"Bias" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time, induce people to form their judgment, to say the best, harshly, and but too often, incorrectly. It is for posterity to calmly weigh the evidence handed down, and to examine into the merits of a case divested of party bias. Actuated by these feelings, we do not hesitate to assert, that, in the point at question, Mr Vanslyperken had great cause for being displeased; and that the conduct of Moggy Salisbury, in cutting off the tail of Snarleyyow was, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... or "to invent authorities," "in support of slavery." Neither Donnegan, nor Liddell and Scott, nor Stephens, nor Schleusner, nor Robinson, nor Smith, nor Macknight, nor Stuart, could possibly have had any such motive. If they were not all perfectly unbiassed witnesses, it is certain they had no bias in favor of slavery. It is, indeed, the abolitionist, and not the slaveholder, who, in this case, "has perverted texts;" and if he has not "invented authorities," it is because his attempts to ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... invidious distinction between two objects equally meritorious; that Nature had marked her disapproval of it in the case of Sir John Franklin and many of his imitators; that it served them very well right; that this enterprise should be undertaken as a protest against the spirit of undue bias; and, finally, that no part of the responsibility or expense should devolve upon the society in its corporate character, but any individual member might contribute to the fund if he were fool enough. It is only ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... same detestation at everything dishonest, and the same scorn at everything unworthy—if they are not in the dependence of absolute beggary, in the name of common sense, are they not equals? And if the bias, the instinctive bias of their souls run the same way, why may ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... notwithstanding strong opposition from the Catholics, to place his illustrious Protestant friend, Sully, at the head of the ministry of finance. Sully entered upon his Herculean task with shrewdness which no cunning could baffle, and with integrity which no threat or bribe could bias. All the energies of calumny, malice, and violence were exhausted upon him, but this majestic man moved straight on, heedless of the storm, till he caused order to emerge from apparently inextricable confusion, and, by just and healthy ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... re-election. If this proposal were adopted, the President would be more free and independent, he would not be haunted by the bugbear of losing his position by temporarily displeasing his political friends, he could give his undivided attention, as he cannot do now, to federal affairs, and work without bias or fear, and without interruption, for the welfare of his nation. He would have more chance of really doing something for his country which was worth while. A further advantage is that the country would not be so frequently troubled with the turmoil and excitement ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... justice, in particular, was infected by the most gross partiality. A case of importance scarcely occurred in which there was not some ground for bias or partiality on the part of the judges, who were so little able to withstand the temptation that the adage, "Show me the man, and I will show you the law," became as prevalent as it was scandalous. One corruption ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Memory's wall Shadows of the thoughts of day, And thy fortunes, as they fall, The bias of the ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... and acceptance of posterity. Men are necessarily actors in the scenes amid which they live. If not personally taking an active part in the conduct of public affairs, they have friends who are, and in whose success or failure their own welfare is in some way bound up. The bias which interest always gives will necessarily attach to their judgment of current events, and the leading actors by whom these events are controlled. Cotemporaneous history, for this reason, will always be found partisan history—not ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... said Margaret. "I am slow as the itch about sewing, and these are not going to be plain dresses when it comes to making them. There are going to be edgings of plain green, pink, and brown to the bias strips, and tucks and pleats around the hips, fancy belts and collars, and all of ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... behavior of mine into contempt. He arose in a terrible passion, slouched his funnel down over his eyes, swore a vast oath, uttered a threat of some character, which I did not precisely comprehend, and finally made me a low bow and departed, wishing me, in the language of the archbishop in "Gil Bias," beaucoup de bonheur et un peu plus ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... 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 ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... bent, the tree's inclined." As mortal mind is directed, it acts for a season. Some students leave my instructions before they are quite free from [20] the bias of their first impressions, whether those be cor- rect or incorrect. Such students are more or less subject to the future mental influence of their former teacher. Their knowledge of Mind-healing may be right theo- retically, but the moral and spiritual status of thought ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... been saying those things to him that night of their last meeting she had been engaged to another man, a fat, bald, doddering, senile fool, whose only merit was his money. Scarcely a fair description of Mr Pickering, but in a man in Bill's position a little bias ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... foundation of splints, wicker-work, Manila braid, or 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
... themselves honour. These squares the giant children should arrange and rearrange to their pleasure. "Decorations must follow," said Redwood; "let them first get the range of all the tints, and then this may go away. There is no reason why one should bias them in favour of any ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... why other people do not understand the position of its inhabitants to-day, but why they themselves largely fail to understand it. They are not fully aware of being behind the times, and probably in many respects they no longer are so; only there is that queer mental attitude giving its bias to their view of life. Although very feebly now, still the momentum derived from a forgotten ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... d'ho^te was served by waitresses dressed in the quaint and comely costume of the Swiss peasants. This consists of a simple gros de laine, trimmed with ashes of roses, with overskirt of scare bleu ventre saint gris, cut bias on the off-side, with facings of petit polonaise and narrow insertions of pa^te de foie gras backstitched to the mise en sce'ne in the form of a jeu d'esprit. It gives to the wearer a singularly piquant and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the American war, in common with many of my countrymen, I felt very indifferent as to which side might win; but if I had any bias, my sympathies were rather in favour of the North, on account of the dislike which an Englishman naturally feels at the idea of Slavery. But soon a sentiment of great admiration for the gallantry and determination ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... 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 ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... continued to "fight shy" of the screw. The late Isambard Kingdon Brunel is entitled to the credit of having first directed the attention of shipbuilders to this important invention. He was himself a man of original views, free from bias, and always ready to strike out a fresh path in engineering works. He was building a large new iron steamer at Bristol, the Great Britain, for passenger traffic between England and America. He had intended to construct her as a paddle steamer; but hearing ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... able to express. She was as gay and gentle in her mood as I was serious. When I married, she accompanied me to my house. But there was no good luck.—The fortune which my sister possessed placed her in a condition to follow her own heart's bias, and she gave her hand to a poor but amiable young man, a Lieutenant Wolf, and lived with him some months of the highest earthly felicity. But brief was the happiness to be. Wolf perished on a sea-voyage, and his inconsolable wife sunk under her sorrow. She died some hours after she ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... of higher passion, nor any of the pomp 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 instinctive; yet never did natural ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... Allowing for bias this is no unfair account of Marvell's method, and it was just because this was Marvell's method that he succeeded so well in amusing the king and in pleasing the town, and that he may still be read by those who love reading with a fair measure ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... divisions of the Island. Bruce, welcomed, sustained, and lamented by the Northern Irish, was distrusted, avoided, and execrated by those of the South. There may have been exceptions, but this was the rule. The Bards and Newsmen of subsequent times, according to their Provincial bias, charged the failure of Bruce upon the Eugenian race, or justified his fate by aspersing his memory and his adherents of the race of Conn. This feeling of irritation, always most deep-seated when driven in by a ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... authorities who have given us 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
... of the publication still in preparation. It may also be mentioned that although the writer has made personal observations of signs, no description of any sign has been printed by him which rests on his authority alone. Personal controversy and individual bias were thus avoided. For every sign there is a special reference either to an author or to some one or more of the collaborators. While the latter have received full credit, full responsibility was also imposed, and ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... 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 suppressed; but it has been peculiarly a force outside ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... he raised according to the traditions of the old times and the old homes. That was the view taken of the matter then, and from that day to this the average California girl has been superior to the average California boy. The boy gets his bias from the street; the girl, from her mother at home. The boy plunges into the life that surges around him; the girl only feels the touch of its waves as they break upon the embankments of home. The boy gets more of the father; the girl gets more of the mother. This may explain ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... circumscribed by the hostile intentions of the other World Powers, by the existing territorial conditions, and by the armed force which is at the back of both. Our policy must necessarily be determined by the consideration of these conditions. We must accurately, and without bias or timidity, examine the circumstances which turn the scale when the forces which concern us are weighed one against ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... have to say of the work of the Irish poets, I am thinking of it solely as a part of English literature. I have in mind no political bias whatever, though I confess I have small admiration for extremists. During the last forty years Irishmen have written mainly in the English language, which assures to what is good in their compositions an influence bounded only by the dimensions of the earth. ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... there, December 29th, he heard of the defeat and flight of Allah-u-din.[2] Undismayed, he marched the following morning to Parsaror, midway between Sialkot and Kalanaur on the Ravi; thence to Kalanaur, where he crossed the Ravi; thence to the Bias, which he crossed, and thence to the strong fortress of Milwat, in which his former adherent Daolat Khan, had taken refuge. Milwat soon fell. Babar then marched through the Jalandhar Duab to the Sutlej, placing, as he writes, 'his foot in the stirrup of resolution, and his hand on the reins of ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... well as tastes, of these young writers being mostly on the side of established models, their authority, as long as it influenced him, would, to a certain degree, interfere with his striking confidently into any new or original path. That some remains of this bias, with a little leaning, perhaps, towards school recollections[6], may have had a share in prompting his preference of the Horatian Paraphrase, is by no means improbable;—at least, that it was enough to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... heroic preoccupation with the revolutionary struggle passed to the question of their relationship. He began to question her. She told him of the days before his awakening, spoke with a brief vividness of the girlish dreams that had given a bias to her life, of the incredulous emotions his awakening had aroused. She told him too of a tragic circumstance of her girlhood that had darkened her life, quickened her sense of injustice and opened her heart prematurely to the wider sorrows of ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... too, personal bias and prejudices, enabling me to see clearer and with wider sympathies. The glamour of modern science and discoveries faded away, for I found them no more than the first potter's wheel. Erasure and reception proceeded together; the past accumulations of ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... merely to submit myself to thy judgment, not to endeavor to bias it. I have long passed the severest sentence on myself, for I have nourished the tormenting worm in my heart. It hovered during this solemn moment of my life incessantly before my soul, and I could only lift ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... is discountenanced. Sometimes one thinks that this is done partly in order to encourage that said pullulation of workers which is so favourable to, the keeping down of wages; but, of course, ancient reasons of ignorance and religious bias weigh also. In the United States the persecutions of ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... W.J., letter to Sen. Stone disclaiming bias against Germany and Austria, 1175; "Seizures of ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... v. Wood,[26] the act was held valid as applied in a criminal prosecution for theft from a private corporation. By a narrow majority the Court has subsequently held that government employees as a class are not disqualified by an implied bias against a person accused of violating the federal narcotics statutes,[27] nor against an officer of the Communist party charged with willful failure to appear before a Congressional committee in compliance with a subpoena.[28] In both cases, the way was ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... the thought that he is in some way instrumental in his good or bad fortune gives a turn to his thoughts. There is something so like the inevitable character of fate associated with the result of a chance, which you can in no way affect or avert, that I have, notwithstanding a strong bias for play, ever dreaded and avoided the rouge et noir table; hitherto prudential motives had their share in the resolve; a small loss at play becomes a matter of importance to a sub in a marching regiment; and therefore I was firm ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... modest obscurity, was—and, believe me, I do not speak from bias—one of the most perfect women to be found in France. Had she desired or been compelled to make herself known to the world, she would assuredly have been famous and extolled beyond all her sex. But she found her happiness in her own family, and the sweetest simplicity crowned ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... the journals agreed, Spite of "politics," "bias," or "party collision;" Viz.: to "give," when they'd "further accounts" of the deed, "Full particulars" ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... convinced that a fairer idea of them is thus imparted, and that facts otherwise dry may in this way be made attractive and indelibly impressed on the mind. He has tried throughout to be fair and national. He has neither introduced offensive allusions, nor invidiously attempted to bias the minds of the young on controverted questions connected with politics ...
— A Handbook of the English Language • Robert Gordon Latham
... Pythonice in the Vica Sacra; and we know that Phryne offered to rebuild the walls of Thebes, by Alexander overthrown. And surely, if modern guide-books instruct us to weep in the cemetery of Pere la Chaise over the grave of Fanny Bias, history will say a word or two in honour of Cerito, who proposed through the newspapers, last season, an alliance offensive and defensive with no less a man than Peter Borthwick, Esq. M.P., (Arcades ambo!) to relieve the distress of the manufacturing classes of Great Britain! It is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... continue to publish cartoons with a pronounced Radical bias I am afraid you will lose at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... earliest infancy, been remarkable for her quiet and contemplative character; and, bred amid scenes that brought at every retrospect, recollections of some acted horror, it is not surprising that the bias given by nature, should have been developed and strengthened by the events that had surrounded her. Not dissimilar in disposition, as she was not unlike in form, to her mother, she was by that mother carefully endowed ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... or if that is too strong, that you see nothing to admire in him. What is there antipathetic in his nature to you, and in yours to him? He doesn't like you either. Yet you both seem to me such gracious, kindly men. Surely you have no bias against other nationalities—a man with a cosmopolitan record ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... precaution, Prince Maurice ordered all garrisons in the strong places to be doubled, lest the slippery enemy should take advantage of too much confidence reposed in his good faith. The preachers throughout the commonwealth, each according to his individual bias, improved the occasion by denouncing the Spaniard from their pulpits and inflaming the popular hatred against the ancient enemy, or by dilating on the blessings of peace and the horrors of war. The peace ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... did not do this, although he did reform not only the school of Rugby, but gave a bias to the education of the sons of what is still the most influential class in this country, which has lasted to the present day, and that in a direction and in a manner which surprised his opponents, and at one time provoked ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... Johnny Eames. Now, it undoubtedly was the fact that the nose on Mrs Lupex's face was a little awry. It was a long, thin nose, which, as it progressed forward into the air, certainly had a preponderating bias towards ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... or the body, supposed to govern 381:1 man, is rendered null and void by the law of Life, God. Ignorant of our God-given rights, we submit to unjust 381:3 decrees, and the bias of education enforces this slavery. Be no more willing to suffer the illusion that you are sick or that some disease is develop- 381:6 ing in the system, than you are to yield to a sinful temp- tation on the ground that sin ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... civilization? Apparently so. He had killed, and someone had informed on him, and a judge had sentenced him to Omega. He was a murderer on a criminal's planet. To live here successfully, he simply had to follow his natural bias toward murder. ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... "what;" the "how" is important, too, but only in its relation to the "what" and "wherefore." The voice of the orator must be an influence—a sincere vibration of the motive within. Theoretically it is so naturally, but practically it is so only when the voice is free from bias and is responsive through habit or spontaneous inspiration to ...
— Expressive Voice Culture - Including the Emerson System • Jessie Eldridge Southwick
... of Dr. Trench on the parables are generally judicious and valuable, his exposition of this and one or two others that are cognate is injured by a secret bias towards the forms in which he has been educated,—a bias that is natural and human, but not on that account less hurtful. The body of the vast and venerable institution of which he is at once a chief and an ornament, stands so near, and bulks so largely, that where it ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... hero as a 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 he kills Polonius; and, again, where ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... extremely tedious and intricate, that it is impossible for the jury to keep them all in their recollection, and that, forgetting the general tenor of the evidence, they suffer the last impressions, those made by the counsel for the prisoner, to bias their judgment, and to regulate their verdict. In the 2d place, It is customary for the president of the court to enter into a long examination and cross-examination of the prisoner, (assisted and prompted in his ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Whether interest be not apt to bias judgment? and whether traders only are to be consulted about trade, or ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley
... I go to Arimathea again? And his second question was hardly less indiscreet: why did we leave Arimathea? His father answered: because it suited us to do so; and Joseph withdrew to Rachel who was never gruff with him. But despite her bias in favour of all he said and did she reproved him, saying that he should not ask as soon as he returned home when he was going away again. I am glad in a way, Granny, but there's no forest here. Dan left the room, and the boy would tell no more but burst into tears, asking what he had done ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... his superior. Persuaded that she could not dispense with himself, he persisted in putting her to her option between them. The rank and file at Elizabeth's Court had a keen scent for their Sovereign's bias. They foresaw the inevitable end, though they antedated by several years the actual catastrophe. In 1587 Arabella Stuart, a girl of twelve, was at Court. She supped at Lord Burleigh's. The other guests were her uncle, Sir Charles Cavendish, and Ralegh. Cavendish mentions the entertainment in a ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... Bias Supersede Sly Aversion Capital Meerschaum Extravagant Travel Alley Concur Travail Fee Attention Apprehend Superb Magnanimity Lewd Adroit Altruism Instigation Quite Benevolence Complexion Urchin Charity Bishop Thoroughfare ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... flavor of the opinion of the average "reader"; he always put himself into the report, and, of course, that meant a warm personal touch. If he could not encourage the publication of a manuscript, his reasons were always fully given, and invariably without personal bias. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... which go to make a successful manager of a 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 ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... good deal of rake to it—to the train, I mean; it was said to be two or three yards long. One could see it creeping along the floor some little time after the woman was gone. Mrs. C. wore also a white bodice, cut bias, with Pompadour sleeves, flounced with ruches; low neck, with the inside handkerchief not visible, with white kid gloves. She had on a pearl necklace, which glinted lonely, high up the midst of that barren waste of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... during this period. A sponge bath taken in a warm room is not injurious and unpleasant odors can be avoided by sponging the parts with a warm antiseptic solution upon changing the cloth. Every woman should be provided with a circular girdle cut upon the bias so it may be elastic, and provided with tabs to which to pin the folded cloth. She also should have a supply of sanitary cloths made of absorbent cotton-fabric, or pads made of absorbent cotton enclosed in ...
— Herself - Talks with Women Concerning Themselves • E. B. Lowry
... Bias! I shall never forget them, for there was such good grace and charm about everything. When Victor Hugo arrived, everything brightened up. His two satellites, Auguste Vacquerie and Paul Meurice, scarcely ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... conclusion, I feel it is desirable to state that any antecedent bias with regard to Theism which I individually possess is unquestionably on the side of traditional beliefs. It is therefore with the utmost sorrow that I find myself compelled to accept the conclusions here worked out; and ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... and distracting where it ought to concentrate through vision the ideas of the mind. Annibal Caracci had more power of execution, but not the taste of Agostino. In their immediate scholars, the lecturer seems little disposed to see fairly their several excellences. They are out of the view of his bias. They are not Michael Angelesque. His judgment of Domenichino—a painter who greatly restored the simplicity and severity of the elder schools, and greatly surpassed his masters—is an instance of blindness to a power in art which we would almost call new, that is very ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... observation, he sent Russell a long and very able description of the prevailing disorders. In spite of a general loyalty the people {85} had been fretted into vexations and petty divisions, and for the most part felt deep-rooted animosity towards the executive authorities. Indeed, apart from the party bias of the government, its inefficiency and uncertainty had destroyed all public confidence in it. Under the executive government, the authority of the legislative council had been exercised by a very few individuals, representing a mere clique in the capital, frequently opposed both to the government ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... to this mental bias because it has both influenced the decoration of pottery and has been itself influenced by it. In the first place, the noise made by a pot when struck or when simmering on the fire is supposed to be the voice of its associated being. The clang of a pot when it breaks or suddenly cracks in burning ...
— A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuni Culture Growth. • Frank Hamilton Cushing
... hand) at their charges? Was he not befriended by our minister at Madrid, Mr. Villiers, subsequently Earl of Clarendon in the peerage of England? It must be true: and yet at this moment I would as lief read a chapter of the 'Bible in Spain' as I would 'Gil Bias'; nay, I positively would give the preference to Senor Giorgio. Nobody can sit down to read Borrow's books without as completely forgetting himself as if he were a boy in the forest with ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... sincere tone of this discourse impressed me, and I felt that I had no right to reject as profane and undeserving of examination the doctrine which it enforced. Accordingly I entered into a thorough searching of the Scripture without bias, and was amazed to find how baseless was the tenet for which in fact I had endured a sort of martyrdom. This, I believe, had a great effect in showing me how little right we have at any time to count on our opinions as final truth, however necessary they may just ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... his power and interest at that time were greater to do good or hurt than any man's in the kingdom, or than any man of his rank hath had in any time; for his reputation of honesty was universal, and his affections seemed so publicly guided, that no corrupt or private ends could bias them. . . . He was indeed a very wise man, and of great parts, and possessed with the most absolute spirit of popularity, and the most absolute faculties to govern the people, of any man ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... all; you can find evidence for that also. Your testimony is often derived from observers ignorant of the language of the people whom they talk about, or who are themselves prejudiced by one or other theory or bias. How can you pretend to raise a science on such foundations, especially as the savage informants wish to please or to mystify inquirers, or they answer at random, or deliberately conceal their most sacred institutions, or have never paid any ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... politician. The present book is a reprint of the Leslie Stephen lecture which he delivered at Cambridge a few months ago. It was bound, therefore, to be predominantly literary in interest. At the same time, Mr. Whibley's political bias appears both in what he says and in what he keeps silent about. His defence of Swift against the charge of misanthropy is a defence with which we find ourselves largely in agreement. But Mr. Whibley is too single-minded a party ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... 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 ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... amount of his loss, and frequently with no inconsiderable addition for the temporary use of his property. In short, the law was momentarily extinct in that particular district, and justice was administered subject to the bias of personal interests and the ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... the circle he has drawn,) to transgress the boundary he has wisely prescribed to himself. The history is not far enough advanced to enable us to judge whether Mr Grote will preserve himself from a political bias, the opposite of that which has been so much censured in Mitford. A sufficient portion however, is published, to authorise us in saying that it is not in point of narrative that the present author will obtain any advantage over his predecessors. It is in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... delicacy,—no leaf is unread. Being learnt, he works upon it; touches each budding trait with gentlest impulse. No violence! he seems to leave her to her own development; yet nothing goes against his will. More than half is left to nature, but his scarce perceptible touches bias nature. Ah! ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... far as can be collected from the imperfect account we have of the circumstances of the case, Dr. Strang discovered, it was imagined, a bias to Arminianism, whereas he seems to have been merely more of a sublapsarian than a supralapsarian. The "peculiar notions" he entertained were vented, we have been told, upon that profound subject De concursi et influxu ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... fly to for rescue and strength. Her tranquil, tender affection for Philip, with its root deep down in her childhood, and its memories of long quiet talk confirming by distinct successive impressions the first instinctive bias,—the fact that in him the appeal was more strongly to her pity and womanly devotedness than to her vanity or other egoistic excitability of her nature,—seemed now to make a sort of sacred place, a sanctuary where she could find refuge from an alluring influence which the best ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... odds against the Negro in this literary battle: how that Southern white people, being more extensive purchasers of books than the Negroes, would have the natural bias of great publishing agencies on their side; how that Northern white people, resident in the South, for social and business reasons, might hesitate to father books not in keeping with the prevailing sentiment of Southern white ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... he was born to marry an heiress, and Peter himself (who had no mind to forego his freedom even on such terms) that he was destined to find a pot of gold. Upon one point both agreed, that being unfitted by the peculiar bias of his genius for work, he was to acquire the immense fortune to which his merits entitled him by means of a pure run of good luck. This solution of Peter's future had the double effect of reconciling both himself and his grandmother to his idle courses, and also of maintaining that ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... consequence of that universal confusion between the effects of nature and of nurture to which we have already referred—that women are less variable than men, that they vary within much narrower limits, and that the bias towards the typical, or mean, or average, is markedly greater in the case of women than of men. A vast amount of idle evidence is quoted in favour of a proposition which seems to have some a priori plausibility. It is ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... foolish, remediless catastrophe, in fancying his father's work as good, and strong, and fit to bear sunlight, as if it had been God's work. So, again, they represent the foresight and kindly zeal of men by a most rueful figure of one chained down to a rock by the brute force and bias and methodical hammer-stroke of the merely practical Arts, and by the merciless Necessities or Fates of present time; and so having his very heart torn piece by piece out of him by a vulturous hunger and sorrow, respecting things he cannot reach, nor prevent, nor achieve. So, again, they ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... lose their power. But where they have not (and it is to be presumed that there are many in the society who have not reached this stature, and many again who bear only the name of their profession) they will frequently prevail. I own I fear that precepts, though there may be a general moral bias, will not always be found successful against those, which are considered to be the most powerful of the temptations, to which our nature is exposed. I own, when I consider that the Quakers, in consequence of their commercial and frugal ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... not aware that I have been influenced by any more bias in regard to the Gadarene story than I have been in dealing with other cases of like kind the investigation of which has interested me. I was brought up in the strictest school of evangelical orthodoxy; and when I was old enough to think for myself I started upon my journey of inquiry ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... self you will begin to see things in their right relations. He who is swayed by any passion, prejudice, like or dislike, adjusts everything to that particular bias, and sees only his own delusions. He who is absolutely free from all passion, prejudice, preference, and partiality, sees himself as he is; sees others as they are; sees all things in their proper proportions and right relations. Having nothing to attack, nothing to defend, nothing ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... polemics. Too often he is merely the emotional controversialist. Bias and Life are with him not always welded into the harmonious whole, which one is entitled to claim from ...
— Maxim Gorki • Hans Ostwald
... Negro not as an aggregate all in a mass, but as a synthesis, composed of gradations from lowest to superior. This is the new concept which the war of 1918 has forced upon America, in spite of the bias of 1914. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... it stand an hour or more. Sprinkle a pastry board thickly with flour, turn the mixture out from the bowl, cut off pieces of it and roll with the hands until about an inch and a half thick, cut in pieces about two inches long, the ends bias. Have a saucepan ready with boiling water, drop the pieces into this without crowding and cook until they float—about five minutes—take them out with a skimmer. Roll in dried bread crumbs, fry brown on both sides in butter, and serve hot with ...
— The Golden Age Cook Book • Henrietta Latham Dwight
... Debs and all other officials of the union, and "all persons whomsoever." For an alleged violation of that injunction, Judge Woods, without trial by jury, sentenced Debs to six months' imprisonment and his associates to three months'. The animus and class bias of the whole proceeding may be judged from the fact that President Cleveland selected to represent the United States Government, at Chicago, Mr. Edwin Walker, general counsel at that very time for the General Managers' Association, representing the twenty-four railroads centering ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... whom hath it operation to stir up affections, either of joy or of trembling? Christians, you come not to hear God speak, and so you meet with empty ordinances—God is not in them. How often do crooked and sinister ends creep in, and bias the spirit! Men ask, to spend on their lusts, and to satisfy their own ambition. Some would have more grace to be more eminent, or to have a more pleasant life; and this is but the seeking to spend ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... perhaps appeared to vaunt a heroism that was not true. He supposed that she had seen his selfishness of motive, and that it was her time now to let him see that she had not much admiration for him, so that he might make his choice without bias. ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... to destroy much of his own work. I now find myself in this predicament; and after teaching my students for years that the Carboniferous epoch belongs to the Palaeozoic or Primary age, I am convinced—and this conviction grows upon me constantly as I free myself from old prepossessions and bias on the subject—that with the Carboniferous epoch we have the opening of the Secondary age in the history of the world. A more intimate acquaintance with organic remains has shown me that there is a closer relation between the character of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Erskine[1141], an intimate friend of Lord Bute, who was the favourite of the King; and surely the most outrageous Whig will not maintain, that, whatever ought to be the principle in the disposal of offices, a pension ought never to be granted from any bias of court connection. Mr. Macklin[1142], indeed, shared with Mr. Sheridan the honour of instructing Mr. Wedderburne; and though it was too late in life for a Caledonian to acquire the genuine English cadence, yet so successful were Mr. Wedderburne's instructors, and his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... with the Del Monte the position of the best hotel in the North American continent is the Canadian Pacific Hotel at Banff, in the National Rocky Mountains Park of Canada. Here also magnificent scenery, splendid weather, and moderate charges combined to bias my judgment; but the residuum, after all due allowance made for these factors, still, after five years, assures me of most unusual excellence. Two things in particular I remember in connection with this hotel. The one is the almost absolute perfection of the waiting, carried on by gentlemanly ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... 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 the congregation of six thousand ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... there was no malice. He talked but for the pleasure of airing himself. He was essentially glib, as becomes the young advocate, and essentially careless of the truth, which is the mark of the young ass; and so he talked at random. There was no particular bias, but that one which is indigenous and universal, to flatter himself and to please and interest the present friend. And by thus milling air out of his mouth, he had presently built up a presentation of Archie which was known and talked of in all corners of the ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... management, no less than the vulgar credulity obtained for them, will cease to surprise us on maturer consideration. It could not be a difficult task for them to give the minds of their patients whatever bias was best adapted to their purposes. These credulous beings passed several days and nights in the temple, and their imagination could not fail to be powerfully impressed with what was diligently told them of the prescriptions and cures of Aesculapius; nor to retain ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... she was very sure that Franklin while liking Helen as a human creature—so he liked Miss Buckston—disapproved of her as a type. Of course, he must disapprove of her. Didn't she contradict all the things he approved of—all the laboriousness, the earnestness, the tolerant bias towards the views and feelings of the majority? And Althea felt, with a rather sharp satisfaction, that it would give her some pleasure to show Franklin that she differed from him; that she had other tastes than his, other needs—needs which Helen ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... development of the mind of man throughout the ages there was conceived also his self-made religious systems, based on a subjective interpretation of the universe, and not on an objective one, devoid of emotional bias. ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... we tempered, and how strong is the national bias! I have been saying things of you that I would not hear an enemy say. When I read, in the criticism of an American novelist, about your "hysterical emotionality" (for he writes in American), and your "waste of verbiage," I am almost ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... that I thoroughly understand the true bias of Pennsylvania. We are with you in this war heart and soul. But I do think, to put it mildly, that Doctor Connolly ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... To his father, Louis XIV.'s younger brother, who is said to have been son of Cardinal Mazarin, Anne of Austria's lover, and who was the most debased man of his time in all France, he just as surely owed the bias of sensuality to which he chiefly owes his place ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... American newspapers. Had a redress of grievances been at this late hour offered, though the honour of the States was involved in supporting their late Declaration of Independence, yet the love of peace, and the bias of great numbers to their parent State, would, in all probability, have made a powerful party for rescinding the Act of Separation, and for re-uniting with Great Britain; but when it appeared that the power of the Royal ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... we grow the more impressed we are by the amount of bias in the world. Thank heaven, the only prejudices we have are religious, racial, and social prejudices. In other respects ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... the source of this knowledge may be 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, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... know, however, and could, and did, discount the sources of error. I was on my guard against the twin fallacies of describing all savage religion as "devil worship," and of expecting to find a primitive "divine tradition". I was also on my guard against the modern bias derived from the "ghost-theory," and Mr. Spencer's works, and I kept an eye on opportunities of "borrowing".(1) I had, in fact, classified all known idola in the first edition of this work, such as the fallacy of leading questions and the chance of deliberate deception. I sought ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... erroneous opinions are twofold, moral and intellectual. Of these, the moral do not fall within the compass of this work. They may be classed under two general heads: Indifference to the attainment of truth, and Bias; of which last the most common case is that in which we are biased by our wishes; but the liability is almost as great to the undue adoption of a conclusion which is disagreeable to us, as of one which is agreeable, if it be of a nature to bring into ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... nevertheless it had passed through Deronda's mind that under other circumstances he should have given way to the interest this girl had raised in him, and tried to know more of her. But his history had given him a stronger bias in another direction. He felt ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... way gifted to test all things to their uttermost, is taken as clear proof, "under unbiased exposition," that the only one who was exactly thus gifted was not the author! The claim to freedom from bias is in almost ludicrous ...
— Old Groans and New Songs - Being Meditations on the Book of Ecclesiastes • F. C. Jennings
... appointment has not been suggested by either 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 defendant; in other words, ...
— The Attempted Assassination of ex-President Theodore Roosevelt • Oliver Remey
... He will be found all but buried in piles of exchanges, now and then clipping a story not covered on the wires, an editorial, a criticism of his own paper, or a comment of any kind that may be worth copying or following up. He must know thoroughly the bias of his paper, to know what to clip and publish. Favorable references to his paper he reprints. Criticisms he refers to the managing editor, who reads them and throws them into the waste basket, or else keeps them for a reply in a later issue. Most of the jokes, anecdotes of famous men and women, ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... her mental methods she was psychologically free, the legal tie mattered as little as if Mortimer had been transposed by some beneficent law to the status of a brother. The will when it is strong enough can control acts, and, when favored by bias, thought; but it has no command whatever over the sub-consciousness, and in that mysterious region are the subtle inheritances of mind and character, the springs and the direction, of all functional life; a fate with a thousand threads on her wheel, filaments from the souls and the bodies, the ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... foreseen that the judges were also liable to be engaged in the factions of the settlement,—and if they should ever happen to be so engaged, that the native people were then without that remedy which obviously lay in the chance that the court and jury, though both liable to bias, might not easily unite in the same identical act of injustice. Your Committee, on full inquiry, are of opinion that the use of juries is neither impracticable nor ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... "An unconscious theological bias was also present, which confounds ignorance with faith. It is often forgotten that He who surrounded us with this ever-evolving mystery of creation has also implanted in us the desire to question ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... view into every circumstance of life; the lover or the miser who is just love or greed; the people who, as in Dickens, meet every situation with the same phrase or attitude, This, too, looks like a plain falsification of human nature, because, however strong be the professional bias or however overmastering the ruling passion, real people are always more complex and many-sided, having other modifying and counteracting elements of character which prevent their speech and actions from being completely monotonous and mechanical. Nevertheless, we can again ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... venture openly to say [220-21]; he prejudices readers by irrelevant gibes [271]; he has made people believe what is untrue [333]; he was quite as prejudiced and unfair as the notorious Bishop Bale [342]; his narrative has been exposed as untrustworthy by reason of its bias, but has not even yet been subjected to complete and thorough criticism [352]. In consequence of all this, says Mr. Gairdner, Foxe has given a false colour to the history of the times, and especially to the sentiments and motives of the persecutors. ' It is quite untrue, ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... so much on our concentration, that Nature usually, in the instances where a marked man is sent into the world, overloads him with bias, sacrificing his symmetry to his working power. It is said, no man can write but one book; and if a man have a defect, it is apt to leave its impression on all his performances. If she create a policeman like Fouche, he is made up of suspicions and of plots to circumvent them. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... Lauriston ran into him as he entered the shop; what Lauriston said to him; what he himself saw and observed; what happened afterwards. It was a plain and practical account, with no indication of surprise, bias, or theory—and nobody asked the detective any ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... man, at all alive to a generous and kind feeling, who can deny M. Gail the merit of a frank, benevolent, and hearty disposition. His Greek and Latin studies, for the last thirty-five years, have neither given a severe bias to his judgment, nor repressed the ebullitions of an ardent and active imagination. His heart is yet all warmth and kindness. His fulfilment of the duties of his chair has been exemplary and beneficial; and ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... which can be avoided only by prudent distrust. He therefore that, remembering this salutary maxim, learns early to withhold his fondness from fair appearances, will have reason to pay some honours to Bias of Priene, who enabled him to become wise without the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... possess a passion warm and unreasoning. It was strong enough to induce the 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
... arrived in Cyprus upon the inhospitable shore opposite the Custom House in the shape of two Liberal M.P's. from England,—who visited the island specially to form an honest opinion free from all political bias. Whether these gentlemen were undervalued by the eccentric official to whom I have alluded, or whether he suspected Liberals as opponents to be regarded and treated as spies, we never could determine; ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... public testimony. Those, whose livelihood, or promotion, or expectations, were dependent upon the government of the country, were generally backward on these occasions. Though they thought they discovered in the parliamentary conduct of Mr. Pitt, a bias in favour of the cause, they knew to a certainty that the Lord Chancellor Thurlow was against it. They conceived, therefore, that the administration was at least divided upon the question, and they were fearful of being ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... 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 he will, the spiritual welfare of man ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... he had often seen connexions of that sort, which having been planted in the infancy of the adherent, had grown up to a surprising pitch of fidelity and friendship, that no temptation could bias, and no danger dissolve. He therefore rejoiced in the hope of seeing his own son accommodated with such a faithful attendant, in the person of young Fathom, on whom he resolved to bestow the same education he had planned for the other, though conveyed in such a manner as should be suitable ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... privilege, and hesitate to visit her often, like her other Friends. My nature pauses here, I do not well know why. Perhaps she does not make the highest demand on me, a religious demand. Some, with whose prejudices or peculiar bias I have no sympathy, yet inspire me with confidence, and I trust that they confide in me also as a religious heathen at least,—a good Greek. I, too, have principles as well founded as their own. If this ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... adult Arab, there is a life's work to undo, and the facing of that fact it is which makes some of our bravest workers drop their hands in despair. With these young Arabs, on the contrary, it is only the wrong bias of a few early years to correct, leaving carte blanche for any amount of hope in youth, maturity, and old age. Being desirous of forming, for my own edification, some notion of the amount of the evil existing, and the efforts made to counteract it, I planned a pilgrimage into this Arabia Infelix—this ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... environment of his youth. Third, one never knows just how much of his decision is due to reason and how much is due to passion or to selfish interest. Passion can dethrone the reason—we recognize this in our criminal laws. We also recognize the bias of self-interest when we exclude from the jury every man, no matter how reasonable or upright he may be, who has a pecuniary interest in the result of the trial. And, fourth, one whose morality rests upon a nice calculation of benefits to ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... fruitful cause of human misery. Let knowledge grow, let truth prevail. Since God is God, the universe is good, and the more we know of its laws, the plainer will the right way become. The investigator and the thinker, the man of culture and the man of genius, cannot free themselves from bias and limitation; but the work they do will ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... a heart as unbiassed as I can prevail on it to be; as free, I mean, from its customary bias; for I strive to call up feelings and ideas similar to his. I know how pure to him would be the satisfaction of leaving the world with the belief of a thorough change ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... defense had thirty peremptory challenges Mr. Tutt well knew that Babson would sustain the prosecutor's objections for bias until the jury box would contain the twelve automata personally selected by O'Brien in advance from what Tutt called "the army of the gibbet." Yet the old war horse outwardly maintained a calm and genial exterior, betraying none of the apprehension which ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... urged 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 text. But the task is ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... matters prevalent among Nonjurors and their ecclesiastical sympathisers in the Established Church became also unpopular, and tainted with an unmerited suspicion of leaning towards Rome. This was no gain to the Church of the Georgian era. Quite independently of any bias which a person may feel towards this or that shade of opinion upon debated questions, it may be asserted with perfect confidence that the Church of that period would decidedly have gained by an increase of life ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... conduct. It is Defoe's misfortune that his biographers on the large scale have occupied themselves too much with subordinate details, and have been misled from a true appreciation of his main lines of thought and action by religious, political, and hero-worshipping bias. For the following sketch, taking Mr. Lee's elaborate work as my chronological guide, I have read such of Defoe's undoubted writings as are accessible in the Library of the British Museum—there is no complete collection, I believe, in existence—and endeavoured to connect them and ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... rich musical ensemble, was his particular aversion, and my demands for this irritated him so that he met them only with scorn and indignant refusals. Of the strange connection between this artistic bias and his taste in the domain of morality I was also to become aware, to my horror, in due course. For the present I felt so repelled by the declaration of his artistic antipathies, as to let my dislike for the theatre as a profession steadily grow upon me. I still took pleasure in some ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... business, and such business may very possibly be affected for good or evil by the policy of the Bank. But you must not on this account seal up the Bank hermetically against living information; you must make a fair body of directors upon the whole, and trust that the bias of some individual interests will disappear and be lost in the whole. And if this is to be the guiding principle, it is not consistent to exclude ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... work and enter a more lucrative and materially satisfactory field of endeavor—if he starve in his obstinacy—engineers are men of the temperament, aside from the training, to minister to public needs and desires. Self-effacement is the engineer's chief characteristic. He views largely and without bias. He can see things from the other fellow's angle because he is not an engineer if he has not the gift of imagination. The successful engineer has this most precious of endowments, and, having it, cannot but be possessed also of kindliness and sympathy, which ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... 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 ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... heart, '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 know ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... the Assembly biassed with something adventitious from without, which he calls a national determination, and that we are not permitted by those that sent us to receive any further light from the word of God. I shall say no more of the bias, because, as I told him before, the standers by see well enough which way the bias runs. But most strange it is, that after I had confuted his calumny, not only from our paper first presented to the grand committee, but from the General Assembly's own letter ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... and English, with their strong political bias, use the expressions respectively economie politique and Political Economy. In Germany, where the terms the people (Volk) and the state (Staat) are much less nearly coextensive, the words Volkswirthschaft and Nationaloekonomie are preferred. But even ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... not half so ingenious as myself; clumsy fellows, as it might happen, who could not afford the baggages one excuse for their weakness, besides those disgraceful ones of sex and nature!—O Belford! who can bear to think of these things!——Who, at my time of life especially, and with such a bias for mischief! ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... House of Gemini). Also, her horizontal attitude was so full of menace that Rigel and Betelgeux (in Orion) seemed to wilt under her sinister supremacy. Sirius (in Canis Major), strongest and most malevolent of the astral powers, hung southwest of the zenith, reinforcing the evil bias of the time, and thus, from his commanding position, overruling the guardianship of Canopus (in Argo), south-west of the same point. Lower still, toward the south, Achernar seemed to reserve his gracious prestige, whilst, across the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... savages make war upon their families; wherefore the assertion, if true, turns to her reproach; but it happens not to be true, or only partly so and the phrase PARENT or MOTHER COUNTRY hath been jesuitically adopted by the king and his parasites, with a low papistical design of gaining an unfair bias on the credulous weakness of our minds. Europe, and not England, is the parent country of America. This new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty from ...
— Common Sense • Thomas Paine
... and from each other, and then to have each separately examined. Should there appear to be any evidence of possession, he hoped that the bailiff would be pleased to appoint clerics of well-known rank and upright character to perform whatever exorcisms were needful; such men having no bias against him would be more impartial than Mignon and his adherents. He also called upon the bailiff to have an exact report drawn up of everything that took place at the exorcisms, in order that, if necessary, he as petitioner ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... should be negotiated in time of profound peace, and not with reference to any particular controversy. Its judges should be selected in time of peace and their terms of office should be permanent. In order that they might be removed from, and uninfluenced by, any bias or prejudice they should be appointed for life, and while holding this great international commission they should be prohibited from accepting or holding any other office ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... the receptive attitude appropriate in observation and forming opinions—the attitude of looking for the facts and accepting them as they are rather than seeking {168} to confirm one's own prepossessions. Bias is self-assertive, impartiality is submissive ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... 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 the case in Sacramento, ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... first vacant benefice either on himself or on one of his children, relations or friends. Turgot gave his indult to his friend Abbe Morellet, who consequently obtained (in June 1788) the priory of Thimer, with 16,000 livres revenue and a handsome house.—Ibid., p.887. "The bias of the Pope, ecclesiastical or lay patrons, licensed parties, indultaires, graduates, the so frequent use of resignations, permutations, pensions, left to the bishop, who is now undisputed master of his diocesan appointments, but very few situations to bestow."—Grosley, "Memoires, etc.," ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... to the Commandant Krieger if the foregoing is not a fair and impartial statement of the views of himself and his people. I am sensible of no mental bias toward or against these Boers; and during the several journeys I made to the poor enslaved tribes, I never avoided the whites, but tried to cure and did administer remedies to their sick, without money and without ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... was the qualification of scores of men upon whom the highest social rank was bestowed in reign after reign in our English history. Moreover, birth distinction has never been recognised in law, in spite of the fact that the manipulation of laws has not always been free from bias. The well known words of Macaulay are ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... [Difference of quantity or degree.] Inequality. — N. inequality; disparity, imparity; odds; difference &c. 15; unevenness; inclination of the balance, partiality, bias, weight; shortcoming; casting weight, make- weight; superiority &c. 33; inferiority &c. 34; inequation[obs3]. V. be unequal &c. adj.; countervail; have the advantage, give the advantage; turn the scale; kick the beam; topple,topple over; overmatch &c. 33; not come up to &c. 34. Adj. unequal, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... for and made of real service to the world. Our American education must be made continually more keenly alive to the great moral, ethical and social needs of the time. Thereby it will be made religious without having any sectarian slant or bias; it will be made safe for and the hand-maid of Democracy and not a ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine
... good deal of misunderstanding about the meetings, arising from garbled newspaper reports. The newspaper reporter has a bias for things off colour—buzzard-like, he sees only the carrion—at least he is trained to report only the carrion—this always against his will. So we were kept explaining to men and women of the church who had not been able to attend and see for themselves. There was not only misunderstanding ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... Indian character saved his life; had he betrayed the slightest symptom of fear, he was a dead man; but the undaunted attitude he assumed staggered the resolution of the savage; a new bias seemed to operate on his mind, probably through a feeling of respect for the determined courage displayed by his intended victim. He could not brace his nerves to a second effort; his hand dropped listlessly ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... was naturally a despiser of superstition. Mere strength of understanding would, perhaps, have made him so in any age, and apart from the circumstances of his personal history. This natural tendency in him would doubtless receive a further bias in the same direction from the office of Pontifex Maximus, which he held at an early stage of his public career. This office, by letting him too much behind the curtain, and exposing too entirely the base machinery of ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... lofty spirit, were always accompanied with the necessary talent of knowledge to make amends for those imperfections. He had religion enough for this world. His own good sense, or else his inclination, always led him to the practice of virtue if his self-interest did not bias him to evil, which, whenever he committed it, he did so knowingly. He extended his concern for the State no further than his own life, though no minister ever did more than he to make the world believe he had the same regard for the future. In a word, all ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... failure of many negotiations, and a careful reconsideration, now had, of the whole subject, at a moment when the passions are laid, and no present interest or emergency exists to bias the judgment, have fully convinced this government that this is not only the simplest and best, but the only rule, which can be adopted and observed, consistently with the rights and honor of the United States and ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... propter honoris respectum; as if a lord of Parliament be impannelled. 2d, propter defectum; as if a juryman be an alien born, or be in other respects generally objectionable. 3d, propter affectum; for suspicion of bias or partiality: and 4th, propter delictum; or, for some crime that affects the juror's credit, and renders him infamous; In treason and felony, the prisoner is allowed the privilege of a limited number of peremptory ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... or temporary mortification. Abstract principle has no rule but the understood distinction between right and wrong; the indulgence of vanity, of caprice, or prejudice is regulated by the convenience or bias of the moment. The temperament of our politician's mind is poetical, not philosophical. He is more the creature of impulse, than he is of reflection. He invents the unreal, he embellishes the false with the glosses of fancy, but pays little attention to "the words of truth and soberness." His impressions ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... had made known his will, the custom of primogeniture was set aside, and his word became law. We can well imagine the secret intrigues formed both by mothers and sons to curry favour with the father and bias his choice; we can picture the jealousy with which they mutually watched each other, and the bitter hatred which any preference shown to one would arouse in the breasts of all the others. Often brothers who had been disappointed in their expectations would combine ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... and impertinence which detract so much from the value of most recent books of travel, it may be doubted whether, since the French Revolution gave birth to the Caliban of Democracy, there has been a tourist without political bias toward one side or the other; and now that the "Special Correspondent" has been invented, whose business it is to be one-sided, if possible, and at all events entertaining, the last hope of rational ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... or two I was undecided whether to respond to this call, or take no notice of it. I was not conscious of the slightest mysterious bias, influence, or attraction, one way or other. Of that I am as strictly sure as of every other statement that I make here. Ultimately I decided, as a break in the monotony of my life, that ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens |
