"Bias" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... both these points and apparently determined to remain wrong. Of course, it might have been a mere error of judgment, but at the same time he had no evidence whatever against her, and it seemed to suggest a curious bias. And finally, I didn't like the ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... part of an historian, who is absolutely destitute of political principles, to pass judgment. Facts have crept into this history, it is true, but no one could regret it more than the author; yet there has been no bias or political prejudice shown, other than that reflected from the historical sources ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... esteem you, and how grateful we are for the inestimable service you have rendered us, and for your kindness and attention while we were on board your ship; but you must acknowledge that I ought not as a father to allow these considerations to bias me when my daughter's future prospects are concerned. Now you will understand, my brother and I had agreed that she should marry her cousin Henri, although she herself is not aware of this arrangement. My astonishment was nevertheless ...
— Charley Laurel - A Story of Adventure by Sea and Land • W. H. G. Kingston
... means, raise out of the slough of inanity to their own intellectual level, it was particularly strange, and it was even particularly affecting, to see this crowd of earnest faces, whose honesty in the main no competent observer free from bias could doubt, so ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... table sacred to litter; and from a wild welter of books, pipes, papers, golf-balls, hats, cigar-boxes, dog-collars, switches, cartridges and other sediment, he extracted a large gilt-edged card and studied it without enthusiasm or bias. ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... transports us beyond the grave. Hence we should give appropriate names to our children,—such as will interest them, and neither be a reproach, on the one hand, nor reach to unattainable and unworthy heights, on the other; for the mind of your child will take a bias, from its name, ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... which belongs, in mood, situation, or utterance, to the loftier phases of human suffering. The sorrow of those who most attracted his sympathy was not theatrical or imposing. It has been well said of him, that his "bias was towards all that was poor and unregarded." And thus, while those who painfully moved the charity and compassion of his genius were considered by him the victims of artificial civilization, his own feeling for them was natural and ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... all the softness and melody of Spenser; and if a riper judgement has robbed us of the pleasing fancy, it has been at least replaced by the grateful conviction that they were the overflowings of a mother's heart, and by the blessing of God, contributed in a great measure to give an early bias in favour of religious truth. A specimen written at this time ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... their solemn office. They were of marked but very contrasted characters. The elder inherited the strong will and dominant energy of her race. As yet, and for some time afterwards, without any religious bias, she contemplated her prospects with a quiet and proud consciousness of responsibility. The younger sister was of a softer and more submissive nature. She shrank from her high position, saying that an abbess had to answer to God for the souls of her nuns, and she was sure that she would have enough ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... analogy is, we must be convinced that the use for our cases of both induction and analogy, is always menace. We have at the same time to bear in mind how much use we actually make of both; even our general rules—e. g., concerning false testimony,—bias, reversibility, special inclinations, etc.— and our doctrines concerning the composition and indirection of testimony, even our rules concerning the value of witnesses and confessions, all these depend upon induction and ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... psychological bias informing his essay, Ogilvie tends to reduce the importance of narrative events in favor of vivid and picturesque descriptions, for the latter most immediately communicate themselves to the reader and most expressly realize the translation from thought to feeling. ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... is for this reason that your country, standing apart from either one of the belligerents, is in the best position to judge, without bias or partiality, the conditions under which the war is ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... promptly discerning the signs of the times, took the initiative toward making the national attitude and tendency on the subject of slavery the touchstone of politics. Politic and prudent by nature, and with no personal disappointments or grievances to bias his course, he doubtless would have preferred to save and use the accumulated and organized force of one or the other of the political parties which divided the country, and press its power into the service of the principles ...
— Eulogy on Chief-Justice Chase - Delivered by William M. Evarts before the Alumni of - Dartmouth College, at Hanover • William M. Evarts
... imperfectly recorded "Lectures on Shakespeare." Coleridge as a critic is not easily to be summed up. What may first surprise us, when we begin to look into his critical opinions, is the uncertainty of his judgments in regard to his own work, and to the work of his friends; the curious bias which a feeling or an idea, affection or a philosophical theory, could give to his mind. His admiration for Southey, his consideration for Sotheby, perhaps in a less degree his unconquerable esteem for Bowles, together with something very like adulation of Wordsworth, ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... quite without either political or religious bias!" she said defiantly. She had failed to keep her secret, but she went down with ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... age like Dulwich, which has Modern, Science, and Engineering sides, the primacy still belongs to Classics, and the captaincy of the school is rigidly confined to boys on the Classical side. My son believed that this bias for Classics was bad educationally. He thought the prestige given to Greek and Latin as compared with English Literature, Science, Modern Languages and History was simply the outcome of a pedantic scholastic ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... thus endued as with a sense And faculty for storm and turbulence. Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes; Sweet images! Which, wheresoe'er he be, Are at his heart; and such fidelity It is his darling passion to approve;— More brave for this, that ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... a novel with which I could sympathise deeply, based upon the theme of England's regeneration by means of the right type of Tory squire, but it would be a novel with a more credible hero and conceived in a less petty spirit of party bias than Mr. H. N. DICKINSON has given us in The Business of a Gentleman (HEINEMANN). For, in the first place, Sir Robert Wilton, who figured of course in Keddy and Sir Guy and Lady Rannard—he has, in fact, by this time married Marion, late ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... well to remember that of it St. Bernard may be assumed to have had full and first-hand information. The main facts were probably communicated to him by Malachy himself, though some particulars were no doubt added by other Irish informants. It is true, we must also allow for bias on St. Bernard's part in favour of his friend. Such bias in fact displays itself in Secs. 25, 26. But bias, apart from sheer dishonesty, could not distort the whole narrative, as it certainly must have been distorted in the Life, if the narrative ...
— St. Bernard of Clairvaux's Life of St. Malachy of Armagh • H. J. Lawlor
... stories of its echoes having been heard from a dilapidated log cabin in Arkansas, from a remote corner of the north of England, and from the Heights of Benjamin in the Holy Land. But even its devotion and humility have not escaped censure—arising, perhaps, from denominational bias. The fault found with it is the fault of Addison's 'How are thy servants blessed, O Lord,' and the fault of the Psalmody begun by Sternhold and Hopkins, which, published in Geneva in 1556, electrified ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... editorial and reportorial functions of a newspaper are apt to be much less clearly defined in the United States than in England. The English reporter, as a rule, confines himself strictly to his report, which is made without bias. A Conservative speech is as accurately (though perhaps not as lengthily) reported in a Liberal paper as in one of its own colour. All comment or criticism is reserved for the editorial columns. This is by no means the case in America. Such an authority as the Atlantic Monthly ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... series of notable books. They were all similar in that they bore the stamp of the romanticism of the thirties and forties, interpreting history in terms of the {4} individual; but they differed in their political bias. These works were written by Carlyle, Louis Blanc, Lamartine ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... success of my enterprise, Betty liked me. She told me this with the same engaging candor she would have used in informing me that she hated me, if she had happened to take a bias in that direction, ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... on the continent, became a student of the Inner Temple. The contiguity of these inns of court, the similarity of their studies and pursuits, and particularly, as they both possessed the same political bias; Chaucer attaching himself to John of Ghent, Duke of Lancaster, by whom, as well as by the Duchess Blanche, he was greatly esteemed; and Gower giving his influence to Thomas of Woodstock, both uncles to King Richard II.—would naturally ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13 Issue 364 - 4 Apr 1829 • Various
... alone in the matter of circulating false information that these news venders are at fault. The habit of retailing 'points' in the interest of cliques, the volunteering of advice as to what people should buy and what they should sell, the strong speculative bias that runs through their editorial opinions, these things appear to most people a revolting abuse of the ...
— Successful Stock Speculation • John James Butler
... effect, and an adherence to the law by a proportionate effect. Does not the "punishment fit the crime" better in this case—the rewards also. And looking at it from a reasonable point of view, devoid from theological bias, which plan seems to be the best exemplification of Justice and Natural Law, not to speak of the higher Divine Justice and Cosmic Law? Of course, we are not urging these ideas as "proofs" of Reincarnation, for strictly speaking "proof" must lie outside of speculation of "what ought ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... man can well be; but he is a young and princely novice, full of high enthusiasm and quick sensibility—the sport of circumstances, questioning with fortune, and refining on his own feelings, and forced from the natural bias of his disposition by the strangeness of his situation. He seems incapable of deliberate action, and is only hurried into extremities on the spur of the occasion, when he has no time to reflect—as in the scene where ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... pointed to some distant goal; to look backwards, is like walking backwards—against our proper formation; the mind does not readily adopt the habit, and when once adopted, it will readily return to its natural bias. Oblivion is, therefore, an easier obtained boon than we imagine. Forgetfulness of the past is purchased by increasing our anxiety for ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and a language of sparkling brilliancy. Schnitzler's profession, too, has not been without some influence upon his poetical work. A physician facing humanity daily not in strength and health, but in weakness and disease, cannot divest himself of a certain pessimistic bias. Brought up and practising in a city like Vienna, he cannot escape the cynicism which belongs alike to the man of the world as to the doctor before whom all veils and pretenses are discarded. It is difficult, indeed, to banish the idea that the consultation-room ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Executive Council took no notice of it; for certain papers found in the iron chest at the Tuileries cast doubts on the purity of Talleyrand's patriotism. Further, as Pache, Minister at War, hated Dumouriez, personal bias told strongly against the moderate proposals coming from London and The Hague. Nevertheless the Executive Council now decided to defer for the present the invasion of Holland, meanwhile chasing the Austrians ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... don't run after 'respectable working girls'; they leave that to things who wear 'Modish Men's Clothing'—with braided cuffs and pockets slashed on the bias!—and stand smirking on corners we have to pass going home. Do you think I'd do my hair becomingly, and—and ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... bring A bias with us here, And, when here, each new thing Affects us we come near; To tunes we did not call our being ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... that these considerations would warrant the interference of an editor, and justify him in selecting the text which he thought the best upon the whole; but this must be left to posterity. When editors can escape the bias of contemporary thought and feeling, when their judgments are refined by distance and mellowed by the new literary standards of the intervening years,—when in fact Wordsworth is as far away from his critics as Shakespeare now is—it may be possible to adjust a final ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... and helpless children, free rein was given to the growth of pride and the exercise of irresponsible tyranny. To these feelings, developed without check for thousands of years, and to the mental habits resultant, it is easy to trace much of the bias ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... to this writer, concerning sin, makes it a state rather than an act. It is not merely the act of disobedience, but the wrong bias of the will, out of which the act proceeds. He thinks it wrong to call "sin a nature," for neither the substance of the soul, nor its faculties, are sinful. The depravity of nature is not choice, so much as tendency which leads to choice. It is hereditary, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... which he is admitted. A foreigner cannot be a member of Parliament, but he may be what is called a king. If there is any reason for excluding foreigners, it ought to be from those offices where mischief can most be acted, and where, by uniting every bias of interest and attachment, the trust is best secured. But as nations proceed in the great business of forming constitutions, they will examine with more precision into the nature and business of that department which ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... man was Niccolo Macchiavelli, Secretary of State to the Signory of Florence. He owed no benefits to Cesare; he was the ambassador of a power that was ever inimical to the Borgias; so that it is not to be dreamt that his judgement suffered from any bias in Cesare's favour. Yet he accounted Cesare Borgia—as we shall see—the incarnation of an ideal conqueror and ruler; he took Cesare Borgia as the model for his famous work The Prince, written as a grammar of statecraft for the instruction in the art of government ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... luxury, but eating and drinking very moderately of the most delicate viands and the finest wines, holding converse with none but one another, lest tidings of sickness or death should reach them, and diverting their minds with music and such other delights as they could devise. Others, the bias of whose minds was in the opposite direction, maintained, that to drink freely, frequent places of public resort, and take their pleasure with song and revel, sparing to satisfy no appetite, and to laugh and mock at no event, was the sovereign remedy ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... to the picturesque and does not care for the classic," suggested his colleague; "a fundamental distinction in mental bias." ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... we cannot assent. And our chief objection might be translated into vulgar, but expressive parlance, by saying, that, in generalizing about society, the writer does not always seem able to sink the influences of the shop. We have been faintly reminded of the professional bias of Mr. Bob Sawyer, when he persuaded himself that the company in general would be better for a blood-letting. We respectfully submit that we are not quite so mad as—for the interests of science, no doubt—Dr. Ray would have us. The doctrine, that, do what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... myself as expressing a personal conviction so much as interpreting a general feeling, shared I know by almost all who speak our tongue, Americans, Australians, Canadians, Irish, New Zealanders, and Scotch, whom I range alphabetically lest I should be thought to show prejudice or bias in any direction. But this is beyond the present purpose, which is merely to exhibit the tendency which this so-called degradation has ...
— Society for Pure English, Tract 2, on English Homophones • Robert Bridges
... whatever material of the kind may be found most convenient, fourteen inches and seven-eighths long and ten inches and a half wide, which is sloped off on the corners, and trimmed with two strips of embroidery, separated by a bias strip of blue satin, which is turned down on the edges an inch wide on the wrong side, and gathered so as to form a puff. The embroidered strips are worked on a foundation of white cloth as shown by Fig. 2. For the corn-flowers ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... force); There reverend Nestor ranks his Pylian bands, And with inspiring eloquence commands; With strictest order sets his train in arms, The chiefs advises, and the soldiers warms. Alastor, Chromius, Haemon, round him wait, Bias the good, and Pelagon the great. The horse and chariots to the front assign'd, The foot (the strength of war) he ranged behind; The middle space suspected troops supply, Inclosed by both, nor left the power to fly; He gives command to "curb the fiery steed, Nor cause confusion, nor ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Shin-gaku (the Learning of the Heart). If you once arrive at the possession of your heart as it was originally by nature, what an admirable thing that will be! In that case your conscience will point out to you even the slightest wrong bias or selfishness. ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... partook of their doubts and approved their opinions, quite down to our own times. But now, after weighing the question maturely, we are compelled to admit that the Apostle was not so wide of the mark after all—that, in fact, the latest and best authorities, with no bias in his favor, support his position and may almost be said to paraphrase his words. For according to a writer who ranks second to none in the science of ethnology, the severest and most recent investigations show that "not only do acknowledged facts permit ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... point, in which country, putting other things aside, would one naturally expect to find the better code of business morals? Let us, if we can, consider the matter, as has been said before, without preconceived ideas or individual bias; let us imagine that we are speaking of two countries in which we have no personal stake whatever. If in any two such countries—in Gombroonia and Tigrosylvania, let us say—we should see two peoples approximately matched, of one tongue and having similar political ideals, not visibly unequal ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... no danger of that little boat's overtaking this large ship!" exclaimed Sir George, with a vivacity that did great credit to his philanthropy, according to the opinion of Mr. Dodge at least; the latter having imbibed a singular bias in favour of persons of condition, from having travelled in an eilwagen with a German baron, from whom he had taken a model of the pipe he carried but never smoked, and from having been thrown for two days and nights ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... to maintain current high levels of growth. Administrative and legal barriers are also causing costly delays for foreign investors and are raising similar doubts about Vietnam's ability to maintain the inflow of foreign capital. Ideological bias in favor of state intervention and control of the economy is slowing progress toward a more ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... departments. He was well aware of the common belief that his predecessors had appointed Virginians to the Secretaryship of State in order to prepare the way for their succession to the Presidency. He was determined, therefore, to avert the suspicion of sectional bias by selecting some one from the Eastern States, rather than from the South or from the West, hitherto so closely allied to the South. His choice fell upon John Quincy Adams, "who by his age, long experience in our foreign affairs, and adoption into the Republican party," he assured Jefferson, ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... conditions necessary to secure the most harmonious matrimonial unions, it would be useless to do so; for unions of this sort never have been, and never will be—with rare exceptions—formed in accordance with a prescribed method independent of any emotional bias. Nor is it probable that such a plan would result in remedying, in any appreciable degree, existing evils. It is a fact too patent to be ignored that a very large share of the unhappiness in the world arises from ill-mated marriages; ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... and did not hesitate. "No, you are wrong, wholly wrong," he said. "I did not bias what I said in my report —a report I was bound to make—by any covert prejudice against Mr. Calhoun. I guarded myself especially"—there he lied, but he was an incomparable liar—"lest it should be used against ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to discuss the "preparedness" of the State to care for its unfortunates. And I propose to do this without any party bias and without blame upon any particular individual, but in just criticism ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... counsel for the state or for the defendant, or by any other party or, source directly or indirectly interested in this inquisition. You are the court's commission, and you must enter upon your duties free from any bias or prejudice, if any there be. You should assume your duties, and I know you will, with the highest motives in seeking the truth, and then pronounce your judgment without regard to the effect it may have upon the state or upon the ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... she a mind such as I have described? You see what these priests say under oath—picked men, men chosen for their places in that terrible court on account of their learning, their experience, their keen and practised intellects, and their strong bias against the prisoner. They make that poor country-girl out the match, and more than the match, of the sixty-two trained adepts. Isn't it so? They from the University of Paris, she from ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... points the familiar lesson that the opportunity to do ill deeds often makes ill deeds done. The path for entering on evil is made fatally easy at first; that gate always stands wide. The Devil knows how to time his approaches. A weak nature, with an evil bias in it, finds everywhere occasions and suggestions to do wrong. But it is the evil nature which makes innocent things opportunities for evil. Therefore we have to be on our guard, as knowing that if we fall it is not circumstances, but ourselves, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... but followed his wife to the gate. On his way to his office, he turned and looked after her with a frown as she rattled her team along the uneven road. She was a vain and covetous woman with a bias towards intrigue, but there had been times since her marriage when she despised herself, and as a natural consequence blamed her husband. Sometimes she hated Thurston, also, though more often she was sensible of vague regrets, and grew morbid thinking of what might have been. Now she ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... passages written in that essentially vicious style to which the name Johnsonese has been cruelly given; but the searcher could not fail to find many passages guiltless of this charge. The characteristics of Johnson's prose style are colossal good sense, though with a strong sceptical bias, good humour, vigorous language, and movement from point to point, which can only be compared to the measured tread of a well-drilled company of soldiers. Here is a passage from the preface ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... his imagination. His first book was Voltaire's Charles XII., and a better book for a boy has never been written. Then he fell upon the Spectator. Before he was twelve he had read the Arabian Nights, Orlando, Robinson Crusoe, Smollett's Works, Reynard the Fox, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, Tom Jones, Gulliver, Shakespeare, Plutarch's Lives, Pope's Homer, Goldsmith's Rome, Percy's Reliques, Thomson's Seasons, Young, Gray, and Chatterton,—a gallon of sack to a penny's worth of bread. A good steady drill in arithmetic, geography, ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... solidity of his literary attainments than for the liberality of opinion and the patriotism which condemns him to the penalty of exile in a "dear country's cause," who therefore will not be suspected of undue bias in favour of Russian systems, had written and published in an able article on Russia, treating inter alia of the rise and progress of her manufactures and commerce, to the following effect:—"The manufacturers of Russia commenced, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... Scotch, the persistent and witty Irish, the conservative but indomitable English, the effervescent French, the phlegmatic German, and the irascible Italian. I found this variety beneficial, for the usual national and race bias was sufficiently in evidence to preclude a combination to retard the work. I had three Americans, that were neither white nor colored; they were born black; one of them—Tambry, the cook—will ever have my grateful remembrance for his fatherly kindness and attention ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... question: What are the conditions and qualities that have produced such results? is less easy to answer. The door is so largely open to conjecture that every explanation must depend largely on the answerer's personal bias. But one thing is certain. France has not achieved her present tone by the sacrifice of any of her national traits, but rather by their extreme keying up; therefore the surest way of finding a clue to that ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... exceeding bitterness and party bias, he had some warrant for his diatribe. In the Injunctions of Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich[71] (1569), he says: "Item, that no person or persons calling themselves lords of misrule in the Christmas tyme, or other vnreuerent persons at any other tyme, ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... cooperative store, namely, steadiness, conservatism of judgment, attention to detail and business punctuality always will be in great demand in the business world. Hence, when no barrier is interposed in the form of preempted opportunities or class bias, the exceptional workingman who possesses these qualifications will likely desert his class and set up in business for himself. In England, fortunately for the cooperative movement, such an ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... the most sincere advice he gave, He had a grudging still to be a knave. The frauds he learnt in his fanatick years, Made him uneasy in his lawful gears: At least as little honest as he could; And, like white witches, mischievously good. To this first bias, longingly he leans; And rather would be ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... ways of considering an object? Our mind observes it daily under a different aspect, turns and turns it again, sees it from above and below, sees it near and from afar and loves to show it off and place it in the most favourable light. The mind of every woman, especially of a woman with an artistic bias, is not without a secret harmony of colour, line and proportion. Something intentional even enters into it; and the caprices of her soul are often but an outcome of her desire to please. Her natural instinct, which is always inclined to give form to the most subtle ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... about a national bias, to those who have a veneration for diction and style. Assuredly there can be no quarrel with the taste for grace and elegance of speech. I am of opinion that one cannot say too well what he has to say. But it does not follow that the things ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... is no more certain way of judging a man than from his own words, if his real words be in our possession. In doing so, we are bound to remember how strong will be the bias of every man's mind in his own favor, and for that reason a judicious reader will discount a man's praise of himself. But the reader, to get at the truth, if he be indeed judicious, will discount them after a fashion conformable with the nature of the man whose character he is investigating. A reader ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... sulphurous, even as some pour forth in abundance while others flow drop by drop, thus, understand thou, is it also with our choices. Some choices are swift and exceeding fervent, others languid and cold: some have a bias entirely toward virtue, while others incline with all their force to its opposite. And like in nature to these choices are the ensuing impulses ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... Prescott, settled down upon Dutch history, went to Europe to work up his material in 1851, and, after five years, scored an immense triumph with his "Rise of the Dutch Republic." He was a brilliant partisan, hating Spaniards and Calvinists; and wrote all the better for this bias. He was an admirable sketcher of historical portraits, and had Macaulay's skill in composing special chapters devoted to the tendencies and qualities of an epoch or to the characteristics of a dynasty. Between 1860 and 1868 he produced the four volumes of the "History of the United ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... your duty, and I know it is a duty you will honestly and faithfully discharge, not to allow what my learned friend cautioned you well against, but immediately fell into the very same course himself; not to allow any thing like prejudice to bias ...
— The Trial of Charles Random de Berenger, Sir Thomas Cochrane, • William Brodie Gurney
... a hopeless) enmity. Now, in Ireland, the Protestant predominance has long since trained and moulded the channels through which flows the ordinary ambition of her national aristocracy. The Popery of Ireland settles and roots itself chiefly in the peasantry of three provinces. The bias of the gentry, and of the aspiring in all ranks, is towards Protestantism. Activity of mind and honourable ambition in every land, where the two forms of Christianity are politically in equilibrium, move in that same line of direction. Undoubtedly the Emancipation bill of 1829 was calculated, or ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... intercourse by the act of marrying a man, she has given it forever, whatever new circumstances may arise, and he has no need to ask her consent to sexual intercourse, not even if he is knowingly suffering at the time from a venereal disease (see, e.g., an article on "Sex Bias," Westminster ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Still less can that case be received as completely representing all cases of coincidence. Laplace has so contrived his example, that though black answers to 999 distinct possibilities, and white only to one, the witness has nevertheless no bias which can make him prefer black to white. The witness did not know that there were 999 black balls in the box and only one white; or if he did, Laplace has taken care to make all the 999 cases so undistinguishably alike, that there is hardly a possibility ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... time he dies in torment In Sister Helen we touch the key-note of Rossetti's creative gift. Even the superstition which forms the basis of the ballad owes something of its individual character to the invention and poetic bias of the poet. The popular superstitions of the Middle Ages were usually of two kinds only. First, there were those that arose out of a jealous Catholicism, always glancing towards heresy; and next there were those that laid their account neither with orthodoxy nor unbelief, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... care, and skill, Shall bend opposing fortune to their will. Of such is Archer, he who keeps in awe Contending parties by his threats of law: He, roughly honest, has been long a guide In Borough-business, on the conquering side; And seen so much of both sides, and so long, He thinks the bias of man's mind goes wrong: Thus, though he's friendly, he is still severe, Surly, though kind, suspiciously sincere: So much he's seen of baseness in the mind, That, while a friend to man, he scorns mankind; He knows the human heart, and sees with ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... the weight upon his heart grew heavier, and the chill of dread more unendurable. He saw his character as another might see it. He saw a nature to which, from infancy, a wrong bias had been given, made selfish by indulgence, imperious and strong only in carrying out impulses and in gratifying base passions, but weak as water in resisting evil and thwarting its vile inclinations. The pride and hope that had sustained him in what he regarded as the great effort of ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Queen replied that Lord John's views were very sound and moderate, and that the line of Foreign Policy he had formerly had to pursue had been forced upon him by Lord Palmerston, who had never left a question for the decision of the Cabinet to which he had not already given a decided bias. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... before the South London Medical Society in 1849, declared that in all of three afflicted individuals there was found a diseased condition of the suprarenal capsules, and that in spite of the consciousness "of the bias and prejudice inseparable from the hope or vanity of an original discovery ... he could not help entertaining a very strong impression that these hitherto mysterious organs—the suprarenal capsules—may be either ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... man Jay might have been, given a different temperamental bias. I'd say—the man Jay Allison started out to be. The man he refused to be. Within his subconscious, he built up barriers against a whole series of ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... compare the qualities that distinguish such groups as flourish or prosper from others of the same kind that decline or decay. This method has the advantage of giving results more free from the possibility of bias than those derived ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... chief character of a philosophical romance on education by Jean Jacques Rousseau (1762). Emile is the author's ideal of a young man perfectly educated, every bias but that of nature ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... that it was not some beggar's daughter, a Gagaian, or a maiden of Hanirabbat or Ugarit whom my messengers saw?" Then Nimmuria took up the tale, and complained that Kadashman-Bel sent only ambassadors who had never frequented his father's Court, and were moreover of adverse bias. "Send a kamiru" (evidently a eunuch is meant) "who knows thy sister." Further misunderstandings come under discussion, from which it is evident that the general situation between the two princes was very ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... species of presentiment, that induced Bluewater to send away the midshipman, when he saw the adherent of the dethroned house approaching. Enough had passed between the parties to satisfy each of the secret bias of the other; and, by that sort of free-masonry which generally accompanies strong feelings of partisanship, the admiral felt persuaded that the approaching interview was about to relate to the political troubles ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... short, misgives me less, when I resolve this way, than when I think of the other: and in so strong and involuntary a bias, the heart is, as I may say, conscience. And well cautions the wise man: 'Let the counsel of thine own heart stand; for there is no man more faithful to thee than it: for a man's mind is sometimes wont to ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... a woman, makes no difference. To exclude woman from equality on the ground that she was born female and not male—an accident for which man is as little responsible as she—is as inequitable, as would be to make rights and privileges dependent upon the accident of religion or political bias; and as senseless as that two human beings must look upon each other as enemies on the ground that the accident of birth makes them of different stock and nationality. Such views are unworthy of a truly free being. The progress of humanity lies in removing everything that holds one being, ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... in Britain since the days of the Commonwealth. It has formed one of the great forces on which they have calculated—a formidable power among the people, that they have striven, according to the nature of the emergency, to quiet or awaken, bias or control,—now for the ends of party, when an antagonist faction had to be overborne and put down,—now for the general benefit of the country, when a foreign enemy had to be repelled or an intestine discord to be ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... almost to horror, the strictures which had appeared from time to time against the Earl of Guildford as master of St Cross, and the invectives that had been heaped on rich diocesan dignitaries and overgrown sinecure pluralists. In judging of them, he judged leniently; the whole bias of his profession had taught him to think that they were more sinned against than sinning, and that the animosity with which they had been pursued was venomous and unjust; but he had not the less regarded their plight as most miserable. His hair had stood on end and his flesh had crept ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... standing a few ridiculous jests at first, and that too from such, generally, as are not the most worthy to be minded; and, after a while, they will say, It signifies nothing to ask him: he will have his own way. There is no putting him out of his bias. He is a regular piece of clock-work, they will joke, and all that: And why, my dear, should we not be so? For man is as frail a piece of machinery as any clock-work whatever; and, by irregularity, is as subject ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... I know not, and have not the glimmer of an explanatory suggestion to make; but from admitting the fact of such knowledge I can see no escape. So when I turn to the rest of the evidence, ghosts and all, I cannot carry with me the irreversibly negative bias of the 'rigorously scientific' mind, with its presumption as to what the true order of nature ought to be. I feel as if, though the evidence be flimsy in spots, it may nevertheless collectively carry heavy weight. The rigorously scientific mind may, in truth, easily overshoot the mark. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... strongly, the writer of these speculations says to himself: "Let me, at all events, try to eliminate any bias, and see the whole thing as should an umpire—one of those pure beings in white coats, purged of all the prejudices, passions, and predilections of mankind. Let me have no temperament for the time being, for I have to set down—not what would ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... their appearance recompensed us for our trouble. Lilly's was trimmed with folds of blue from mine, around collar, cuffs, pockets, and down the front band; while mine was pronounced a chef d'oeuvre, trimmed with bias folds of tiny red and black plaid. With their fresh colors and shining pearl buttons, they were really very pretty. We sent word that we would be happy to make as many as they chose for themselves or their friends, and ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... personality and a separate organization? Cities are permitted to exercise vast powers of police and of taxation. It is idle to say that a few commissioners can give satisfactory legislation. They cannot represent community interests. Their executive functions will naturally bias their judgment. Moreover, each commissioner, knowing little of the needs of the other departments, will naturally take the word of its administrative head, especially since he desires the same freedom. This was actually ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... negative character which will cause him to neglect certain tendencies. He must learn not to accept the first idea offered, to neglect suggestions, to hurry or to leave half finished, to ignore interruptions, to prevent personal bias to influence criticism, and so on. These connections which result in neglecting certain elements are quite as important as the positive element, both in the production of the particular procedure and in the transfer to other fields. Third, the identity may be of still more general character ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... liberal cause, devoted partisans of the Pretender continued to reside, conforming to the established order of things, and therefore unmolested. In most instances their private opinions were suspected, in some actually known; but a few of them were so skilful in concealing their political bias and partialities, as to pass for steady and conscientious favourers of the Queen's government. Here was one and no unimportant cause of the prolongation of the war; the number of spies thus harboured in the very heart of the Christino camp and councils. By these men intelligence ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... Religion," thereby offending Queen Anne and blocking his own church preferment (p. 19). Except for "some gross Words, and lewd Descriptions, and had the Inventor's Intention been innocent" (p. 6 [note the suspicion of Swift's political and religious bias]), the author is mildly pleased with the first three voyages. But he finds intolerable the satire on human nature in the last, here echoing Addison's criticism of the demoralizing effect of a satire on mankind (Spectator 249, ...
— A Letter From a Clergyman to his Friend, - with an Account of the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver • Anonymous
... opinions—but we speak what we know when we state that up to the time of the rebellion no attempt was made to give the minds of the pupils in the public schools of New Orleans either a political or religious bias. Some incline to the opinion that the duties of the educational trust would have been more effectively performed had patriotic politics been made a prominent branch of study; but to such a course innumerable objections would have arisen. Patriotism does not always ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... this he reasoned as a man of his class and antecedents was likely to reason—only with a bias against himself. To capture Connie, through Otto, before she had had any other chances of marriage, seemed to him ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the remedy for the effects of bias must be found in a rigorous and searching criticism. If misleading statements and unsound arguments are allowed to pass unchallenged the fault will not lie only ...
— The Gospels in the Second Century - An Examination of the Critical Part of a Work - Entitled 'Supernatural Religion' • William Sanday
... only those afloat who are to be thus considered; all the empire is more or less connected with its navy and its commerce, and nautical phraseology is thereby daily becoming more habitual with all classes of the lieges than of erst. Even our parliamentary orators, with a proper national bias, talk of swamping a measure, danger ahead, taking the wind out of an antagonist's sails, drifting into war, steering a bill through the shoals of opposition or throwing it overboard, following in the wake of a leader, trimming to the breeze, tiding a question over ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... love of liberty and hatred of slavery; that they cannot at once adjust themselves to "constitutional duties" which in South Carolina and Georgia are reserved for trained bloodhounds? Surely, in view of what Massachusetts has been, and her strong bias in favor of human freedom, derived from her great- hearted founders, it is to be hoped that the Executive and Cabinet at Washington will grant her some little respite, some space for turning, some opportunity for conquering her prejudices, before letting loose the dogs ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... this task of self-inspection either by a selfish bias which is unwilling to recognize a fault, or by the fault itself which biases the judgment. The faculty, or passion, which misleads one becomes a part of his judging faculty, and cannot condemn itself. The miser cannot realize ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... liked me once, I knew, but still he had the Frenchman's temper, and had always to argue down his bias against my race, and to cherish a good heart towards me; for he was young, and most sensitive to the opinions of his comrades. I can not express what misery possessed me when I saw him leave Doltaire, and, coming to me where I stood ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... aesthetic. But the feelings and ideas of an active animal cannot help uniting internal moral intensity with external physical reference; and the natural conditions of sensibility require that perceptions should owe their existence and quality to the living organism with its moral bias, and that at the same time they should be addressed to the external objects which entice that organism ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... in the fairest possible manner with my readers, I have looked into the various records of those events which might have escaped my memory. But I have not suffered them to bias opinions conceived long since, and conceived in the spirit of sincerity. Such is my design. It is given to the public with a perfect freedom from all party influence; with a total avoidance of all personality; with that calmness of retrospect which best becomes ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... easily excused in a self-made man who became one of the leaders of the German Reichstag, this book remains a veritable social monument on the sexual question. With the exception of his strong political bias, and the errors I have just mentioned I am, on the whole, in accord with ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... authentic accounts of Andean civilization; for we may have every confidence in the care and accuracy of Sarmiento as regards his collection and statement of historical facts, provided that we always keep in mind the bias, and the orders he was under, to seek support for ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... leaning toward him which, on Carrie's part, we have seen. She might have been said to be imagining herself in love, when she was not. Women frequently do this. It flows from the fact that in each exists a bias toward affection, a craving for the pleasure of being loved. The longing to be shielded, bettered, sympathised with, is one of the attributes of the sex. This, coupled with sentiment and a natural tendency to emotion, often makes refusing ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us: He knows each chord, its various tone, Each spring its various bias: Then at the balance let's be mute, We never can adjust it; What's done we partly may compute, But ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... have been played with more skill, or with greater knowledge of his character whom he addressed. He said just enough to set him thinking, and to give a bias and a colour to his thoughts, without giving him reason to suspect that he had any interest in the matter; and he had withdrawn himself in that careless and half contemptuous manner, which naturally led the young man to wish for ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... am afraid, my dear George, that you are animated by a somewhat reactionary bias in favour of feudalism, which in your own best interests you would do well to curb. It is enough to say that some of the peers supported the House of Commons, and the majority were too timid to make ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 17, 1917 • Various
... affairs. He started to return to these islands; but, as the weather was not suitable for the voyage, he coasted along Cochinchina, where he repaired his ships, and sent overland, to the kingdom of the Laos, Bias Ruiz and Diego Bellosso, well-known to the king of Canboxa, to acquaint him with what had taken place in his kingdom, so that he should descend upon it. Thereupon he left Cochinchina, where he had had some unpleasant ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume X, 1597-1599 • E. H. Blair
... interest in this department of life, and so seldom put its phenomena in evidence, even when it seemed obvious that personal experience of some kind must have made their confidence in their own vision so strong. The logician's bias has always been too much with them. They have preferred the thinner to the thicker method, dialectical abstraction being so much more dignified and academic than the confused and unwholesome ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... benefits done to society, from that which does not. The symbols, the externals, have all the world through swayed the masses; and must long continue to do so. Even the cultivated, who are on their guard against the bias of associated ideas, and try to separate the real from the seeming, cannot escape the influence of current opinion. We must, therefore, content ourselves with looking for a ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... can. He has shot it with a zampatan, and it will presently fall all to dust. He has brought his acres into a consumption, and they are strangely fallen away; nothing but skin and bones left of a whole manor. He will shortly have all his estate in his hands; for, like bias, he may carry it about him. He lays up nothing but debts and diseases, and at length himself in a prison. When he has spent all upon his pleasures, and has nothing left for sustenance, he espouses a hostess dowager, and resolves to lick himself whole ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various |
