay down a few practical, or rather negative, rules for their use, for my ambition extends no further than to arm them with cautions against the self-defeating ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... negative, and the conversation was kept up for two or three hours, in the course of which I mentioned the quack ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... independent though in office, and invariable in pursuing the interest of his country. It must be owned, for the honour of North Britain, that all her representatives, except two, warmly contended for this national measure, which was carried in the negative by a majority of one hundred and six, though the bill was exactly modelled by the late act of parliament for the establishment of ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... in my experience, is invariably stern, and 'in the negative': in tolerant moments compromising on 'Wait, like a good boy, ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Electricity. The Accumulator. Accumulator Plates. The Grid. The Negative Pole. Connecting Up the Plates. Charging the Cells. The Initial ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... several volumes of "The Spectator" and "Roderick Random." Of the former I read a good deal. The latter was a story which a boy who had scarcely read any other would naturally follow with interest. Two circumstances connected with the reading, one negative and the other positive, I recall. Looking into the book after attaining years of maturity, I found it to contain many incidents of a character that would not be admitted into a modern work. Yet I read it through without ever noticing or retaining any impression ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... marries the hero, or she marries the villain; and often there is a third possibility, that she marries neither. If he has provided a proper plot, the author has but little to do with making the surprise genuine, and that little is rather negative. He opens the possibility of the hero doing any one of a number of things, and he may even give rather broad hints, but he should take care never to give a clue to the outcome of the story, unless ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... judgement of Horace nor the pure fervour of Persius. He is more positive than the former, more negative than the latter. But he has lived in a sense in which Persius never had, and possesses the gift of direct and lucid expression; therefore, when he strikes, he strikes home. He cannot, like Horace, 'play about the hearts of men,' ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... power and in an exaggerated form the conviction that there was something wrong in the social order, which was suggested by the conditions of the time and was to bear fruit in later days. Satire, however, is by its nature negative; it does not present a positive ideal, and tends to degenerate into mere hopeless pessimism. Lofty poetry can only spring from ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... Patriarchal Family.—It is well, however, to consider not only the negative but the affirmative side of the social inheritance of the patriarchal family, in which has grown up and developed the ideal of monogamic marriage. What did the father gain, intellectually and ethically, from ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... you see, Cherry, you should not have put the negative sign to that equation. My dear ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and Helena Belmont had behaved themselves, and, more particularly, if she had been outside the house without an attendant; he never failed to ask this when he had been away from the house for twenty-four hours. Magdalena replied in the negative, and did not feel called upon to confess her minor sins. She had a conscience, but she had also a strong distaste ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... she was summoned to Mr. Dinsmore's presence,—in the library as before,—again asked if she were ready to obey, and on answering in the negative was told that, such being the case, she was to be sent to Oakdale as a boarding scholar, and not to return home at all until ready to give up her wilfulness and ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... floor, and which came after the lunch. These were such a bother on my table that I pasted two strips of tinfoil on the wall at my desk, connecting one piece to the positive pole of the big battery supplying current to the wires and the negative pole to the other strip. The cockroaches moving up on the wall would pass over the strips. The moment they got their legs across both strips there was a flash of light and the cockroaches went into gas. This automatic electrocuting ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... doubtful," he said to me, "whether or not you have consented to evil, always take the doubt for a negative, and for this reason. A true and full consent of the will is necessary to form a real grave sin, there being no sin in what is not voluntary. Now full consent is so clear that there can never be left in the mind a shadow of doubt about ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... permanent value to its literature." At that early period a discriminating critic bears testimony, "that his piety, pure, deep, tender, serene and warm, took hold of positive principles of light and beneficence, not the negative ones of darkness and depravity, and—himself a child of light—he preached the ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... of bringing us misfortune it brought us comfort. Did we ever tell you about that, Mr. Garth?" asked Sara; then, as he gave a negative sign, she ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... known in musical history as the writer of dozens of sonatas in which the melody is supported from beginning to end by an extremely familiar formula of arpeggio accompaniment, consequently known as the Alberti bass. He thus shows how advanced was the decay ofpolyphonic sensibility (as a negative preparation for the advent of the sonata-style) already during the lifetime of Bach. His works have no other special qualities, though it is probable that Mozart's first violin sonatas, written at the age of seven, were modelled on Alberti in ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... PROOF that Chaucer was a married man before 1374, when he is known to have received a pension for his own and his wife's services. But with this negative result we are asked not to be poor-spirited enough to rest content. At the opening of his "Book of the Duchess," a poem certainly written towards the end of the year 1369, Chaucer makes use of certain expressions, both very pathetic and very definite. The most obvious ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... is essential to sin to be against God's law, for this is part of its definition, as is clear from what has been said (Q. 71, A. 6). Now in God's law, the affirmative precepts, against which is the sin of omission, are different from the negative precepts, against which is the sin of omission. Therefore sins of omission and ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... same time, always, overhead, there is the eternal, negative radiance of the snows. Beneath is life, the hot jet of the blood playing elaborately. But above is the radiance of changeless not-being. And life passes away into this changeless radiance. Summer and the prolific blue-and-white ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... so legislate, that is, it may have acts and records, but each other State SHALL give to the records and proceedings of all the rest 'full faith and credit.' Does not this enactment thoroughly negative all theories of the exclusive supremacy of State rights? Independent sovereign States do not, in the absence of treaties, give any faith or credit to the records or proceedings of other independent states. Our States are not only compelled to do this, by this section, but must do so in accordance ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... but made none of the negative protestations usual on such occasions. He asked me ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... these, that "it is indestructible by any operation to which it can be subjected in the ordinary course of circumstances observed at the surface of the globe."[1] The very utmost which any man can assert in this matter is a negative, a want of knowledge, or a want of power. He can say, "Human power can not destroy matter;" and, if he pleases, he may reason thence that human power did not create it. But to assert that matter is eternal because man can not destroy it, is as if a child should try to beat the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... as a trumpet note—a defiant negative hurled at the Force of the Universe. And Charles-Norton began to race around the fountain, striking with his right fist his left hand, muttering unintelligible and tremendous protests. You see, his wings ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... approach nearer and nearer as we descend in temperature, approximating to the value 4. Other metals were tested in order to determine if their atomic heats approximated to this value at low temperatures, but with negative results. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... all former feasts whole leagues behind. HE rises to propose a toast. It is, The Father of Todgers's. It is their common friend Jink—it is old Jink, if he may call him by that familiar and endearing appellation. The youngest gentleman in company utters a frantic negative. He won't have it—he can't bear it—it mustn't be. But his depth of feeling is misunderstood. He is supposed to be a little elevated; and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... with look downcast. His firmness was not shaken; he had no inclination to reconsider his decision, but he was deeply moved by the emotion of the other. He could not bear to meet pleading so affectionate with a cold negative. ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... she loved her husband, she derived a certain negative happiness from the fact that their exclusive ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... with death in all its forms, is the dreamland of the saints. His political principles, roughly speaking, are England was decent once—let us apply the same recipe to the England of to-day. His suggestions, therefore, are rather negative than positive. He would dam the flood of modern legislative tendencies because it is taking England farther away from his Middle Ages. But he will not say "do this" about anything, because in the ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... treated; and, without at the time having any suspicion of what I now take to be the fact, {346} I determined, if possible, to find it out. The first question I put to myself was, Had Shakspeare himself any concern in the older play? A second glance at the work sufficed for an answer in the negative. I next asked myself on what authority we called it an "older" play. The answer I found myself obliged to give was, greatly to my own surprise, On no authority whatever! But there was still a difficulty in conceiving how, with Shakspeare's work before him, so unscrupulous an imitator should ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 22., Saturday, March 30, 1850 • Various
... and when he had gained the room where the members were assembled he reduced the whole company to perplexity by asking each in turn whether he had cast a black ball. Of course the answer was in the negative in every case, and the triumphant bully naturally claimed that he had consequently been elected unanimously. Proceeding to make himself at home, and to order numerous bottles of champagne, which the waiters were too frightened ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... could adequately meet; the country, in her adverse hour, must have his services; the King desired them, solicited them. With a remarkable degree of reticence he declined all these overtures, and in a letter addressed to his sovereign gave a most respectful, but decided negative. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... answer in the negative, and the other seemed a little doubtful. "Look," said Constans, and, drawing rein, he took aim at a beech-tree a few yards distant. The bullet ploughed into the wood, leaving a small, round hole in the smooth bark. "See ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... this cartoon suggest? I am asked and I ask myself. At first very little, almost nothing, only uninteresting, ugly death, gloomy, ghastly, dismal, but dull and largely featureless, blank and negative. Has the artist's power failed him? No, it is strongly drawn. Has his inspiration? What does it mean? Is it indeed meant? As I gaze and pore on it longer, I seem to see that it is just in this blank negation that its strength and its suggestion lie. It is meant. It has ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... to approach the bar and Blacky, having a leisure moment, came forward and stood ready to serve him. A short nod of greeting passed between the three, and Blacky placed a bottle on the bar and reached for a glass. Dakota made a negative sign with his head—short ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Alone In the Course of Ultimate Extinction Institution of Slavery in the States Where it Exists It Will Become All One Thing, or All the Other Kingcraft Lincoln and Douglas Debates Man Cannot Prove a Negative Mexico Nationalization of Slavery Negro Cannot Make a Choice No Legal Power to Choose No Wrong Without its Remedy People Were Better off for Being Ridden Perfect an Understanding Without Talking ...
— Widger's Quotations from Abraham Lincoln's Writings • David Widger
... side with the negative change involved in the abolition of the old punishments, there had been in progress, throughout the intervening centuries, a positive development of far worse omen for the hapless sailor-man. The root-principle ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... neither from the temptation to indulge even in such mild neologisms as they might have learnt from the elder brother's master, Nanino, nor from the necessity of preserving their purity of style by a mortified negative asceticism. They wrote pure polyphony because they understood it and loved it, and hence their work lives, as neither the progressive work of their own day nor the reactionary work of their imitators could live. The 12-part Stabat Mater in the seventh volume of Palestrina's complete works ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... in the negative, and in the examination of a few articles that were being prepared for her bridal-day she gradually forgot all unpleasant misgivings, and nothing but happiness could ...
— Town and Country, or, Life at Home and Abroad • John S. Adams
... independence, six Colonies were in the affirmative and six in the negative; how Pennsylvania was brought over to vote for independence, by one of its members being induced to absent himself; and how the votes of other Colonies were obtained for the affirmative (in a ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... much debate, that the voyage should be continued, and that during our stay in Matanzas my cousin Pedro should remain hidden on board. The next mooted point was whether to conceal the matter from the crew, and decided in the negative; so the men were called aft, and the truth briefly stated to them. One and all swore to be faithful and discreet—and so they proved. With one or two exceptions our crew were Yankees, and of a far higher grade than ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... fellow by nature, a politician by circumstances, a boss by evolution, and a grafter by choice. He became grand sachem of Tammany and chairman of the general committee. This committee he ruled with blunt directness. When he wanted a question carried, he failed to ask for the negative votes; and soon he was called "the Boss," a title he never resented, and which usage has since fixed in our politics. So he ruled Tammany with a high hand; made nominations arbitrarily; bullied, bought, and traded; became ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... photographer may within certain limits correct the effects of an over or under exposure; but you have all, doubtless, found out that there is a correct exposure, and that you cannot trespass very far on either side of it without sacrificing something in the resulting negative. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... Nicholas Moore in a letter to The Athenaeum, June 10, 1882 and in his article on Wagstaffe in the DNB. Paul V. Thompson, "Swift and the Wagstaffe Papers," Notes and Queries, 175 (1938), 79, supports the notion of Wagstaffe as an understrapper of Swift. The negative part of Dilke's thesis is perhaps the more plausible. A Comment Upon Tom Thumb, as Dilke himself confesses (Papers, p. 377), scarcely sounds very ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... he had not produced a pleasant impression. Without intention, he had treated young Van Ariens with that negative politeness which dashes a sensitive man and makes him resentfully conscious that he has been rendered incapable of doing himself justice. And Rem could neither define the sense of humiliation he felt, nor yet ruffle the courteous urbanity of Hyde; ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... was in the negative. Magdalen requested that the subject on which she was asked to decide might be mentioned to her in writing. She engaged to reply in the same way, on the understanding that Mrs. Wragge, and not the servant, should be employed to ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... John's frame. It is as if he has been given the negative and positive ends of a battery. He believes that his mother is here, in this city. Can that have anything to do with ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... contained in that act, was subjected to the pains of treason. The king, therefore, needed only propose to any one a question with regard to the legality of either of his first marriages: if the person were silent, he was a traitor by law: if he answered either in the negative or in the affirmative, he was no less a traitor. So monstrous were the inconsistencies which arose from the furious passions of the king and the slavish submission of his parliaments. It is hard to say whether these ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... he said, so momentous and important was the affair; and when he did reply, his counsel was entirely opposed to what many hoped, and Ferdinand expected. Indignant as he declared himself to be, at the abuses in religion, he yet put a strong and most decided negative on the royal proposition, of utterly exterminating this unlawful tribunal. With all his natural eloquence, and in most forcible language, he declared that, if kept within proper bounds, restrained by due authority, and its proceedings open to the inspection ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... counsel—whereat Steggars looked very dismal indeed, and knowing the state of his exchequer, imagined himself already on shipboard, on his way to Botany Bay. Old Mr. Quirk asked him if he had no friends who would raise a trifle for a "chum in trouble,"—and on Mr. Steggars answering in the negative, he observed the enthusiasm of the respectable old gentleman visibly and rapidly ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... good. 'I take down my violin,' he continued, 'and play them a few tunes, which gives me an opportunity of seeing that they get no more liquor than necessary for refreshment; and if the young people propose a dance, I seldom answer in the negative; nevertheless, when I announce time for return, they are ever ready to obey my commands.' The Archdeacon appears to have been a broad-minded man, for he did not reprimand Mr. Carter at all; and as there seems to have been no mention of an increased stipend, the parson publican must ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... pointing into his open mouth and gazed delightedly at the patting of the stomach. Apparently, however, he could discover nothing amiss with the belt buckle or any of the accoutrements that adorned the person of the new-found recruit. He shook his head in a negative way. ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... accordance with natural law. Just what this law was, they left largely to the common sense of each man to determine. As a result, the positive side of Deism, as the body of the new teachings was called, was lost in vagueness, and the negative side —the mere denial of orthodox Christianity—became uppermost in ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... duty toward an unseen maker—was but an old-wives'-fable; and that, as to the hereafter, a mere cessation of consciousness was the only reasonable expectation. The testimony of his senses, although negative, he accepted as stronger on that side than any amount of what could, he said, be but the purest assertion on the other. Why should he heed an old book? why one more than another? The world was around ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... frequently have outbursts of temper, and her brother would tie her down during these attacks to prevent her from injuring members of the family. Physical examination on the first admission was negative. Mentally she complained of being nervous and easily awakened at night; consciousness was clear; she was well oriented; no hallucinations or delusions could be elicited. Intellectually she appeared to be above the average negro in intelligence; she read and wrote, spelled correctly and used ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... absence of restraint is, however, a merely negative thing; it is a "being let alone." Some great writers, John Stuart Mill for example, treat it as though it had only this negative character, and as though to be let alone were necessarily and in itself ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... with the microscope, it frequently occurs that the operator, instead of devoting a negative to each of two or more similar objects for comparison, printing both upon the same print, prefers to have the whole series upon one negative, and taking from this a single print. There is often room for two or more ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... fluid is necessary, and that each person may eventually find his or her hypnotizer, even when numerous attempts at inducing sleep have failed. However this may be, the impossibility some individuals find in inducing sleep in trained subjects, proves at least the existence of a negative force." ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... leant towards him, and made an inquiry which was answered by a sign in the negative. Then taking up some memoranda, Mr. Crabbe announced that as far as he could yet discover, the brother and five sisters would divide about 120,000 pounds between them, so that each of the ladies had 30,000 ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as we can gather it, was rather negative than positive. In the speculative treatise which he has left us, 'On the Nature of the Gods', he examines all the current creeds of the day, but leaves his ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... a superficies of 15x20 centimeters, and is cut out of the ordinary commercial sheet metal. It may be turned upside down when one end has become worn away, thus permitting of its being entirely utilized. The negative electrode is formed of four carbons, which have, each of them, a superficies of 8x21 centimeters. These four carbons are less fragile and are more easily handled than two having the same surface. Their arrangement is shown at the left of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... which is given in Utopia to the child who seeks to gratify his desire for knowledge, is positive as well as negative. When the obstacles which education usually places in his path have been removed, it is found that the whole atmosphere of the school is favourable to the growth of his inquisitive instinct. At every ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... the instances of its application; the questions we have rather to ask are: Can a practical instrument be made which will serve all these purposes? Has such an instrument been already put upon the market? If I have to answer these questions in the negative, it is rather a doubtful negative, for the instrument I have to show you to-night goes so far, and suggests so many modifications and possibilities, which would take it so much further, that it is very close to bringing the practical ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... all sides; but every answer was in the negative, and we stood there by our troopers and chargers in the darkness, listening to the wild excitement from ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... asked but eight pounds a year. The next question was, what work she could do to deserve such wages? to which she answered, she could clean a house, or dress a common family dinner. But cannot you wash, replied my sister, or get up linen? she answered in the negative, and said, she would undertake neither, nor would she go into a family that did not put out their linen to wash, and hire a charwoman to scour. She desired to see the house, and having carefully surveyed ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... friars (the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, and Carmelites) issued a protest. Fortunately in their spirited reply they give the reasons on account of which they are supposed to have shared in the rising. These were principally negative. Thus it was stated that their influence with the people was so great that had they ventured to oppose the spirit of revolt their words would have been listened to (Fasciculi Zizaniorum, p. 293). The ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett
... expression of this desire. His first questions to Glastonbury were ever the same. 'Had he heard anything? Were there any letters? He thought there might be a letter, was he sure? Had he sent to Bath; to London, for his letters?' When he was answered in the negative, he usually dwelt no more upon the subject. One morning he said to Glastonbury, 'I know Katherine ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... maddening at times to have so many good uses for money, and to be unable to command it at the crucial moment. He had approached Eugene Larue on that past Sunday afternoon, only to find him cautiously negative where once ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... surely be regarded as an example of Uplift, and is even, in a manner of speaking, a high-brow. Above all, I shall probably make generalisations that are much too general; and are insufficient through being exaggerative. To this sort of doubt all my impressions are subject; and among them the negative generalisation with which I shall begin this rambling ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... Mr. Kent thought resembled the call of the natives, but which the soldiers positively declared to be the voice of a white man. On their return to their companions, they asked if any sounds had caught their ears, to which they replied in the negative. The wind was blowing from the E.S.E., in which direction Captain Barker had gone; and, to me, the fact of the nearer party not having heard that which must have been his cries for assistance, is satisfactorily accounted ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt
... defect, pretended in our law, that it hath provided no remedy for lies and fillips, it may receive like answer. It would have been thought a madness amongst the ancient lawgivers to have set a punishment upon the lie given, which in effect is but a word of denial, a negative of another's saying. Any lawgiver, if he had been asked the question, would have made Solon's answer: That he had not ordained any punishment for it, because he never imagined the world would have been so fantastical as to take it so highly. The civilians dispute ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... nor agreeable to the principles of this free constitution to vest in any person or persons not particularly named and approved of in Parliament the important offices of Regent of these kingdoms and guardian of the royal offspring heirs to the crown." But "it passed in the negative," probably, if we may judge by other divisions on motions made by the same party, by ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... darkness is unutterable. So maddening now becomes the mystery that men are compelled to construct an Environment for themselves. No Environment here is unthinkable. An altar of some sort men must have— God, or Nature, or Law. But the anguish of Atheism is only a negative proof of man's incompleteness. Natural ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... of Austria goaded the Swiss to rebellion, do not once mention Tell's name, or betray the slightest acquaintance with his exploits or with his existence. In the Zurich chronicle of 1479 he is not alluded to. But we have still better negative evidence. John of Winterthur, one of the best chroniclers of the Middle Ages, was living at the time of the battle of Morgarten (1315), at which his father was present. He tells us how, on the evening of that dreadful day, he saw Duke Leopold himself in his flight from the fatal field, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... negative; but it showed only the door of the Grey Room, half opened. Then I left the house, as I wanted to get certain matters and implements that might be necessary to life; perhaps to the spirit; for I intended to spend the coming ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... all your negative qualities for granted," she said curtly. "I have no doubt that there are many things which you do not do. Let us confine ourselves to issues of definite importance. What is it, if you have no objection to concentrating your attention on that for a moment, that you ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... can no more prove a universal negative about them than I can about the existence of life on the moon. But I do say that this contempt for that which has been already discovered-this carelessness about induction from the normal phenomena, coupled with this hankering after theories built upon exceptional ones-this ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... own philosophy. I had grown to disbelieve impartially in all; and if in the atlas of the sciences there were two charts I disbelieved in more than all the rest, they were politics and morals. I had a sneaking kindness for your vices; as they were negative, they flattered my philosophy; and I called them almost virtues. Well, Otto, I was wrong; I have forsworn my sceptical philosophy; and I perceive your faults to be unpardonable. You are unfit to be a Prince, unfit to be a husband. And I give you my word, I ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reasons, and not negative reasons, ought to be given in support of a measure which regulates the hours of adult labour—that you ought to show, not that it will do no harm, but that good will come from it. There are, of course, such reasons in support of this Bill, but they are so obvious that they ...
— Liberalism and the Social Problem • Winston Spencer Churchill
... noun, or it may be explained: not is darkness. It cannot be objected to the latter view that, in that case, [Hebrew: aiN] should rather have stood; while the analogy of the phrase: "Not didst thou increase the joy," in chap. ix. 2 (3), seems to be in favour of it. Here we have the negative, the ceasing of darkness; in chap. ix. 1 (2) the positive, the appearance of light. The suffix, in [Hebrew: lh] refers, just as the suffix, in [Hebrew: bh] in ver. 21, to the omitted [Hebrew: arC].—The [Hebrew: k] in [Hebrew: ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... little decaying country towns are seized on with avidity and exhibited on the stage in every kind of decay and human futility and meanness. Well, it is good to be chastened in spirit, but it is a thousand times better to be invigorated in spirit. To be positive is always better than to be negative. These writers understand and sympathize with Ireland more through their lower nature than their higher nature. Judging by the things people write in Ireland, and by what they go to see performed on the stage, it is more pleasing to them to see enacted characters they know are meaner than themselves ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... is almost always followed by ne without pas, because ne is only attended by its intensifying particle pas when used as the sole negative in the clause, without any accompanying rien, jamais, aucun, etc. Here, therefore, there should be no pas. Its introduction creates a sort of anacoluthon, and throws great ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... she did not know it, had himself been a candidate for the situation of clerk; and intended probably to keep the equation precisely as it was with respect to the allowance of credit, only to change places with the handsome lady—keeping her on the negative side, himself on the affirmative—an arrangement that you know could have made no sort of pecuniary difference ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... changed? I answer unequivocally, yea, a thousand times, yea. A negative answer would be the quintessence of ignorance. From a recent careful survey of every Southern state through nearly one hundred trusty observers, I have the testimony that the young women are pure in large numbers, and are rapidly increasing in an intense desire and determination ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... a shake negative, to which the Cavaliere responded by a long, melancholy sigh. "But her mother is determined to force matters," ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... and it is a great glory of your country that it is true. It is a fact which entitles to the hope that your nation will revive the law of Christ, even on earth. However, the guarantee which your Constitution affords to religious liberty is but a negative part of a Christian government. There are, besides that, positive duties to be fulfilled. He who does no violence to the conscience of man, has but the negative merit of a man doing no wrong; but as he who does not murder, does not steal, and does not covet what ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... whom I had met at the picnic, and whose vigils I had shared in the sick-room of her father. Then, even in her moments of greatest sorrow or fright or anxiety, she was all life and thought and keenness. Now she was generally distraite, and at times in a sort of negative condition as though her mind—her very being—was not present. At such moments she would have full possession of observation and memory. She would know and remember all that was going on, and had gone on around her; but her coming back to her old self had to me something the sensation ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... you think of our baths?" said my lovely neighbour; "for of course you have already been immersed in, and have tasted the waters." I humbly alleged the negative. "Well! I declare this phlegme Britannique is insupportable. Why, sir, we were at the bath-house before ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... deciding in his mind to what end he had amassed it. None of his various schemes is thus completed, none of them gets the full advantage of the profusion of life which he commands. At any moment great masses of that life are being wasted, turned to no account; and the result is not merely negative, for at any moment the wasted life, the stuff that is not being used, is dividing and weakening the effect of the picture created out of the rest. That so much remains, in spite of everything, gives the measure of Tolstoy's genius; ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... got to hurting him he don't know when him and the cook would have had their turn at Rosy. 'Course they wanted a turn on account of the tobacco and the dinner, not to mention the stone bruises. When all hands was through, that photographer was a spiled negative. ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... the factors capable of making an impression on the minds of crowds all mention of reason might be dispensed with, were it not necessary to point out the negative ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... screens has made it possible to photograph colors which formerly indicated no contrast with white back grounds in the negative and later in ...
— Forty Centuries of Ink • David N. Carvalho
... of how a man has no soul, no consciousness after death; that to the Buddhist 'dead men rise up never,' and that those who go down to the grave are known no more. I read that all that survives is the effect of a man's actions, the evil effect, for good is merely negative, and that this is what causes pain and trouble to the next life. Everything changes, say the sacred books, nothing lasts even for a moment. It will be, and it has been, is the life of man. The life that lives tomorrow in the next incarnation is no more the life that died in ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... adjectives, both primative and derivative. The latter are formed from every part of speech by invariable rules: As, from tue the earth, comes tuetu terrestrial; from quimen to know, quimchi wise; and these, by the interposition of no, become negative, as tuenotu not terrestrial, quimnochi ignorant. The adjectives, participles, and derivative pronouns are unsusceptible of number or gender, in which they resemble the English; yet when it is necessary ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... and are the evident and successful result of study. The bronze, of which the statue and bas-reliefs are composed, being covered with a fine green patina (which has apparently been superinduced), would have assimilated very well with the sort of grave, negative colour of the Scotch granite, of which the pedestal is formed, had the rock on which the Duke stands been of bronze, as well as the statue and personifications of the seasons which are designed to group with it. This rock ought certainly not to have been of Scotch granite. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... invisible blent these two hitherto widely separated souls into one, even as the positive electricity leaps through the spaces to find the negative, and when met, dissolves the separateness into a harmonious oneness which can never be sundered. The unsophisticated Indian maiden went her way, thrilling with the thought that her heart is in his bosom, and his in hers, useless one without ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... in the fragment an example bearing out his theory of the development of the epic. "The qualities which difference it from Beowulf," he says, "are mainly negative; it lacks sentiment, moralizing, the leisure of the writer; it did not attempt probably to cover more than a single event; and one will not err in finding it a fair type of the epic songs which roving singers were wont to sing before lord and liegeman in hall and which were used ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... discussion, the Brethren frequently consulted the Lot. The method was to place three papers in a box, and then appoint someone to draw one out. If the paper was positive, the resolution was carried; if the paper was negative, the resolution was lost; if the paper was blank, the resolution was laid on the table. The weightiest matters were settled in this way. At one Synod the Lot decided that George Waiblinger should be entrusted ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... station of life she had been brought up. She certainly adapted herself well to whatever society she happened to be with; neither patricians nor plebeians found any thing to criticise; but, whether this were the result of tact, or owing merely to the adoption of a negative standard, no one could say. In language she was uniformly correct, without seeming at all scholastic; she occasionally used the idioms and dialectic peculiarities of those around her, though never with the air of being ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... on the negative statements in the first three stanzas? On the entreaty in the refrain? (Introduction, ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... went on Treherne in a low voice. "It is more negative than positive, and yet it is infinite. Hundreds of men will avoid walking under a ladder; they don't know where the door of the ladder will lead. They don't really think God would throw a thunderbolt at them for such a thing. They don't know what would ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... occurred in the icy blast which was blinding him, he perceived, at a short distance in front of him, a cluster of gables and of chimneys shown in relief by the snow. The reverse of a silhouette—a city painted in white on a black horizon, something like what we call nowadays a negative proof. Roofs—dwellings—shelter! He had arrived somewhere at last. He felt the ineffable encouragement of hope. The watch of a ship which has wandered from her course feels some such emotion when he ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... household began to take on more than ever the character of a political tragedy, the promise to Dalberg being quickly forgotten. When he began to publish, however, his political program was still rather vague and negative; it hardly went beyond the intention to bestow an incidental scourging upon the enemies of mankind in ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... all about. But his limited French and his constitutional hatred of active investigation made it hard for him to buttonhole anybody and ask questions. He was content to observe, and watch, and remain negative. ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... complained of; but, by the authority of the graver and more prudent part of the house, that grievance was buried in oblivion;[****] and, being informed that the king had remitted several considerable sums to the palatine, the commons, without a negative, voted him two subsidies;[v] and that too at the very beginning of the session, contrary to the maxims frequently adopted ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... purposes referred to, with suitable provisions for their accomplishment through the agency of public officers. Considering the opinions of both Houses of Congress on the first two propositions as expressed in the negative, in which I entirely concur, it is unnecessary for me again in to recur to them. In respect to the last, you have had an opportunity since your adjournment not only to test still further the expediency of the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... result of all this exploration, Hudson had at his command a mass of information—positive as well as negative—that at once narrowed his search and directed it; and there is very good reason for believing that he actually carried with him charts of a crude sort on which, more or less clearly, were indicated the Strait and the Bay and the River which popularly are regarded as of his discovery ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... of much hardship, where one man is convicted upon evidence given against another, if he has the good fortune to live; for, within a twelvemonth after his return, or his age of twenty-one, he has a, right to call for a new trial, in which he also is to undertake the negative proof, and to show by sufficient evidence that he has not been sent abroad against the intention of the act. If he succeeds in this difficult exculpation, and demonstrates his innocence to the satisfaction of the court, he forfeits all his goods and chattels, and all the profits of his lands incurred ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... horror that was, in the great dark empty room, in a silence that was something more than negative, that ghastly figure frozen into stone by some unexplained terror! And the silence and the stillness! The very thunder had ceased now. My heart stood still with fear. Then, moved by some instinctive feeling, under whose influence I acted mechanically, I crept ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... body by refusing to them his assent. So a similar power has necessarily resulted from that instrument to the judiciary, and yet the judiciary forms no part of the Legislature. There is, it is true, this difference between these grants of power: The Executive can put his negative upon the acts of the Legislature for other cause than that of want of conformity to the Constitution, whilst the judiciary can only declare void those which violate that instrument. But the decision of the judiciary is final in such a case, whereas in every instance where ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson
... the patient coaching of Diemann and to put it in play at the right time, but he never seemed quick enough; that cursed slowness of his came in to show how futile it all was. Everything he did or could do as a football man was made negative by the fact that he was in Blake's place. ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... the Crown Prince, not meant to be accepted. "I would rather dig potatoes than be a reigning Prince under such conditions," said one of the Austrian Ministers. When they were officially presented, Karolyi was instructed to meet them with an unhesitating negative, and all discussion ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... feel surprised, and replied in the negative to both points of her question—"I do not know your husband," he said, "nor have I to my knowledge ever seen him until to-night; may I beg to inquire ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... appears to me very like a hoax, there is such a weight of negative testimony against it. Dr. Whitaker, the learned historian of Whalley, describes Hurstwood Hall as a strong and well-built old house, bearing on its front, in large characters, the name of "Barnard Townley," ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... vestige of honor struggled to make itself apparent in a negative movement of the head. But the movement would not come. His thoughts were of the game, and ere yet the last words of the money-lender had ceased to sound, he was captured. The satanic cunning of the proposal ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... Cuba, as found by the Spaniards, comparatively little is recorded. They seem to have been a somewhat negative people, generally described as docile, gentle, generous, and indolent. Their garments were quite limited, and their customs altogether primitive. They disappear from Cuba's story in its earliest chapters. Very little is known of their ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson
... reason of one fact and perhaps the most important one: they were not dramatizing the idea in hand. They were not creating a furor with pink and lavender haystacks. They were satisfied that there was still something to be found in the old arrangement of negative and positive tones as they were understood before the application of the spectrum turned the brains and sensibilities of men. In other words Courbet survived while the Barbizonians perished. There was ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... that produces this wonderful characteristic of humanity? Ignorance; ignorance is the sole support of despotism, which lives on darkness and silence. Now happiness in the domestic establishment as in a political state is a negative happiness. The affection of a people for a king, in an absolute monarchy, is perhaps less contrary to nature than the fidelity of a wife towards her husband, when love between them no longer exists. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... the negative we are shown we look like a supremely ridiculous little family drawn up in a line by a ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... an abstract idea observed in Indian oratory. Upon examining these, and kindred forms of speech, we shall at once perceive that they are not the result of imagination, but are suggested by material analogies. Peace, to the savage, is, at best, but a negative idea; and the state of peacefulness, abstracted from the absence of war, finds no corresponding word in his language. Even friendship only means that relation, in which friends may be of use to each other. As his dialects are all synthetic,[18] his ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... usual procedure, both in the 17th century and today, is to smoke the ground and incorporate the soot with the ground by heating the plate slightly. This gives a black ground, against which the lines appear light, the negative of the ultimate print. The black ground is favored, both out of long-established tradition and because it is very easy to apply. Furthermore, artists today explain that they also enjoy the feeling of working slightly blind, ...
— Rembrandt's Etching Technique: An Example • Peter Morse
... each one all the liberty consistent with the general safety. Security, being the only common object, should be the sole duty of the common agent. The government being confined to the performance of this negative duty, it must not exercise its power except when necessary. The inquiry, Is it necessary? not, Is it advantageous? is the test to be applied to every measure. The rigid application of this rule excludes the state from any interference with commerce ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... band. They were rather difficult to trace accurately; those parts of the traces which lay upon the black tessellae being less distinct in the outline than the others upon the white or colored. Most unquestionably, so far as this went, it furnished a negative circumstance in favor of the negro, for the footsteps were very different in outline from his, and smaller, for Aaron was a man of colossal build. And as to his knowledge of the state in which the premises ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... hope that my Walladmor will show when compared with the original. In saying this I disclaim all vanity; for, waiving other and more positive services to the German Walladmor, I here found my claim to the production of a "silk purse" simply on the negative merits of omission and compression. This is a point which on another account demands a word or two of explanation; as the reader will else find it difficult to understand upon what principle of translation three 'thick set' German ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... placed before a confiding public. Thirdly, I have approached the question a posteriori and enquired whether history or present experience offers any evidence from which we can reasonably infer the existence and activity of such a God—arriving once more at a negative conclusion. With the best will in the world, I can discover nothing in this Invisible King but a sort of new liqueur—or old liqueur with a new label—suited, no doubt, to the constitutions of certain very exceptional people. Mr. Wells ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... are therefore to be regarded as steps in a negative direction, and it is highly important that even such marked departures occur without transitions or intermediate forms. If these should occur, though ever so rarely, they would probably have been brought to notice, on account of the great prospect the ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... and dissatisfaction, in aesthetic contemplation, the muscular adjustments and the measuring, comparing and coordinating activities by which Empathy is started, being indeed occasionally difficult and distressing, but giving in themselves little more than a negative satisfaction, at the most that of difficulty overcome and suspense relieved. But although nowhere so fostered as in the contemplation of shapes, Empathy exists or tends to exist throughout our mental life. It is, indeed, one of our simpler, though far from absolutely elementary, ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... readily conceived by the lover of Fiddles. Away he started in search of his Fiddle's head, dead to all around him but the sense of his loss; he demanded of every one he met whether they had by chance picked up the head of a Fiddle. The answers were all in the negative; and many were the looks of astonishment caused by the strange nature of the question and the bewildered appearance of the questioner. At length he arrived at the house of the Fiddle doctor, whose want of punctuality had brought about the misfortune. ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... the suffering which improves and the suffering which only punishes and deters. He applies to the sphere of ethics a conception of punishment which is really derived from criminal law. He does not see that such punishment is only negative, and supplies no principle of moral growth or development. He is not far off the higher notion of an education of man to be begun in this world, and to be continued in other stages of existence, which is further developed in the Republic. And Christian thinkers, who have ventured out of the beaten ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... habits, and from the despair of ever shaking them off which is only too well grounded in the experience of the past, is the beginning of salvation for each of us. That great keyword of the New Testament covers the whole field of positive and negative good which man can need or God can give. Negatively it includes the removal of every evil, whether of the nature of sorrow or of sin, under which men can groan. Positively it includes the endowment with all good, whether of the nature of joy or of purity, which men can hope for or receive. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... the terminal vowel of the common root are those from a (which is almost invariably the terminal vowel of Bantu verbs), (1), into e to form the subjunctive tense, (2) into i to give a negative sense in certain tenses. With these exceptions the vowel a almost invariably terminates verbal roots. The departures from this rule are so rare that it might almost be included among the elementary propositions determining the Bantu languages. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... our fighters Too many hard buffets and humps, 'Tis a comfort to think that our blighters Are down in the deadliest dumps; And whatever the future may bring us In profits or pleasures or pains The ill wind that's blowing to-day is bestowing A number of negative gains. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... extravagant and incendiary talk. One thing was certain—he would never be caught up at that house beyond the race-course, with its reptiles and its Chinaman. Should he ever even go to the pastorate again? He decided not to quite definitely answer THAT in the negative, but as he felt now, the chances were all ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... a double negative is frequent in Chaucer; as in the "Miller's Tale": "That of no wife toke he non offering For curtesie, he ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... negative, outdoors he became godlike. The Elliots possessed a little Norwegian sleigh they had brought from Europe. It was swan-shaped, stood on low wooden runners, and was brightly painted in the Norse manner. This Gunther found in the stable, and, promptly harnessing to it the fastest horse, drove ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... wavering in her decision, but on that point he was entirely mistaken. She was doing what Nehemiah did when he "prayed to the God of heaven" between the King's question and his answer. Well she knew that to reply in the negative might lead to reproach, prison, torture, even death. Yet that was the path of God's commandments, and no flowery By-path Meadow must tempt her to stray from it. In her heart she said to Him ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... name to that account. He had been educated among the Egyptians, who were a people as well skilled in science, and particularly in astronomy, as any people of their day; and the silence and caution that Moses observes, in not authenticating the account, is a good negative evidence that he neither told it nor believed it.—The case is, that every nation of people has been world-makers, and the Israelites had as much right to set up the trade of world-making as any of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... chemical stimulus the cells stored up in the blood-forming organs ("positive chemiotaxis"). In the cases in which a diminution of the leucocytes in the blood is found, it is the result of a repulsion of the leucocytes by the bodies mentioned, negative chemiotaxis. ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich
... these stories have points of peculiar interest to the author. For instance, "Negative Gravity" was composed in Switzerland when the author was temporarily confined to the house in full ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... predominated—an assembly representing the thirty Roman tribes, according to the Servian constitution, but which, at first, had insignificant powers. The persons of the tribunes were inviolable, but their power was negative. They could not originate laws; they could insure the equitable administration of the laws, and prevent wrongs. They had a constitutional veto, of great use at the time, but which ended in ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... in it in the sense suggested by "Mars vigila." See above, p. 116. If Servius correctly reports the practice, it must be compared with the clashing of shields and spears by the Salii, which may thus have had a positive as well as negative object. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler |
