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Pragmatic   Listen
noun
Pragmatic  n.  
1.
One skilled in affairs. "My attorney and solicitor too; a fine pragmatic."
2.
A solemn public ordinance or decree. "A royal pragmatic was accordingly passed."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Pragmatic" Quotes from Famous Books



... fill thine abode with calamity—thine heart with dread—thy mind with illusions—thy bosom with groans. Know that when thou neglectest my counsels, the gods will refuse their aid. Dare, then, to affranchise thyself from the trammels of superstition, my self-conceited, pragmatic rival, who mistakes my rights; renounce those empty theories, which are usurpers of my privileges; return under the dominion of my laws, which, however severe, are mild in comparison with those of bigotry. It is in my empire alone that true liberty reigns. Tyranny is unknown to its ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... her reigning queens—chief of all, Isabel la Catolica, shows this. It was not until the time of Philip V., the first of the Bourbons, that this absolute monarch limited the succession to heirs male by "pragmatic sanction"; that is to say, by his own unsupported order. The Act in itself was irregular; it was never put before the Cortes, and the Council of Castile protested ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street

... internal impulses, tendencies, and appetites; to the various necessary human contacts and relations; to the great body of knowledge important to life, which human beings have got together; to the prevailing philosophical interpretations of the universe and of life; and to the pragmatic organizations, conventions, and controls which human society has instituted. In addition to these, some students of biology are going into various careers, each demanding special adjustments which biology may aid notably. Such are medicine and its related ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... aversion to assembling the States General, i. 12; consents to abrogate the Pragmatic Sanction, i. 32; subsequently re-enacts it, i. 33; confirms the privileges ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... kingdom of Bavaria, on the Main, and on the Frankfort-on-Main-Aschaffenburg railway, 10 m. N.W. of Aschaffenburg. It is memorable as the scene of a decisive battle on the 27th of June 1743, when the English, Hanoverians and Austrians (the "Pragmatic army"), 42,000 men under the command of George II. of England, routed the numerically superior French forces under the duc de Noailles. It was in memory of this victory that Handel composed his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... of the books which they gave to the public. Vigneul-Marville, in his Melanges d'Histoire et de Litterature, relates that he found the two following lines at the end of the "Decrees of Basle and Bourges," published under the title of "Pragmatic Sanction," with a Commentary by Come Guymier,—Andre Brocard's Paris ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various

... events Francis did not evince much indulgence for the man whose wife he had seduced. Under date April, 1518, the Journal dun Bourgeois de Paris mentions the arrest of several advocates and others for daring to discuss the question of the Pragmatic Sanction. Disome was implicated in the matter but appears to have escaped for a time; however in September of that year we find him detained at Orleans and subjected to the interrogatories of various royal Commissioners. The affair was then adjourned till the following year, when no ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre

... questions that deal with the formal aspect of thinking do not enter the field of psychological investigation. The general psychological problem is to describe the actual psychic events as they occur, to analyze them into their simplest elements, and inasmuch as it is this purely pragmatic application of psychology to the problem of inference that concerns us, we need to deal only with that law which defines the combination of images and with the question,—how the spirit achieves this combination. The material aspect of this question is therefore psychological. The ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden

... so little ... and am working with such pitifully inadequate instrumentation—However, we have months of time yet, and if I am unable to arrive at a conclusion before arrival—I don't mean a rigorous analysis, of course, but merely a stop-gap, empirical, pragmatic solution—we will simply remain in orbit around that sun until ...
— Subspace Survivors • E. E. Smith

... schools, including the higher institutions of learning, have been socializing the future leaders in social progress so that their inspiration has been drawn from a concrete knowledge of social problems and from the belief that humanity can, by proper effort, control conditions of living. Then pragmatic results have furthered this belief until inspiration has come from the achievement of results themselves rather than from any recognition of Christian influence in social life. The Christian religion is doubtless responsible ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt

... same year, 1740, in which Frederic II succeeded his father, the Emperor Charles VI died, leaving his hereditary dominions to his daughter Maria Theresa, wife of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, of the House of Lorraine. By an instrument called the Pragmatic Sanction, which was the subject of protracted negotiations, the Powers had agreed to acknowledge her right. She was & sensible and reasonable woman, much the best that had ever reigned; but she was without culture or superior talent, and he husband was not able ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... choice, of effort, and of new creation out of new possibilities presented by the ever-newly-created opportunities of ever-new time. We get a right to the type of voluntaristic conception of man which most of us live by—with a reasonable harmony between our science and our pragmatic needs ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various

... him was not likely, under these circumstances, to be declined; and during the whole winter of 1836-37 the story of Sordello remained untold, while its author plunged, with a security and relish which no one who knew only his poetry could have foretold, into the pragmatic politics and diplomatic intrigues of Strafford. The performance of the play on May 1, 1837 introduced further distractions. And Sordello had made little further progress, when, in the April of the following year, Browning embarked on a sudden but memorable trip to the South of Europe. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford

... and brings deplorable results. Bolshevism is not merely a body of belief and speculation. When the Bolsheviki seized the government of Russia and began to attempt to carry out their ideas, Bolshevism became a living movement in a world of reality and subject to the acid test of pragmatic criteria. It must be judged by such a matter-of-fact standard as the extent to which it has enlarged or diminished the happiness, health, comfort, freedom, well-being, satisfaction, and efficiency of the greatest number of individuals. Unless ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... significant attempts were made by some rationalistic theologians to explain in a real historical way the phenomena of the history of dogma, and to put an authentic and historical view of that history in the place of barren pragmatic ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack

... Pragmatic tests must be applied strictly and the way to beat wild- eyed schemes is to show that they are impracticable, and to harness our people to the land. Every man in an industry ought to be tied up in some way by profit-sharing or stock-owning arrangements, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... and his anti- intellectualism, in A Pluralistic Universe. It may be remarked here that, although James hailed Bergson as an ally, Bergson cannot be classed as a pragmatist. His great assertion is that just because intellect is pragmatic it does not help us to get a vision of reality. Cf. the interesting work on William James and Henri Bergson, ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn

... clear that Mr. Joshua Brigham regarded these transactions as so many Pragmatic Sanctions, that were to clear the moral and legal atmospheres of any atoms of difficulty that might exist in the forms of old opinions, to his getting easily out of debt, in the one case, and suddenly rich in the other. I dare say I looked bewildered, but I certainly felt so, at thus ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper

... him fine manners. It was a difficult undertaking. Often, as might have been expected, she lost her patience. Mary was an excellent girl, but rather kindlesome and pragmatic. Like most of the prairie folk, for instance, Abe Lincoln had been accustomed to reach for the butter with his own knife, and to find rest in attitudes extremely indolent and unbecoming. He enjoyed sprawling on the floor in his shirt-sleeves and slippers with a pillow under his head and a book ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... these philosophers from conceiving that validity and truth are ideal relations, accruing to ideas by virtue of dialectic and use, that while on the one hand they pointed out vital affinities and pragmatic sanctions in the mind's economy they confessed on the other that the outcome of their philosophy was sceptical; for no idea could be found in the mind which was not a phenomenon there, and no inference ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... sweeping implications, equality in the armed forces obviously had its pragmatic aspects. In one sense it was a practical answer to pressing political problems that had plagued several national administrations. In another, it was the services' expression of those liberalizing tendencies that were permeating American society during ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.

... seats beneath the canopy, the Emperor, as head of the family, spoke as follows: "Inasmuch as the customs of the Imperial family require that the Imperial Princesses and Archduchesses shall before marriage recognize the Pragmatic Sanction of Austria, and the order of succession, by a solemn act of renunciation, Her Imperial Highness the Archduchess Marie Louise, who is betrothed to His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of the French, King of Italy, is about to take the usual oath, and proceed to the formal rite of renunciation." ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand

... most of its history since independence from British administration in 1946, Jordan was ruled by King HUSSEIN (1953-1999). A pragmatic ruler, he successfully navigated competing pressures from the major powers (US, USSR, and UK), various Arab states, Israel, and a large internal Palestinian population, through several wars and coup attempts. In 1989 he resumed ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... superior and it is not inferior. It is temperamental and it is based upon the study of the psychology of attention, on a knowledge of what impresses a certain kind of man and of what really is conclusive with crowds and with average men and women. It is the distinctive point of view of the pragmatic temperament, of the inductive mind. The modern mind is interested in facts and cannot make a religion out of not knowing them. There was a time once when people used to take their bodily diseases as acts of God. We have made up our ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee

... temper and its lure. Mystery no longer hangs over its waters. Now that all the prairie and plain have been occupied, the mystery has fled entirely from the valley or has hidden itself in the wilderness and "bad lands." All is translated into the values of a matter- of-fact, pragmatic, industrial occupation. ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... years of University life should be devoted to the Science of Human Behavior. Much of to-day's biology, zooelogy, history, if it is interpretive, psychology, if it is behavioristic, philosophy, if it is pragmatic, literature, if it had been written involuntarily, would find its place here. The last two years could be profitably spent in appraising with that ultimate standard of value gained in the first two years, the various institutions and instruments used by civilized man. ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... visited the United States two years ago the lecture-rooms of Columbia University, like those of the College de France, were packed to the doors and the effect of his message was enhanced by his eloquence of delivery and charm of personality. The pragmatic character of his philosophy appeals to the genius of the American people as is shown by the influence of the teaching of William James and John Dewey, whose point of view in ...
— Dreams • Henri Bergson

... operation in New Zealand we have been influenced as to general principles mainly by decisions of the Privy Council and the House of Lords but, of course, we have had New Zealand conditions and practicalities very much in mind. The result has been a pragmatic approach. ...
— Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster • Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richardson, Duncan

... puissant and most felicitous monarch crowned by God Emperor and King of the greater part of Europe (and docked of most of his pretensions by the Treaty of Utrecht)? We only remember the forcible-feeble person by his Pragmatic Sanction, and otherwise his personality has left in history not the remotest trace. And yet, on the 12th February, 1723, a profoundly erudite, subtle, and picturesque historian grovels before the man and subscribes himself "Of your Holy Caesarean and Catholic Majesty the most humble and ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... the bold experiment of trusting the Word of God, as it reveals itself to him, and of following Christ. He finds that his faith verifies itself at every step, his experiment carries him on into an experience, his venture brings him to the reality he is seeking. Every stage of this pragmatic faith, which in a word is obedience to the Light, makes the fact and the meaning of sin clearer, at the same time makes the knowledge of God more real and the nature of goodness more plain, and it leads away from a superstition of fear ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... the exigent problems of existence in a country that was yet but half settled and organized left its people with no energy for questioning what at least satisfied their gross needs, and so met the pragmatic test. And on the other hand, there was no critical pressure from without, for the English culture which alone reached over the sea was itself entering upon its Victorian decline, and the influence of the native aristocracy—the degenerating Junkers of the great ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... diplomatic knowledge and political sagacity. Their capital feats were the creation of two kingdoms, both of which are already erased from the map of Europe. They made no single preparation for the inevitable, almost impending, conjunctures of the East. All that remains of the pragmatic arrangements of the mighty Congress of Vienna is the mediatisation of ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... subject to pragmatic tests. That is, the spiritual beliefs aren't. Any belief that could be disproven by such a test would eventually die out. But beliefs in ghosts or demons or angels or life after death aren't disprovable by material tests, any more than they are provable. ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... his purse, in order to indulge himself "a little the more in pleasure, knowing that this is the proper age to do it." From Milton and the Earl of Clarendon to William Pitt, England was no country of lost causes and impossible enthusiasms. It was a pragmatic age, in which the scientific discoveries of Newton are the highest intellectual achievement, and the conclusion of Pope that "everything that is is best" gives the quality ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... an official report as to progress and deportment: and in retaliation for being debarred from the comforts of this view, the psychoanalysts have no doubt invented for it some opprobrious explanation. At all events, this Chivalry was a pragmatic hypothesis: it "worked," and served society for a long while, not faultlessly of course, but by creating, like all the other codes of human conduct which men have yet tried, a tragi-comic melee wherein contended "courtesy and humanity, friendliness, hardihood, love and friendship, ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell

... the Habsburgs could continue in their efforts to assimilate, by one process or another, the Southern Slavs in the Empire, it was necessary to induce them to accept the Pragmatic Sanction, for Charles VI., the reigning Emperor, had lost his only son and wished to secure the succession to Maria Theresa. It is interesting to see that Croatia negotiated independently of Hungary, that she recognized ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... hopes of male issue. During the latter part of his life, his principal object had been to secure to his descendants in the female line the many crowns of the House of Hapsburg. With this view he had promulgated a new law of succession, widely celebrated throughout Europe under the name of the Pragmatic Sanction. By virtue of this law, his daughter, the Archduchess Maria Theresa, wife of Francis of Lorraine, succeeded to the dominions of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... poor, nor a slave to the great, Neither factious in church, nor pragmatic in state, He keeps himself quiet within his own sphere, And finds work sufficient in preaching and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various

... fully explained and vindicated, by a person who sat opposite to me, and, by the solemnity of his manner and the richness of his apparel, seemed to be a foreign ambassador. This dissertation produced another on the Pragmatic Sanction, handled with great warmth by a young gentleman at my right hand, dressed in a green frock, trimmed with gold, who justified the French king for his breach of that contract; and affirmed ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... atheist, but traditionally pragmatic and eclectic; most important elements of religion are Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism; about 2-3% Muslim, ...
— The 1990 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... wanted; yet in spite of his encomiums, there was nothing in the behaviour of the girl that corresponded with such an amiable character: she had, indeed a beautiful face, but strongly marked with something, more like impudence than boldness, and more of that of a pragmatic mistress than an humble servant; and therefore we did not accept, what I was very certain, she would not have performed. I impatiently, however, waited their return, and verily believed the old man had bought his crimson velvet breeches and gold-laced waistcoat in honour of the Virgin, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse

... planned to remove, returning the Old Testament to a state of textual purity with emendations drawn from sources as varied as the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Greek Psalms, the Antiquities of Josephus, the Chaldee Paraphrases, the books of Philo. His pragmatic purpose was to nullify the biblical criticism of historical minded scholars as reputable as Grotius, to render useless the allegorical interpretation of messianic prophecies. That is, he saw in the latter a "pernicious" absence of fact, a "weak and enthusiastical" whimsy, unchristian adjustments ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins

... there seems to be a suggestion that we may be wrong. Is it possible that the laugh is not the test of the joke? Here is a question over which the philosophers may wrangle. Is there an Absolute in the realm of humor, or must our jokes be judged solely by the pragmatic test? Congreve once told Colly Gibber that there were many witty speeches in one of Colly's plays, and many that looked witty, yet were not really what they seemed at first sight! So a joke is not to be recognized even by its appearance or by the company ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers

... sooner came to the throne than he started on an aggressive expansionist policy for Prussia. The opportunity presented itself a few months after his accession by the dispute as to the Pragmatic Sanction and Maria Theresa's right to the throne of Austria. In the two wars which immediately followed, the Prussian army overran the whole of Silesia, and the peace of 1745 left the Prussian King in possession of the entire country. ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... lord, from these divisions there has got up a kind of aristocracy something like the famous triumvirate at Rome; they are a kind of undertakers and pragmatic statesmen, who, finding their power and strength great, and answerable to their designs, will make bargains with our gracious sovereign; they will serve her faithfully, but upon their own terms; they must have their own instruments, their ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various

... I. If I see a listener or a pryer in at the chinks or lockhole, I am presently on the bones of him. If a friend comes, I make him sit down by me on a form or chest. The rest may walk, a God's name!" There has been seldom a better portrait of the pragmatic conceit and self-importance of ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott

... compare especially Thucyd., I, 2, 7, seq.) Such a circle is not a vicious one. All first class historians have thus explained historical phenomena. The one-sided deduction of A. from B., and B. from C., etc., which the so-called pragmatic writers like Polybius, for instance, is the result of overlooking all reciprocal action. Scialoja, Principii (1840), p. 60, makes a somewhat similar observation for ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... Southern China. This success was looked at askance by the maritime Powers, which, basing their claim on a clause in the treaty of Muenster forbidding the Spanish to trade in the East Indies, made the suppression of the new company a condition to the acceptance of the Pragmatic Sanction. By this act, Charles VI endeavoured to ensure the succession of Maria Theresa to the Austrian throne. Once more, Belgium was sacrificed to dynastic interests, and on May 31, 1727, the concession of the Company of Ostend was ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... of the Imperative of morality is more difficult. As categorical, it presupposes nothing else to rest its necessity upon; while by way of experience, it can never be made out to be more than a prudential precept—i.e., a pragmatic or hypothetic principle. Its possibility must therefore be established a priori. But the difficulty will then appear no matter of wonder, when it is remembered (from the Critique of Pure Reason) how hard it is to establish synthetic ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain

... adopting beliefs that fit the trend of its habits and feelings, and this trend is powerfully molded by the unanimous direction of an army's purpose. There is an all but irresistible orthodoxy within a body committed to a war. And the current (pragmatic) psychology referred to, making the intelligence a mere instrument of the will, would seem to sanction the maxim, "First decide, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... of his Britannic Majesty's Sorrows, the Britannic or Domestic Part, is now perhaps conceivable to readers. But as to the Second, the Germanic or Pragmatic Part,—articulate History, after much consideration, is content to renounce attempting these; feels that these will remain forever inconceivable to mankind in the now altered times. So small a gentleman; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... of its history since independence from British administration in 1946, Jordan was ruled by King HUSSEIN (1953-99). A pragmatic ruler, he successfully navigated competing pressures from the major powers (US, USSR, and UK), various Arab states, Israel, and a large internal Palestinian population, through several wars and coup attempts. In 1989 he resumed ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... the second satisfies it, the second will be favored by sane men for the simple reason that it makes the world seem more rational. To choose the first view under such circumstances would be an ascetic act, an act of philosophic self-denial of which no normal human being would be guilty. Using the pragmatic test of the meaning of concepts, I had shown the concept of the absolute to MEAN nothing but the holiday giver, the banisher of cosmic fear. One's objective deliverance, when one says 'the absolute exists,' amounted, on my ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James

... self-government in the sense of their own active participation in power, such happiness must go unfulfilled. The State, in fact, may have the noblest purpose; but its object is attempted by agents who are also mortal men. The basis of their scrutiny became at once pragmatic. The test of allegiance to established institutions became immediately the achievement for which they were responsible. The achievement, as they urged, was hardly written with adequacy in terms of ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... and addressing Pearson, "thou hast not touched Mark Everard, in whom there was no guilt, for he was deceived by him who passed between us—neither hast thou put forth thy hand on the pragmatic Presbyterian minister, to have all those of their classes cry sacrilege, and alienate ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott

... the morbid in Wedekind are more than redeemed by his rich humanity. He loves his fellow man even when he castigates him. He is very emotional, also pragmatic. The second act of his Franziska, a Karnevalgroteske, was given at the Dresden Pressfestival, February 7, 1913, with the title of Matrimony in the Year 2000, the author and his wife appearing in the leading roles with brilliant success. It contains in solution the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... in recompense, the dignity of archbishop of Seville. Two years later, when the grand master of the order of Santiago died, Ferdinand had himself elected without difficulty. [Footnote: Maurenbrecher, Studien und Skizzen, 54.] Some time after this Isabella issued a pragmatic decree, declaring that the grand masterships of the orders should always be annexed to crown. These dignities were of great value; not only did they bring in a princely income, but they practically ...
— European Background Of American History - (Vol. I of The American Nation: A History) • Edward Potts Cheyney

... future—so we cease to be impulsive, convincible men, interested in what is ethically true by fine margins, we substitute rules of conduct for ideas of integrity, we value safety above romance, we become, quite unconsciously, pragmatic. It is left to the few to be persistently concerned with the nuances of relationships—and even this few only in certain hours especially ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... a subtle theologian who has been clever enough to add to his "repertoire" a certain evasive mist of pragmatic modernism, under the filmy and wavering vapours of which the inveterate sacerdotalism of his temperament covers its tracks. But with Pascal we get clean away from the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... do we find? As soon as we get a whisper of civilization in Greece, we find Daedalus successful in flying. The pragmatic interpreters pretend that the fable does but point to the discovery of sails for ships; but I put it to ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang

... recollection of what we have been told about their deadliness. Then instantly, irrepressibly, comes the lightning-flash of horror to our heart, to our muscles, to our lungs, to get ready to meet this emergency. Then, and not till then, do we really feel the emotion. In fact, our most pragmatic philosopher, William James, has gone so far as to declare that emotions are the after-echoes of muscular contractions. By the time an emotion has fairly got us in its grip so that we are really conscious of it, the blood-supply of ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... repeat, was a very good dinner indeed—the Huxleys, I took it, must be well to do—the company agreeable; a bit pragmatic, however, I thought. The gentleman by the name of Spencer said he loved music and wished to hear Mrs. Watterson sing, especially Longfellow's Rainy Day, and left the others of us—Huxley, Mill, Tyndall and myself—at table. ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... depopulated looked to Justinian to succour her in her misery if she was not to perish under her ruins and her debts. The first step in that work was undertaken in the very year of the peace, in the August of the year 554, and it took the form of a solemn "Pragmatic Sanction" addressed to Narses and to Antiochus, the Prefect of Italy,[1] in Ravenna. It had for its object the social peace of Italy, the re-establishment of order out of the chaos of the Ostrogothic war; and it is significant of the true ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton

... miracle, my masters! as brave a miracle as ever was wrought in the kirk of Kennaquhair. And I charge you, my masters, as your lawfully chosen Abbot, that you touch no one without my command—You, wolf and bear, will guard this pragmatic youth, but without hurting him—And you, reverend brother, will, with your comrades, withdraw to your cells; for our conference has ended like all conferences, leaving each of his own mind, as before; and if we fight, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... Philip the Fair with Boniface VIII., she furnished the legal weapons of the contest. She furnished, in her Chancellor Gerson, the leading spirit of the Council of Constance. In the Council of Bale she obtained for France the "Pragmatic Sanction." Her voice was consulted on the question of the Salic Law; unhappily, also in the trial of Jeanne d'Arc; and when Louis XI. concluded a treaty of peace with Maximilian of Austria, the University of Paris was the guaranty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... lit by large windows overlooking the kitchen garden; a cheerful fire burnt in the grate this autumn morning, and in a big chair before it sat a cheerful, comely person in a print gown, in whom he recognized Mrs. Fryar the cook. Gordon the chauffeur, a pragmatic young man from the Clyde, in this levelling hour was sitting on the edge of the table with a glass of beer in his hand. Caroline, the Baptist housemaid, held the floor: she was declaiming, when ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde

... the part which the aesthetic life plays in determining one's choice of a religion. Men, I said awhile ago, involuntarily intellectualize their religious experience. They need formulas, just as they need fellowship in worship. I spoke, therefore, too contemptuously of the pragmatic uselessness of the famous scholastic list of attributes of the deity, for they have one use which I neglected to consider. The eloquent passage in which Newman enumerates them[301] puts us on the track of it. Intoning them as he would ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... a bear of manners rough, Who could take bee-hives well enough: He lived by plundered honey-comb, And raided the industrial home. Success had puffed him with conceit; He boasted daily of some feat. In arrogance right uncontrolled He grew pragmatic, busy, bold; And beasts, with reverential stare, Thought him a most ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... could wish, in the way of symbolical ornament. He had formed a correct notion of the spirit of Ancient History, and more particularly of that of the Romans; and the history of his own country was familiar to him even in detail. Fortunately for him it had not as yet been treated in a diplomatic and pragmatic spirit, but merely in the chronicle-style; in other words, it had not yet assumed the appearance of dry investigations respecting the development of political relations, diplomatic negotiations, finances, etc., but exhibited a visible image of the life ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... insists upon reminding the reader of Catiline's conspiracy in the Sergestus, furens animi, who dashes upon the rock in his mad eagerness to win, and obtrudes etymology in the phrase segnem Menoeten (1. 173). One is tempted to suspect that the whole narrative of the boat-race is filled with pragmatic allusions. If the characters of his epic must be connected with well-known Roman families, it is at least interesting that the connections are indicated in the fifth book and not in the passages where the names first meet the reader. Does it not ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank

... of his happiness; the categorical imperative, on the contrary, is not limited by any condition, and as being absolutely, although practically, necessary, may be quite properly called a command. We might also call the first kind of imperatives TECHNICAL (belonging to art), the second PRAGMATIC (to welfare), [It seems to me that the proper signification of the word pragmatic may be most accurately defined in this way. For sanctions [see Cr. of Pract. Reas., p. 271] are called pragmatic which flow properly, not from the law of the states as necessary enactments, but from ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... succeeded Pierson's departure, Gratian and George often discussed Noel's conduct and position by the light of the Pragmatic theory. George held a suitably scientific view. Just as he would point out to his wife—in the physical world, creatures who diverged from the normal had to justify their divergence in competition with their environments, or else go under, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... X. came together, and, after conferring, determined that the Pragmatic Sanction should be repudiated; Leo, because he must increase his revenues, and Francis, because he desired to use appointments to rich vacancies as rewards for his friends. Leo's tastes, as we know, were magnificent, and needed much more money than he could command; a fact which led to grave ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... scarcely hoped for his return. She had always had a vague comprehension of those pragmatic qualities in his nature which placed him miles above her, or beneath her, or beyond her. She had drunk of the cup which had been offered her, and she must not rebel because a bitter sediment lay on her lips. ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge

... Glambe, professed themselves to be entirely satisfied as to their bona fides, and exhibited an eagerness to be of immediate service to the ladies in whatever capacity might be conceived. Mrs. Makebelieve instantly invoked the Pragmatic Sanction; she put the entire matter to the touchstone of absolute verity by demanding an advance of fifty pounds. Her mind reeled as she said the astounding amount, but her voice did not. A check was signed ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens

... outline to the Congress in the weeks ahead represent a reaffirmation, not an abdication, of Federal responsibility. They represent a pragmatic rededication to social compassion and national excellence, in place of the combination of good intentions and fuzzy follow-through which too often in ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... she said softly. Marian had a pleasant voice, throaty and low, that sounded intimate even when talking about something pragmatic. "I wish ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith

... been one of Barstein's fellow-councillors in Zionism, a pragmatic inexhaustible debater in the small back room, and the voluble little man now loomed suddenly large as a possible authority ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill

... history it narrates, greatly outwent Plymouth in wealth and population, though not in priority of settlement. The interest of Winthrop's Journal lies in the events that it records rather than in any charm in the historian's manner of recording them. His style is pragmatic, and some of the incidents which he gravely notes are trivial to the modern mind, though instructive as to our forefathers' way of thinking. For instance, of the year 1632: "At Watertown there was (in the view of divers witnesses) a great combat between a mouse and a snake, and ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... state sponsorship of terrorism. The United States will assume a clear and pragmatic approach in prosecuting the campaign against terrorism. This will include incentives for ending state sponsorship. When a state chooses not to respond to such incentives, tough decisions will be confronted. At all times within this new dynamic we will balance a nation's ...
— National Strategy for Combating Terrorism - February 2003 • United States

... But the triumphs of the sword were speedily wrested from him by the adroitness of the politician; in an interview with Leo X. at Bologna, Francois bartered the liberties of the Gallican Church for shadowy advantages in Italy. The 'Pragmatic Sanction of Bourgea', which now for nearly a century had secured to the Church of France independence in the choice of her chief officers, was replaced by a concordat, whereby the King allowed the papacy once more to drain the wealth of the Church of France, while the Pope ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... to the rescue from the philosophical camp; but the assault was but a very short one; since, tested by Pragmatic methods (that is, the testing of the truth of a religion by its appeal to human consciousness), if one fact stood out luminous and undisputed, it was that the Catholic Religion, with its eternal appeal in every century and to every type ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson

... sentence of condemnation against the Duke of Ferrara. Lewis XII strove in vain to alarm him by the National Council of Tours,—Germany, by severe gravamina (complaints of national grievances against the Papal See), and by the threat of the Pragmatic Sanction (an imperial order to confirm the decrees of such reform councils as that of Basel). Not even a General Council, summoned at Pisa by the two monarchs for the first of September, 1511, with the dread phantom of a reform of the Church, could bend the violent Pope." The Council ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... had been "buzzed about for three or four months a story of something that would amaze everybody," and these dark rumors being "spread through all the towns in the province and everybody's expectations... raised," it was exasperating to his pragmatic nature to have nothing more definite transpire than that the something which would amaze everybody would indeed amaze everybody if only it could be made known. It should at least be made known to the ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker

... known by the name of the Pragmatic Sanction, has likewise got placed, with the date of March, 1268, in the Recueil des Ordonnances des Rois de France, as having originated with St. Louis. Its object is, first of all, to secure the rights, liberties, and canonical rules, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... the stages of the progress from a limited to an absolute monarchy. By an act dated the 10th of January 1661, entitled "Instrument, or pragmatic sanction," of the king's hereditary right to the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, it was declared that all the prerogatives of majesty, and "all regalia as an absolute sovereign lord," had been made over to the king. Yet, even after the issue of the "Instrument," there was nothing, strictly speaking, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... than an artificial alignment, had been breaking up. Americans were absorbed in the great liberal movement begun under the leadership of President Roosevelt, the result of which was to transform democracy from a static to a pragmatic and evolutionary conception,—in order to meet and correct new and unforeseen evils. Political freedom was seen to be of little worth unless also accompanied by the economic freedom the nation had enjoyed before ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... form in which an express or tacit acknowledgment of the claims and rights of the Crown was to be made as to the secularisation of Church property. The Netherlands went on a different plan, and framed a constitution of the Roman Catholic Church in their dominions, called a Pragmatic Sanction, which they wanted the Pope to acknowledge. The Hanoverian Government also wished to conclude a formal treaty, and oblige the Pope to sanction certain civil regulations concerning Church government. He observes that the Court of Rome will appear ignorant of, and thus tacitly acknowledge, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... the death of Charles, he had bound all the leading powers of Europe in a sort of agreement called the Pragmatic Sanction, by the terms of which, in case he should leave no son, all his hereditary dominions—that is, the kingdom of Hungary, the kingdom of Bohemia, the archduchy of Austria, and the other possessions of the House ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... nine-branched candlestick of silver. He wore a long, hooded mantle reaching to the feet, and showing where it fell back in front a brown gaberdine clasped by a girdle. These sombre-colored robes were second-hand, as the austere simplicity of the Pragmatic required. The Jewish Council of Sixty did not permit its subjects to ruffle it like the Romans of those days of purple pageantry. The young bloods, forbidden by Christendom to style themselves signori, were forbidden by Judea to ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... ideal of speculative completeness. [Footnote: This was to be well explained by Fontenelle, Preface sur l'utilite des mathematiques, in Oeuvres (ed. 1729), iii, I sqq.] But this does not invalidate Bacon's pragmatic principle, or diminish the importance of the fact that in laying down the utilitarian view of knowledge he contributed to the creation of a new mental atmosphere in which the theory of Progress was afterwards ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... controversy, and thus into all the terrible temptations—worse than the temptations to whoredom or wine—that accompany a life of controversy. The three scoundrels that fell upon Valiant at the mouth of the lane were Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatic. In other words, the besetting temptations of many men who are set as defenders of the truth in religion, as well as in other matters, is to be wild-headed, inconsiderate, self-conceited, and intolerably arrogant. The bloody ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte

... direction of discovery were aimed at surmounting the range that defied their attacks. Among the many whose attempts were signalised only by failure were the gallant Bass, whose name, for other reasons, will never be forgotten by Australians, the quarrelsome and pragmatic Cayley, and the adventurous Hack. Amongst them there was one, however, whose failure, read by the light of modern knowledge, was probably a geographical success. This was Francis Barallier, ensign in ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc

... not speculate further upon the philosophy of the subject because I took it up at this point for pragmatic tests experimentally. The horticulturist does not have to go to the theatre for thrills. My advance report at this moment comes at a time when a scientist would demand more works along with faith and my only reason for presenting incomplete notes ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association

... his recognition by the powers, Pope Eugenius IV. (1431-1447) had been victorious over the council of Basel; but neither France nor Germany was prepared to forgo the reforms passed by the council. France secured their validity, as far as she herself was concerned, by the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (July 7, 1438); Germany followed with the Acceptation of Mainz (March 26, 1439). The theory of the papal supremacy held by the Curia was thus at ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... in the Austrian Netherlands. The clamor was great and general; jealousy of the commercial prosperity of Holland being the real motive. Long negotiations took place on the subject of the treaty; and in December, 1718, the republic consented to modify some of the articles. The Pragmatic Sanction, published at Vienna in 1713 by Charles VI., regulated the succession to all the imperial hereditary possessions; and, among the rest, the provinces of the Netherlands. But this arrangement, though guaranteed by the chief powers of Europe, was, ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan

... word "pragmatism" has been brought into popular use to denote the test by which the pragmatists measure all systems, theories and doctrines. The pragmatic inquiry when applied to any system, theory, or doctrine may be understood to mean, "does it meet its claims in practice?" Although much is being made of this phase of pragmatism, the test is as old as the race, and verified by Scripture, for Jesus said, ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer

... German business, and England is mixed up in it only because her present king is a Hanoverian and not an Englishman. This is the matter as far as I can make it out. Charles VI., Emperor of Germany, died in October, 1740. It had been arranged by a sort of general agreement called the Pragmatic Sanction —" ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... unharmed and unchanged. I measured it with a steel tape and it was so. Why didn't they force me to misread the tape? They would have, if I'd done that measuring first. At the start they were in the business of turning every piece of pragmatic evidence into an outright lie. But I outlasted the test. When they'd finished with their whole arsenal of sensory lies, they still hadn't broken me. They then turned me loose, like a rat in a maze, to see if I could ...
— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn

... were inevitable. When war becomes the trade of a separate class it is natural that they should wish to pursue it at the first favourable opportunity of conquest. That opportunity came to Prussia when Charles VI died and the Archduchess Maria Theresa succeeded to her father by virtue of a law (the Pragmatic Sanction), to which all the Powers of Europe had subscribed. Frederick had subscribed to it. But, nevertheless, in the name of Prussia, without any proper excuse or even decent pretext, he took possession of Silesia, thereby robbing the ally whom he had bound himself to defend, ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine

... Nietzsche or even of Hegel; but for the constant reader his detachment or attachment to Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas is not nearly so important as his personal impressions of both the little things and the big things of our contemporary life. Whether you are pragmatic or not, you must, if you are at all in love with life, become a Jamesonian after you have read the "Letters"! And his son, Mr. Henry James, who, we may hope, may resemble his father in time, has arranged them so well, and kept himself so tactfully ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan

... Charles VI., a queenly woman; was in 1736 married to Francis of Lorraine; ascended the throne in 1740 on the death of her father, associating her husband with her in the government under the title of Francis I.; no sooner had she done so than, despite the PRAGMATIC SANCTION (q. v.), which assured her of her dominions in their integrity, she was assailed by claimants one for this and one for another portion of them, in particular by Frederick the Great, who by force of arms wrenched Silesia from her and kept it fast; the war thus occasioned is known as ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... which gave on the black hulk of the ailantus tree. From behind a screen, which was covered with faded wall paper, the figure of the doctor emerged while they waited, an ample middle-aged man, with the air of having got into his clothes in a hurry and the face of a pragmatic philosopher. He motioned commandingly for them to approach; and going to the other side of the screen, they found the dying woman gazing ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... succumbed to the charms of his parentless cousin—the daughter of the minister's brother, who had settled in France and taken to himself a French wife—and he became her defender against those inhabitants of the Manse and the parish—from his brother Wattie to the pragmatic schoolmaster—whose ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... Betty dear—I see that there is a great satisfaction in the pragmatic accomplishment, and—" he was saying when we came out of the woods onto the southern slope, where lie the long rows of peas, which are making Sam's fortune. He got them in by working two days and ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess

... bottom, your own spirit, gentlemen, In which the times are seen reflected. And often such a mess that none can bear it; At the first sight of it they run away. A dust-bin and a lumber-garret, At most a mock-heroic play[8] With fine, pragmatic maxims teeming, The mouths of ...
— Faust • Goethe

... eyes from their pragmatic character in varying degree. Wordsworth, in poetic mood, seems to have kept them half closed.[Footnote: See A Poet's Epitaph, and Sonnet: Most Sweet it is with Unuplifted Eyes.] Mrs. ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... the heart as well as the brain. No writer's work leaves a better taste in the mouth; he makes us think better of the world, of righteousness, of ourselves. Yet no writer is less of a Puritan or a Philistine; none writes with less of pragmatic purpose or a less obtrusive load of positive fact. He scorns such overladen pedantry, and never loses a chance to lash it. He tells us that he has "never been inside the reading-room of the British Museum," and "expounds ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... so that she did not enjoy them as much as she would, had she been less voracious in her appetite, and they made her complain grievously of the dulness of the latter part of Russell's Modern Europe, which was being read in the schoolroom, and yawn nearly as much as Phyllis over the 'Pragmatic Sanction.' However, when that book was concluded, and they began Palgrave's Anglo Saxons, Lily was seized within a sudden historical fever. She could hardly wait till one o'clock, before she settled herself at the schoolroom table with her work, and summoned every ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of circumstances, and the ultimate survival of what was most fit to survive. It was almost by a principle of natural selection that mankind was supposed to have determined the necessity of civil authority, slavery, private property, and the rest. The pragmatic test of life had been applied and had proved ...
— Mediaeval Socialism • Bede Jarrett

... too often a whimsical thing. Pragmatism appears to teach that any individual, as such, has a moral right to adopt any hypothesis live enough to appeal to his individual will. One has only to call to mind the extraordinary assortment of guests collected by Signer Papini in his novel pragmatic "hotel." [Footnote: Ibid.] Can such, by any human ingenuity, be moulded into anything resembling an ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... (Stenzel, iii. 5222).] and solemnly publishes it to the world, as a thing all men are to take notice of. All men had notice enough of this Imperial bit of Sheepskin, before they got done with it, five-and-twenty years hence. [Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748.] A very famous Pragmatic Sanction; now published ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... an athletic pull at his liquor, and continued his discourse. He had been discussing more to himself than to me the merits of Professor James and Monsieur Bergson, and had inquired was I aware of the nature of the Pragmatic Sanction. The gentleman behind the counter remarked, that he had one on his bicycle, but that they were no good. This statement was denounced by the Philosopher as an unnatural and clumsy falsehood, and, anathematising ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens

... S. anything, properly headed. I would allow him to prove—for himself—that the Quadrature of the Circle is the child of a private marriage between the Bull Unigenitus and the Pragmatic Sanction, claiming tithe of onions for repeal of the Mortmain Act, before the Bishops in Committee under the kitchen table: his mode of imitating reason would do this with ease. But when he puts his imitation into my mouth, to make me what he calls a "real mathematician," my ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... tree grows, the child develops, and this was metaphorically transferred to society, the state, science, and religion. The study of this development was called history, and occasionally genetic or pragmatic history; but instead of talking as we do now of evolution with imperceptible transitions, it was these transitions which industrious and honest investigators formerly sought to observe. They aimed at ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller

... the pragmatic openness of mind and whom my fancy likes to picture as our leader were he ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... thinker, an extremely weak thing indeed—speaks as follows: "Scholasticism has taken the notion of substance from common sense and made it very technical and articulate. Few things would seem to have fewer pragmatic consequences for us than substances, cut off as we are from every contact with them. Yet in one case scholasticism has proved the importance of the substance-idea by treating it pragmatically. I refer to certain disputes about the mystery of the Eucharist. Substance here would appear to ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno

... burying self, son, wife, family and fortunes, under the ruin-heap,—a monument to remote posterity. Never was such an enchanted dance, of well-intentioned Royal Bear with poetic temperament, piped to by two black-artists, for the Kaiser's and Pragmatic Sanction's sake! Let Tobacco-Parliament also rejoice; for truly the play was growing dangerous, of late. King and Parliament, we may suppose, return to Public ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... death-bed, but that of Madge Wildfire has a grace of poetry, and her latest song is the sweetest and wildest of his lyrics, the most appropriate in its setting. When we think of the contrasts to her—the honest, dull good-nature of Dumbiedikes; the common-sense and humour of Mrs. Saddletree; the pragmatic pedantry of her husband; the Highland pride, courage, and absurdity of the Captain of Knockdander—when we consider all these so various and perfect creations, we need not wonder that Scott was "in high glee" over "The Heart ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... demoralize and weaken the individual. Miracles, in the accepted sense, New Thought does not conceive as possible in a universe of law. The only miracles are phenomena not understood, but nevertheless the result of law. It applies the pragmatic test to every religion and philosophy. Are you true? What do you give to a man to carry to his daily task?" "New Thought recognizes no authority save the voice of the soul speaking to each individual. Every soul can interpret ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins

... the Dardanelles route for the Russian corn. Neither is it to be wondered at that while the Allied Forces in Gallipoli were still grappling with the Turks, the Tsar's Ministers should have thrust into the foreground the question of Constantinople and the Straits, and insisted upon an immediate pragmatic settlement. True, that was not statesmanship; it was anything but political wisdom; but at any rate it was human on the part of all concerned. If this Titanic struggle, in which Russia is perhaps the greatest sufferer, is to bring her any palpable and enduring advantage, ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... it worked. But the weakness of Pragmatism is that most theories will work if you put your back into making them work, provided they have some point of contact with human nature. Hedonism will pass the pragmatic test as well as Stoicism. Up to a certain point every social principle that is not absolutely idiotic works: Autocracy works in Russia and Democracy in America; Atheism works in France, Polytheism in India, Monotheism throughout Islam, ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... monkey-jacket of Nat Boody, and his fighting-dog "Scamp," and the pink arms and pink cheeks and brown ringlets of Suke Boody, as so many types of human wickedness; and, by parity of reasoning, he came to look upon the two flat curls on either temple of his Aunt Eliza, and her pragmatic way, and upon the yellow ribbons within the scoop-hat of Almira Tourtelot, who sang treble and never went to the tavern, as the types of goodness. What wonder, if he swayed more and more toward the broad and easy path that lay around the tavern-pump, ("Scamp" ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... should be observed, is markedly different from its corresponding cults in Germany and in the United States. In Germany, reformed Judaism has its nascence in free thought, and it aims to appeal to the intellectual. With us liberalism is stimulated by our pragmatic evaluation of religion, and is held out as a bait to the indifferent. In England it arises from the growing admiration on the part of a certain class of Jews for what they consider the inwardness and the superior morality of Christianity, and ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... Austro-Hungarian monarchy (see AUSTRIA) is based on the Pragmatic Sanction of the emperor Charles VI., first promulgated on the 19th of April 1713, whereby the succession to the throne is settled in the dynasty of Habsburg-Lorraine, descending by right of primogeniture and lineal succession to male heirs, and, in case of their ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... Sinbal, chief of the Heruli, was subdued, taken and hung on a lofty gallows by the inflexible justice of the exarch. [56] The civil state of Italy, after the agitation of a long tempest, was fixed by a pragmatic sanction, which the emperor promulgated at the request of the pope. Justinian introduced his own jurisprudence into the schools and tribunals of the West; he ratified the acts of Theodoric and his immediate successors, but every deed was rescinded ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon

... alluded to in it (if the little transaction deserves so high-sounding a name) was, in every sense of the words, strictly necessary. Julia Wentworth had resided for years with her grandfather, a pragmatic old gentleman, to whom from pure affection she had long yielded an obedience which he would have had no right to extort, and which he was sometimes disposed to abuse. He had declared in the most ingenuous manner that she should never marry with his consent any man of less ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... continuously, from eleven till two o'clock. On coming to or going from our dinner, we would often hear him: sometimes he sang in the morning and now and then after supper. This bird—it is the red-eyed vireo—has an oddly persistent, pragmatic note, which can hardly be called singing, being more like declamation and somewhat disconnected and disjoint, as if the "preacher" were laying down certain truths and facts and seeking by constant iteration to impress them upon dullards. Betwixt every one of these ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... indispensable for his vigor and executive skill; Bougainville, who had disarmed the jealousy of Vaudreuil, and now stood high in his good graces; and the Adjutant-General, Montreuil, clearly a vain and pragmatic personage, who, having come to Canada with Dieskau the year before, thought it behooved him to give the General the advantage of his experience. "I like M. de Montcalm very much," he writes to the minister, "and will do the impossible to deserve ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman

... alliances. She saw at one time a fresh chance for trying her policy, and she held out every inducement in her power to the Emperor Charles the Sixth and to Russia to enter into a combination against France and England. The Emperor was without a son, and, in consequence, had issued his famous Pragmatic Sanction, providing that his hereditary dominions in Austria, Hungary, and Bohemia should descend to his daughter Maria Theresa. The great Powers of Europe had not as yet seen fit to guarantee, or even recognize, this succession. ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... called them,—and they are here only for silly display. Also there are many of their elders who have no philosophy or wit to justify their continuous talking; nevertheless, all considered, it must be admitted that the Athenian makes a use of their dearly loved "leisure," which men of a more pragmatic race will do well to consider as the fair equivalent of much frantic zeal for "business." Athenian "leisure" has already given the world Pericles, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Socrates, and Plato, not to name such artists as Phidias, whose profession cannot ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... Etherington's merits were not confined to his external appearance; for, had his better fortunes failed him, his deserts, like those of Hamlet, might have got him a fellowship in a cry of players. He presented, though in dumb show, the pragmatic conceit of Bottom, to the infinite amusement of all present, especially of those who were well acquainted with the original; and when he was "translated" by Puck, he bore the ass's head, his newly-acquired dignity, with an appearance of conscious greatness, which made the metamorphosis, though ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... hand by the ungenerous timidity of the monarch to whom had been transferred devotion and loyalty he was unfitted to receive. The Court which had been a centre of flashing and gleaming brilliance degenerated into a knot of sycophants humouring the pragmatic and self-important folly of a king in whom had implanted themselves all the vices of the Scots and none of their virtues. Nothing seemed left remarkable beneath the visiting moon. The bright day was done and they were for the dark. The uprising ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... had to be admitted in one instance, it was admitted in principle; and one could not get rid of the suspicion that it would turn up elsewhere, and that the banishment of it from every other field represented a convenient pragmatic postulate rather than a solid metaphysical truth. Moreover, the correlation of the unitary soul with the unitary gland might do justice to a mechanistical philosophy, but it did not do justice to the soul's own consciousness of itself. The soul's consciousness is the 'idea' or 'representation' ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz

... depends less upon the arguments of speculative theology and the findings of biblical science than upon sociological considerations. The church is dealing with a pragmatic public which insists upon knowing what this or that institution accomplishes for the common good. The deep and growing interest in social science, the crying needs that it lays bare, together with socialistic dreams of human welfare, compel Christian ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben

... previously put to writing; but these considerations do not alter the general proposition set forth in this chapter as to the practical purpose served by the omen series as well as by the reports, and the pragmatic origin of both. ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... is the following: 1. Genealogies, like the records of Manetho, the Egyptian priest. 2. The chronicle, following the chronological order, and telling the story in a simple, popular way. 3. The "pragmatic" form of writing, which aims to explain by reference to the past some particular characteristic or phase of the present, and uses history to point a special moral lesson. 4. The form of history which traces the rise and progress of "ideas," tendencies, or ruling forces,—such as the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... consider the three leaders of the pragmatic movement to be Professor William James, Dr. F. C. S. Schiller, and Professor John Dewey. The first has developed his doctrine at length in his volume entitled "Pragmatism" (London, 1907); the second, ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... has given rise to diverse interpretations and there are those who, on reading the Dialogues, believe that it is not amiss to state that in certain utterances there is ground to hold that Plato argued for the pragmatic value of a belief in God and personal immortality; that he does not stress the truth of the matter, but argues mainly for the benefit which the State derives from the belief; that such theistic beliefs cannot be demonstrated, and may well be but ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks

... Tuscany, Parma, and Placentia, to the eldest son of the queen of Spain, in default of heirs in the present possessors, as masculine fiefs of the empire. Spain became guarantee of the Austrian succession, according to the pragmatic sanction, by which the dominions of that house were settled on the emperors's heirs general, and declared to be a perpetual, indivisible, and inseparable feoffment of the primogeniture. By the commercial treaty of Vienna, the Austrian subjects were entitled ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett



Words linked to "Pragmatic" :   pragmatical, pragmatic sanction, hard-nosed, pragmatism, hardheaded, imperial decree



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