"Deterrent" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will always be, harmonious with the feelings—of the average citizen; for neither priest nor playwright have customarily any such peculiar gift of spiritual daring as might render them unsafe mentors of their fellows; and there is not wanting the deterrent of common-sense to keep them in bounds. Yet it can hardly be denied that there spring up at times men—like John Wesley or General Booth—of such incurable temperament as to be capable of abusing their freedom by the promulgation of doctrine or procedure, divergent from the current traditions ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of such magnitude that of themselves they must serve as a further deterrent to the use of nuclear weapons. At the same time, knowledge, even fragmentary knowledge, of the broader effects of nuclear weapons underlines the extreme difficulty that strategic planners of any nation would face in attempting to predict the results of a nuclear war. Uncertainty is one of ...
— Worldwide Effects of Nuclear War: Some Perspectives • United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
... very uselessness; he relished more keenly than any man the solemn futilities of mediaeval doctors, and the pedantic indecencies of casuist fathers; and, along with all these temptations to an enterprise of the kind upon which he entered, he had been experiencing a steady relaxation of deterrent restraints. He had fallen out with his uncle some years since,[2] and the quarrel had freed him from at least one influence making for clerical propriety of behaviour. His incorrigible levities had probably lost him the countenance of most of his more serious acquaintances; his satirical ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... nulla dubitatio est. Nam illud quoque, quod improbis nunc tristia nunc optata proueniunt, ex eisdem ducitur causis; ac de tristibus quidem nemo miratur, quod eos male meritos omnes existimant. Quorum quidem supplicia tum ceteros ab sceleribus deterrent, tum ipsos quibus inuehuntur emendant; laeta uero magnum bonis argumentum loquuntur, quid de huiusmodi felicitate debeant iudicare quam famulari saepe improbis cernant. In qua re illud etiam dispensari credo, quod est forsitan alicuius ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... the only deterrent I have from dressing in my white Russian hareskin coat, and sitting in the graveyard some dusky evening. The people claim that the place is haunted. I have never met a "Yoho" and never expect to, but I would dearly love to see how others act when they think they have. Only the suspicion ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... is a possible throb of your sense of being floated to your doom, even when the truth is simply and sociably that you are going out to tea. Nowhere else is anything as innocent so mysterious, nor anything as mysterious so pleasantly deterrent to protest. These are the moments when you are most daringly Venetian, most content to leave cheap trippers and other aliens the high light of the mid-lagoon and the pursuit of pink and gold. The splendid day is good enough for them; what is best for you is to stop at last, as you are ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... The deterrent was, the giving himself over into the power of other men, and into the power of the mob-spirit of a democratic army. Should he give himself over? Should he make over his own life and body to the control of something which he knew was inferior, in ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... here before going on to drop a tear on the Hrad[vs]any relics. The little church was dedicated to Cosmas (not the chronicler) and Damian, saints of the third and fourth centuries. It is not known why these gentlemen clubbed together to have a day to themselves, but this need not act as deterrent to anyone who wishes to observe their day. Wherever pilgrims visit, there you will find settlements growing up, beginning with booths and shanties of those who sell appropriate commodities, candles, wreaths and such-like. The traffic in these articles continues; it was only last Palm Sunday ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... suddenly from his seat, crying that in Normandy alone was this inhuman decree allowed, that Rome herself had never dared to stain the statute book with such a penalty. The extension of the punishment to the children, far from proving a deterrent, actually encouraged these hopeless and destitute orphans to exist by crime, since every avenue of honest livelihood was barred to them. Deprived of all their father had possessed, they saw their relations in the enjoyment of an increased inheritance. Ruined by punishment ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... 2003, it declared its withdrawal from the international Non-Proliferation Treaty. In mid-2003 Pyongyang announced it had completed the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel rods (to extract weapons-grade plutonium) and was developing a "nuclear deterrent." From August 2003, North Korea has participated on and off in six-party talks with the China, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States to resolve the stalemate ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... at prayers or anywhere else, and would then have married Ophelia, put his mother in a nunnery, and lived happily ever after.[162] And to that edifying assumption, Mr. Feis adds the fantasy that Shakspere dreaded the influence of Montaigne as a deterrent from the retributive slaughter of ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... salutary penance to those who sought it, like a father-confessor with his penitent. Its sentences, therefore, were not like those of an earthly judge, the retaliation of society on the wrongdoer, or deterrent examples to prevent the spread of crime; they were simply imposed for the benefit of the erring soul, to wash away its sin. The Inquisitors themselves habitually speak of their ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard
... Bishop's mouth, and twinkled in his eyes—"incidentally, my daughter, you will work off a certain stiffness from which you must be suffering, after the unwonted exercise. Ah me!" said the Bishop, "that is ever the Divine method. Punishments should be remedial, as well as deterrent. There is much stiffness of mind of which we must be rid before we can stoop to the portal of God's 'whosoever' and, passing through the narrow gate, enter the Kingdom of Heaven ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... subjected to a like grimly materialistic optimism. I have a vivid recollection of a ponderous editorial on one of the severer earthquakes, in which it was asserted that only the UNEXPECTEDNESS of the onset prevented San Francisco from meeting it in a way that would be deterrent of all future attacks. The unconsciousness of the humor was only equaled by the gravity with which it was received by the whole business community. Strangely enough, this grave materialism flourished side ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... terrible lesson on the horrors of the sea did not act as a deterrent; it was as unsuccessful as the effort of the old lady in one of his stories: "An old lady I once knew tried to check the military ardour of a little boy by showing him a picture of a battlefield, and describing some of its horrors. But the only answer she got was, 'I'll ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... thoroughly effective, for every one of the monsters went down, either dead or too desperately wounded to be capable of further effort. The fate of their comrades, however, seemed in no wise to dismay or act as a deterrent to the survivors, who, five in number, pressed resolutely on and, finding bottom, rose in quick succession to their feet and proceeded to scramble ashore, actually passing between the bodies of their dead and dying companions, and noticing them only to thrust them roughly ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... "... a deterrent force residing in the ego and preventing us from stepping outside the bounds of propriety.... Rebellious messages sent up from the Unconscious, which wishes to live, love and act in archaic modes ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... been very popular with the other sex, and in the early years of the eighteenth century, when girls could do little more than read and write—and not always so much—wit such as hers and the readiness of reply with which she was gifted must have been a deterrent. What could the ordinary social butterfly think of a Lady Mary who had as a friend Mary Ansell, the author of a Serious Proposal to Ladies— what, though perhaps not one of them had ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... her sister-in-law were made to suit one another. With liberty her spirit and audacity revived, and she showed so much attraction towards the Salvation Army, that her brother declared their music to have been the chief deterrent from her becoming a "Hallelujah lass." However, in a brief visit to London, she so much pleased Mr. Grinstead that he invited her to partake in the winter's journey to Italy. Poor man, he little knew what he undertook. Music, art, Roman Catholic services, and novelty ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mental equipment of human civilized life is an absurdity. I find that the fear clement of forethought is not stimulating to those more civilized persons to whom duty and attraction are the natural motives, but is weakening and deterrent. As soon as it becomes unnecessary, fear becomes a positive deterrent, and should be entirely removed, as dead flesh is removed from living tissue. To assist in the analysis of fear and in the denunciation of its expressions, I have coined the word fearthought to stand for the unprofitable ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James |
