"Assignable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I left her, and I was happy. I rambled through the woods and over the vine-slopes, I wandered in the valleys, I read, I lounged, I {34} worked in the garden, I gathered the fruits, I helped at the indoor work, and happiness followed me everywhere. It was in no one assignable thing; it was all within myself; it could not leave me ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... character the "cup of Praeneste" claims a high place among the works of art probably or certainly assignable to the Phoenicians. The relief is high; the forms, especially the animal ones, are spirited and well-proportioned. The horses are especially good. As M. Clermont-Ganneau says, "their forms and their movements are indicated with a great deal of precision and truth."[786] ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... bloodthirsty; boiled and raved, and had in it exactly the same elements—servants, camel-drivers, marketmen, gate-keepers, gardeners, dealers in fruits and wines, proselytes, and foreigners not proselytes, watchmen and menials from the Temple, thieves, robbers, and the myriad not assignable to any class, but who, on such occasions as this, appeared no one could say whence, hungry and smelling of caves and old tombs—bareheaded wretches with naked arms and legs, hair and beard in uncombed mats, and each with one garment the color of clay; beasts with abysmal mouths, in outcry effective ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... whatever are placed to the productions of the earth; they may increase for ever and be greater than any assignable quantity, yet still the power of population being a power of a superior order, the increase of the human species can only be kept commensurate to the increase of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity ...
— An Essay on the Principle of Population • Thomas Malthus
... has been set forth in the preceding chapter, all mental states are effects of physical causes, it follows that what are called mental faculties and operations are, properly speaking, cerebral functions, allotted to definite, though not yet precisely assignable, parts of ...
— Hume - (English Men of Letters Series) • T.H. Huxley
... ale, threepenny, &c., to be subsequently treated of, the practical minutia of fermentation and attenuation shall be circumstantially laid down in each, so as to account for, and distinguish the variety of flavour, &c., assignable to each cause effected by the different ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... thought of death is fraught with all manner of terrors. As some are naturally afraid in the absence of light, and tremble with fear at being alone in a dark and lonely dwelling, or spot, or place, so there are many who, without assignable reason, other than a native tendency, are appalled at ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... and geologists of merit have endeavoured to arrive at positive dates, or an exact estimate of the minimum of time assignable to the later age of stone. These computations have been sometimes founded on changes in the level of the land, or on the increase of peat, as in the Danish bogs, or on the conversion of water into ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... Comte realised so fully as he has done all the majesty of which that idea is susceptible. It ascends into the unknown recesses of the past, embraces the manifold present, and descends into the indefinite and unforeseeable future. Forming a collective existence without assignable beginning or end, it appeals to that feeling of the infinite which is deeply rooted in human nature, and which seems necessary to the imposingness of ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... to be convinced; yet this uncertainty is voluntarily increased by unnecessary delay, whether we respect external causes, or consider the nature of our own minds. He that now feels a desire to do right, and wishes to regulate his life according to his reason, is not sure that, at any future time assignable, he shall be able to rekindle the same ardour; he that has now an opportunity offered him of breaking loose from vice and folly, cannot know, but that he shall hereafter be more entangled, and struggle for ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... must, of course, consider the drops as composing the stream. The question is, What laws can we assign which will determine the process of composition? The phrase 'association' admittedly expresses some general and very familiar truths. Innumerable connections may be established when there is no assignable ground of connection in the ideas themselves other than the fact of a previous contact. One idea not only calls up the other, but in some way generates a belief in an independent connection. We hear thunder, for example, and think of lightning. The ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... authority. On the other hand, seventy-six passages differ both from the Hebrew and LXX where the two are together, ninety-nine differ from them where they diverge, and besides these, three, though introduced with marks of quotation, have no assignable original in the Old Testament at all. Leaving them for the present out of the question, we have a hundred instances of agreement against a hundred and seventy-five of difference; or, in other words, the proportion of difference to agreement is as ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... assignable to one of the three following causes, or a combination of these: First, hereditary or inborn weakness; second, unfavorable conditions of food, surroundings, etc.; third, bacteria or ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... being truly affirmed of John, George, Mary, and other persons without assignable limit; and it is affirmed of all of them in the same sense; for the word man expresses certain qualities, and when we predicate it of those persons, we assert that they all possess those qualities. But John is only capable of being ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... kingdoms, Tartarean and Elysian, defined as the everlasting habitations of departed souls, have been successively driven, as dissipated visions, from their assumed latitudes and longitudes, one after another, by progressive discovery, until now the intelligent mind knows of no assignable spot for them. Since we are not acquainted with any fixed locations to which the soul is to be carried, to abide there forever in appointed joy or woe, and since there is no scientific necessity nor moral use for the supposition of such places and of the transferrence of ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... against a wild desire to rush about from wall to wall, shrieking and waving his arms. Over and over again he exclaimed, "Oh, what is the matter with me?" The strangeness of the thing was what unsettled and unnerved him. He had all the sensations of terror, but without any assignable reason, and this groundless fear became in the end the cause of a new fear: he was afraid of this fear that was ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... habits and needs; they live in much content, despite social imperfections and injustices, despite the ills of nature. Above and below are classes of extreme characterisation; I believe the happiness assignable to those who are the lowest stratum of civilisation is, relatively speaking, no whit less than that we may attribute to the thin stratum of the surface, using the surface to mean the excessively rich. It is a paradox, but anyone ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... close sequence with chap. viii. 12; and we are assured that we are put in possession of the text as it came from the hands of its inspired Author. Nor, (it must be admitted), is any difficulty whatever occasioned thereby; for there is no reason assignable why the two last-named verses should not cohere; (there is no internal improbability, I mean, in the supposition;) neither does there exist any a priori reason why a considerable portion of narrative should be looked for in that particular ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... flocked to hear him, and so supreme was his influence that under his direction the people gladly undertook extensive works of bridge building and road making. Like Shotoku Taishi, his name is associated by tradition with achievements not properly assignable to him, as the invention of the potter's wheel—though it had been in use for centuries before his time—and the production of various works of art which can scarcely have occupied the attention of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... thing can be called a contradiction of the former, it is to be told that a Being of infinite power, wisdom, and beneficence could not construct a world without an immensity of evil in it; no reason being assignable or even imaginable for such a proposition, except the fact that such a world has not been created! I am therefore compelled to doubt, whether such a universe be really the fabrication of such a Being. It is impossible to express my astonishment ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... my shoes; four times the value of my gloves; one twentieth of the value of this watch. Of these several relations of value, what is the sufficient cause? If they were capricious, no such science as that of Political Economy could exist; not being capricious, they must have an assignable cause; this cause—what ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... strange measure he fell upon, there was not a touch of latent Insanity; whereof indeed the actual condition of these Documents in Capricornus and Aquarius is no bad emblem. His so unlimited Wanderings, toilsome enough, are without assigned or perhaps assignable aim; internal Unrest seems his sole guidance; he wanders, wanders, as if that curse of the Prophet had fallen on him, and he were "made like unto a wheel." Doubtless, too, the chaotic nature of these Paper-bags aggravates our obscurity. Quite without note of preparation, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... south-east side of the plantations of palms and gardens, not in the central part of the oasis. I asked the talebs the meaning of some of the names of the gates, but they could not tell. Many proper names of places and persons, amongst them as with us, have now no assignable meaning or derivation. ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... can be exhibited as a show are discovered and appreciated accordingly. But wisdom and virtue, which are to the mind what breath is to the body, have no part assigned or assignable to them on such a stage. A man may pass a life in London without an occasion arising by which his neighbours can learn whether he is an honest fellow or a rogue. The consequence is, that a good deal of such a man's moral nature gets imperfectly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 547, May 19, 1832 • Various
... the effect either of extraordinary accidents, or of the destruction, ever slower and slower, of the vital forces? May we not believe that the duration of the middle interval between birth and this destruction has no assignable term? Man will never become immortal, but is it a mere chimera to hold that the term fixed to his years is slowly and perpetually receding further and further from the moment ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... girl; and, laughing, she ran to the glass to admire herself. 'Barnes said I looked sweet this morning;' and five minutes after she was tossing her head nervously, declaring she was miserable, and often she burst out crying for no assignable cause. Mrs. Barton consoled and flattered gaily; but the sweet placid countenance was sometimes a little troubled. As the girls left the breakfast-room one morning she said, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... and, seemingly, that of the wildest odes, had a logic of its own, as severe as that of science; and more difficult, because more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, and more fugitive causes. In the truly great poets, he would say, there is a reason assignable, not only for every word, but for the position of every word; and I well remember that, availing himself of the synonymes to the Homer of Didymus, he made us attempt to show, with regard to each, why it would not have answered the same purpose; and wherein consisted the peculiar fitness ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... may yet be possible to the bastard brood of Scriblerus. For my part, I shall not be surprised though the next discoverer should assure us that half at least of Hamlet is evidently due to the collaboration of Heywood, while the greater part of Othello is as clearly assignable to ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... previous June I had been badly wounded in the head, and for three months was incapacitated for service. In truth, I had done no actual duty since, being then, as for many years afterward, subject to fits of fainting, sometimes without assignable immediate cause, but mostly when suffering from exposure, excitement or excessive fatigue. This combination of them all had broken me ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... to liberate itself from the transient accretions of a living, and therefore constantly changing, mode of speech. He strove after an enfranchisement of utterance, devoid of stratifying peculiarities, assignable to no age or epoch, and understood of all. A soul-shaking thought, prevalent throughout Christendom, was felt imaginatively by a highly endowed poet, and, like impetuous volcanic fires that fling heavenward mighty fragments ...
— The Hound of Heaven • Francis Thompson
... sometimes means the phenomenal law of conservation of energy, sometimes the metaphysical principle that the quantity of existence is unalterable, sometimes the logical principle that nothing can happen without a reason, sometimes the practical postulate that in the absence of any assignable difference you must call a thing the same. This law is one vast vagueness, of which I can give no clear account; but of his special vaguenesses "mental force" and "social force" are ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... the most valuable intellectual possession we can obtain. If man and his place in nature, his mind and social obligations, become intelligible, if right and wrong, good and evil, and duty come to have more definite and assignable values through an understanding of the results of science, then life may be fuller and richer, better and more effective, in direct proportion to this understanding of the harmony ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... after teething, infants are more or less subject or liable to sudden fits, which often, without any assignable cause, will attack the child in a moment, and while in the mother's arms; and which, according to their frequency, and the age and strength of the infant, are ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... fight this country for the possession of what is now British Columbia. His short figure gave an impression of abounding strength and energy which obtained him the nickname of "the little Giant." With no assignable higher quality, and with the blustering, declamatory, shamelessly fallacious and evasive oratory of a common demagogue, he was nevertheless an accomplished Parliamentarian, and imposed himself as effectively ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... not at the moment; for there was certainly not one word said by the Earl which could give him any assignable cause of offence, and yet he was grieved and offended. It was the tone, the manner, the cold haughtiness of every look and gesture that pained him. He was not moved by any boyish conceit; he was always willing, even in his own mind, to offer deep respect to high rank, or high station, ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... He professes therefore that he has no evidence, arising from his observation of what we call matter, of the actual existence of a material world. He looks into himself, and all he finds is sensation; but sensation cannot be a property of inert matter. There is therefore no assignable analogy between the causes of his sensations, whatever they may be, and the sensations themselves; and the material world, such as we apprehend it, is the mere creature of his ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... were unaware that so much had been written on the subject, but when we find even Mr. Wallace himself as profoundly ignorant on this subject as he still either is, or affects to be, there is no limit assignable to the ignorance or affected ignorance of the kind of biologists who would write reviews in leading journals thirty years ago. Mr. ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... Mr. Tegetmeier, "that a gamecock, though disfigured by being dubbed, and with his hackles trimmed, would be accepted as readily as a male retaining all his natural ornaments."[126] Evidence is adduced that a female pigeon will sometimes turn antipathy to a particular male without any assignable cause; or, in other cases, will take a strong fancy to some one bird, and will desert her own mate for him; but it is not stated that superiority or inferiority of plumage has anything to do with these fancies. Two ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... make against them for past matters; agreeably to the Athenian habit of subjecting every magistrate to a trial of accountability on laying down his office. In the course of this investigation, Philesius and Xanthikles were fined twenty minae,[91] to make good an assignable deficiency of that amount, in the cargoes of those merchantmen which had been detained at Trapezus for the transport of the army: Sophaenetus, who had the general superintendence of this property, but had been negligent in that duty, was fined ten minae. Next, the name of Xenophon was put ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... FitzGerald adds to this his own note: "Miss Ridout I remember—an elegant spinster; friend of my mother's. About 1825 she had been at Sidmouth, and known Crabbe." The son quotes some very ardent verses belonging to this period, but not assignable to any particular charmer, such as ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... the Anglo-Saxon word]. A stream or current of air which may be felt. The horizon being divided into 32 points (see COMPASS), the wind which blows from any of them has an assignable name. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... sense which does not simultaneously recall differences of form, number, colour, and the like. Neither is such a distinction applicable at all to our internal bodily sensations, which give no sign of themselves when unaccompanied with pain, and even when we are most conscious of them, have often no assignable place in the human frame. Who can divide the nerves or great nervous centres from the mind which uses them? Who can separate the pains and pleasures of the mind from the pains and pleasures of the body? The words 'inward and outward,' 'active and passive,' 'mind and body,' ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... subsisting between the Deity and these same objects of our own experience. Hence, to suppose that the Deity constructed the eye by any such process of thought as we know that men construct watches, is to make an assumption not only incapable of proof, but destitute of any assignable degree of likelihood. Take an example. The relation in which a bee stands to the external world is to a large extent a matter of observation, and, therefore, no one imagines that the formation of its scientifically-constructed cells is due to any profound ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... reach two important conclusions: (1) that this great tactical advance was introduced by Anson during the War of the Austrian Succession, and (2) that the older set of Additional Fighting Instructions was then in existence. Another improvement probably assignable to this time was Article IV. (of Boscawen's set) for battle order in two separate lines. Articles V., VI., VII., for extended cruising formations certainly were then issued, for in his despatch after his defeat of De la Jonquiere Anson says: 'At daybreak ...
— Fighting Instructions, 1530-1816 - Publications Of The Navy Records Society Vol. XXIX. • Julian S. Corbett
... interpreted to be somehow high and solemn. There seemed indeed to be nothing in the world that spoke in such mysterious terms of an august destiny awaiting the soul. The origin, the very elements of the joy of music were so absolutely inexplicable. There seemed to be no assignable cause for the fact that the mixture of rhythmical progress and natural vibration should have such a singular and magical power over the human soul, and affect it with such ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... mysterious and painful phenomenon to the unhappy person who is the object of it, and more especially if he have incurred it by no one assignable reason. Why it happens that no heart can be so generous, no life so self-denying, no intentions so honourable and pure, as to shield a man from the enmity of his fellows, must remain a dark question for ever. But certain it is, that to bear the undeserved malignity of the evil-minded, to hear unmoved ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... extemporary comedy, and their Improvisatori; but an instance not yet accounted for of this national levity, appears in those denominations of exquisite absurdity given by themselves to their Academies! I have in vain inquired for any assignable reason why the most ingenious men, and grave and illustrious personages, cardinals, and princes, as well as poets, scholars, and artists, in every literary city, should voluntarily choose to burlesque themselves and their serious occupations, by affecting mysterious ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... that, so far as you know, your husband capriciously struck you out of his will, without assignable reason or motive for doing so, and without other obvious explanation of his conduct than that he acted in this matter entirely under the influence of Mrs. Lecount, I will immediately take Counsel's opinion touching ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... aesthetic philosopher, over and above the real Giorgione and his authentic extant works, there remains the Giorgionesque also—an influence, a spirit or type in art, active in men so different as those to whom many of his supposed works are really assignable—a veritable school, which grew together out of all those fascinating works rightly or wrongly attributed to him; out of many copies from, or variations on him, by unknown or uncertain workmen, whose drawings and designs were, ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... asked, if we have no prostitutes from the free class of society among ourselves. I answer, in no assignable proportion. With general truth, it might be said, that there are none. When such a case occurs, it is among the rare evils of society. And apart from other and better reasons, which we believe to exist, it is plain that it must be so, from the comparative ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Court of Vienna, especially to the Hungarian Majesty, this wonderful reconquest of Bohemia, without battle fought,—or any cause assignable but Traun's excellent manoeuvring and Friedrich's imprudences and trust in the French,—was a thing of heavenly miracle; blessed omen that Providence had vouchsafed to her prayers the recovery ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... everywhere believe in the existence of a supreme Being or beings to whom they are morally responsible, is a strong argument in favor of its truth. So universal an effect must have a cause as universal, otherwise we have an effect without any assignable cause. Certain is it that this argument makes the burden of proof to rest upon those who deny the existence ...
— The Great Doctrines of the Bible • Rev. William Evans
... on horseback, galloping first to one place and then to another, and backing his horse among the people, and prancing, and curvetting, and shouting in a most alarming manner, and making himself very hoarse in the voice, and very red in the face, without any assignable cause or reason whatever. Officers were running backwards and forwards, first communicating with Colonel Bulder, and then ordering the sergeants, and then running away altogether; and even the very privates themselves looked from behind their glazed stocks with an air of mysterious ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... But, say many persons, is not gravity itself a mystery? We say No; gravity has passed through all the stages of legitimate and possible explanation; it is the most highly generalised of all physical facts, and by no assignable transformation could it be made more intelligible than it is. It is singularly easy of comprehension; its law is exactly known; and, excepting the details of calculation, in its more complex workings, there is nothing to complain of, nothing to rectify, nothing to pretend ignorance about; it is the ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... natural consequence of the action: the evolved substances are expelled from the decomposing mass (518. 519.), not drawn out by an attraction which ceases to act on one particle without any assignable reason, while it continues to act on another of the same kind: and whether the poles be metal, water, or air, still the substances are evolved, and are sometimes set free, whilst at others they unite to the matter of ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... fortress by assault, but he has not system enough to make his way by regular approaches. He is weary of the work before he has traced out the first parallel. In this very history of the rise of professional authorship, we may often see the causes of its fall. The calamities of authors are often assignable to the very circumstances that made them authors. Wherefore is it that in many cases authors are disorderly and improvident? simply because it is their nature to be so—because in any other path of life they would be ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... livid spots under the eyes is a common feature. Sudden flashes of heat may be noticed passing over the patient's face. He is liable also to palpitations. The pulse is very variable, generally too slow. Extreme emaciation, without any other assignable cause for it, may be set down as another ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... street, and begin the attempt to penetrate the suspicious secret that hid from him and from every one the origin of Valentine's adopted child, by getting possession of the Hair Bracelet which he had seen laid away in the inner drawer of the bureau. As for any assignable reason for justifying him in associating this Hair Bracelet with Madonna, he found it, to his own satisfaction, in young Thorpe's account of the strange words spoken by Mrs. Peckover in Mr. Blyth's hall—the suspicions resulting from these hints ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... the shade;" and awaking from his vision, Chaucer takes leave of the reader with a resolution already habitual to him—to read more and more, instead of resting satisfied with the knowledge he has already acquired. And in the last of the longer poems which seem assignable to this period of his life, he proves that one Latin poet at least—Venus' clerk, whom in the "House of Fame" he behold standing on a pillar of her own Cyprian metal—had been read as well as celebrated ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... March 24th, 1860, to the London "Critic,") that, on examining the folio with Mr. Bond, the Assistant Keeper of his Department, they were both "struck with the very suspicious character of the writing,"—certainly the work of one hand, but presenting varieties of forms assignable to different periods,—the evident painting of the letters, and the artificial look of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... take their altitudes, perhaps preying on my mind, kept me many whole nights consecutively without obtaining even as much as one wink of sleep—a state of things I had once before suffered from. But there really was no assignable cause for this, unless weakness or feverishness could create wakefulness, and then it would seem surprising that even during the day, or after much fatigue, I rarely felt the slightest inclination ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... periodical in the dog. I have seen it under medical treatment, and without medical treatment, perfectly disappear for a while, and soon afterwards, without any assignable cause, return. There is a breed of the Blenheim spaniel, in which this periodical goitre is very remarkable; the slightest cold is accompanied by enlargement of the thyroid gland, but the swelling altogether disappears in the course of a fortnight. I am quite assured that it is hereditary; no one ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... work like an ordinary play or poem. Their composition apparently extended over a considerable time, which may be fairly estimated as not less than four years. Read literally they seem to portray thoughts, modes or experiences fairly assignable to such a period. Though variable and sometimes light and airy in their movement, the greater portion appear to reveal deep and intense emotion, the welling and tumultous floods of the inner life of their great author. And ...
— Testimony of the Sonnets as to the Authorship of the Shakespearean Plays and Poems • Jesse Johnson
... rupees. He then distributed the lands and revenue of the country according to his own pleasure; and as he had seized the lands without our knowing why or wherefore, so the portion which he took away from some persons he gave to others, in the same arbitrary manner, and without any assignable reason. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and stood for some moments trembling for no assignable reason, as he saw in front of the range a fat German hired girl sitting in the lap of a ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... there is very little room for fallacy; nor do I see what remains to the decision of it, but that those gentlemen who have been acquainted with military operations, inform us, what degree of superiority is conferred by any assignable number of officers; that we may compare their service with the price, and discover whether the same money will not ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... pregnant female we find the young ones to possess gills like aquatic salamanders; and when placed in the water the young ones swim about like the tadpoles of the water newt. Now, to suppose that these utterly useless gills were specially designed is to suppose design without any assignable purpose; for even the far-fetched assumption that a unity of ideal is the cause of organic affinities, becomes positively ridiculous when applied to the case of embryonic structures, which are destined to disappear before the animal is born. Who, for instance, would have ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... the Rector's wife. None of us knew her origin—I doubt if she knew it herself: beyond her husband and children, assignable ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... conformity that we glide so easily towards the studied increase of pain. If some men were able to perceive what lay in the other scale, if they made a free choice, after deliberation, between well-defined and well-argued opinions, then what happened is not assignable to invincible causes, and history must turn from general and easy explanation to track the sinuosities of a tangled thread. In Mr. Lea's acceptation of ecclesiastical history intolerance was handed down as a rule of life from the days of ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Wright, the proprietor of a farm on the banks of the Charles River, in Massachusetts, possessed a flock of fifteen ewes and a ram of the ordinary kind. In the year 1791, one of the ewes presented her owner with a male lamb, differing, for no assignable reason, from its parents by a proportionally long body and short bandy legs, whence it was unable to emulate its relatives in those sportive leaps over the neighbours' fences, in which they were in the habit of indulging, much to ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... severe, beseech grace instead of combating." "It seems to me that souls seek each other in the chaos of this world, like elements of the same nature tending to re-unite. They touch, they feel themselves tallied; confidence is established without an assignable cause. Reason and reflection following, and fixing the seal of their approval on the union, think they have done it all, as subaltern ministers regard the transactions of their masters nothing until they have ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... of trees is strongly inherited in some cases, and, without any assignable reason, feebly in other cases. I have selected this character as an instance of capricious inheritance, because it is certainly not proper to the parent-species, and because, both sexes being borne on the same tree, both tend to transmit the same character. Even supposing that there may have ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... appearance. The general meaning of this somewhat obscure passage is, Since we have no show or pretext of a cause, no assignable ground or apparent ground of complaint, against Caesar, in what he is, or in anything he has yet done, let us assume that the further addition of a crown will quite upset his nature, and metamorphose him into a serpent. The strain of casuistry used in this speech is very remarkable. ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... Production than Actually Employed in it. 3. Examination of Cases Illustrative of the Idea of Capital. Chapter IV. Fundamental Propositions Respecting Capital. 1. Industry is Limited by Capital. 2. Increase of Capital gives Increased Employment to Labor, Without Assignable Bounds. 3. Capital is the result of Saving, and all Capital is Consumed. 4. Capital is kept up by Perpetual Reproduction, as shown by the Recovery of Countries from Devastation. 5. Effects of Defraying Government Expenditure by Loans. 6. ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... eighteen months. There were local tales of his having exerted his powers of prognosis, or perhaps you would say diagnosis; and it was said that in every instance the person whose friends he had warned had died suddenly at the appointed time, and from no assignable cause. All this, however, has nothing to do with what I have to tell; I thought it ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... reflection, was by no means so exultant as the worthy shoe-mender. The odd mode of packing away a deed of such importance, with no assignable motive for doing so, except the needless awe with which Sowerby was said to have inspired his feeble-spirited client, together with what Caleb had said of the shattered state of the deceased's mind after the interview with Mrs. Warner's daughter, suggested fears that Sowerby might dispute, ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... ragtime literature which flouts traditional rhythms and sequences and grammar and logic. In verse its products—rhythms which are often indistinguishable from prose rhythms and collocations of words to which sometimes is assignable no exact intellectual significance—are by now familiar to all who read. Eliot is too personal to be typical of anything, and the student who would get a fair idea of Jazz poetry would do better to spend half ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... "Rise of Dutch Republic," vol. i. p. 151, says that in the sixteenth century, in wars between European states, the captor had a property in his prisoner, which was assignable. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... enthusiasm either of poetry or of painting, if scenery and such accidental circumstances are to be regarded as every thing, and original character as nothing. But it may reasonably be doubted if ever natural scenery has any assignable influence on the productions of genius. The idea has probably arisen from the impression which the magnificence of nature makes on persons of cultivated minds, who fall into the mistake of considering the elevated emotions arising in reality from their ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... is susceptible. It ascends into the unknown recesses of the past, embraces the manifold present, and descends into the indefinite and unforeseeable future, forming a collective Existence without assignable beginning or end, it appeals to that feeling of the Infinite, which is deeply rooted in human nature, and which seems necessary to the imposingness of all our highest conceptions. Of the vast unrolling web of human life, the part best known to us is irrevocably past; this we can no longer ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... The existence of other individuals to whom it applies may be highly improbable; but, if it be logically possible, that is enough. On the other hand, the enumeration of infinite peculiarities is certainly impossible. Therefore proper names have no assignable connotation. The only escape from this reasoning lies in falling back upon time and place, the principles of individuation, as constituting the connotation of proper names. Two things cannot be at the same time in the same place: hence 'the man ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... heart could not grasp the romantic criterion with which Alice was wont to measure action. Her mind was single, impulsive, narrow and direct in all its movements. She loved, hated, desired, caressed, repulsed, not for any assignable reason more solid or more luminous than "because." She adored Rene and wanted him near her. He was a hero in her imagination, no matter what he did. Little difference was it to her whether he hauled logs for the English or smoked his pipe in idleness by the winter fire—what could it ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... the classification here proposed we found that there was still considerable room for difference of opinion in the placing of many reactions, owing to the circumstance that in many cases a reaction presents features which render it assignable under any one of two or more headings. To leave the matter of preference in grouping: to be decided in each case according to the best judgment of the experimenter would mean introducing again the play of personal equation, and would thus court ...
— A Study of Association in Insanity • Grace Helen Kent
... which I have not had time to transcribe; I now send it you, because it somewhat varies from MR. SPURRELL'S, and yet so much resembles it as to show that the same formula is preserved. Both show that the presents are considered as debts, transferable or assignable to other parties. Is this the case in all districts of Wales where the custom of bidding prevails? I think I have heard that in some places the gift is to be returned only when the actual donor "enters into the matrimonial state." It will be observed, too, in these forms, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... good will and energy that would have amazed him a year before; but all to no purpose. The Senior Manageress, who had selected him for appointment and conferred various small marks of favour upon him, suddenly changed in her manner, declared for no assignable cause that he was stupid, and dismissed him at the end of six weeks of salesmanship. So Denton had to resume his ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... the Africans recaptured from the bark Pons; the defeat of the resolution creating the rank of Lieutenant-General; and the act founding a Military Asylum for the relief of disabled soldiers. The French Spoliation Bill, the bill making Land Warrants Assignable, the bill granting ten million acres of the public lands to the states for the relief of the indigent insane, and all the proposals for new steamship lines, as well as Mr. Collins's application for an additional appropriation ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various |
