"Nullify" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hand, shrank from the idea of abandoning the refugees in the island of Salamis, and he regarded the adjacent straits as the best position in which the Greeks could give battle. There, as in the channel of Euboea, the narrow waters would do something to nullify the Persian advantage of numbers. For the Greeks, formed in several lines extending from shore to shore, could only be attacked by equal numbers. Only the leading ships of the attack would be in action ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... that time was certainly a perplexing one to Sherman. He could not permit Hood to put him, with his superior force, on the defensive, nor even to appear to do so for a moment; and it was not easy for him to consent that his enemy should entirely nullify all his elaborately considered plans for future operations in Georgia. What operations Sherman decided on in that unprecedented ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... sequestration of the two nuns, no matter at what risk. The bailiff, however, in the interests of the petitioner himself, did not dare to grant this request, for he was afraid that the ecclesiastical authorities would nullify his procedure, on the ground that the convent was not under ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... justice, veracity and a regard to common good may be conspicuous; the claim of each man upon his fellow-man may be generally acknowledged. In communities more advanced, the growth of class distinctions and the inequalities due to the amassing of wealth on the part of individuals may go far to nullify the advantage to the individual of any advance made by the community as a whole. The social bonds which have obtained between members of the same group may be relaxed; the devotion to the common good may be replaced by the selfish calculation of profit to the individual; the exploitation ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... turning a sick friend, and straightway write a reply or rejoinder in which he mercilessly pilloried a Laniger who had supposed that he could tell the world something else or more than had been sanctioned by the eminent Mordax—and what was worse, had sometimes really done so. Does this nullify the genuineness of motive which made him tender to his suffering friend? Not at all. It only proves that his arrogant egoism, set on fire, sends up smoke and flame where just before there had been the dews of fellowship and pity. He is angry and equips himself accordingly—with ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... that those who crucified Him were not the strong but the weak. Human culture weakens and strives to nullify the struggle for existence and natural selection; hence the rapid advancement of the weak and their predominance over the strong. Imagine that you succeeded in instilling into bees humanitarian ideas in their crude and elementary ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... malevolence, existing because it can not help it, and giving birth to all sorts of creatures, men and women included, because it can not help it—must arise from a condition of being, call it spiritual, moral, or mental—I can not be obliging enough to add cerebral, because so I should nullify my conclusion, seeing there would be no substance left wherein it could be wrought out—for which the man, I can not but think, will one day discover that he was to blame—for which a living God sees that he is to blame, makes all the excuse he can, and will ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... Churches, especially in good livings, there is such an overflowing fullness of consent on the part of the Pastor as supplies that of the people altogether; nay, to nullify their ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... from the factory in the old, rusty, time-embattled milk cans, in which it is allowed to stand until the next milking, and which, after an imperfect washing, and refilled and returned to the factory, freighted with a compound sufficiently poisoned to nullify and undo the best efforts of a hundred A., B., and C's. It may be theorizing and visionary to talk of a time when the spirit of co-operation shall have driven such fellows out of the dairying business, to betake themselves ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... close-knit and logical, was the very summation of these qualities; his words seemed edged with fire as he argued that the Constitution is supreme, the Union indissoluble, and that no state has, or can have the right to resist or nullify a national law. It was the greatest ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... commission with discretionary powers was not specially sanctioned by their charter, they resolved to resist the orders of the king and nullify his commission. While the fleet sent from England was engaged in reducing New York, Massachusetts, on September 10th, 1664, published an order prohibiting complaints to the commissioners, and at the same ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... cost our government a million dollars. A single misspelled word prevented a deserving young man from obtaining a situation as instructor in a New England college. A cinder on the eyeball will conquer a Napoleon. Some little weakness, as lack of courtesy, want of decision, a bad temper, may nullify the labor of years. ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... Union. It seizes upon the brain of a heated politician, sometimes in one state, sometimes in another, and its natural offspring is the doctrine of nullification; that is, the sovereign power of any one state of the confederacy to nullify any act of the whole twenty-four states which the sovereign state shall please to consider as unconstitutional. Stripped of the sophistical argumentation in which this doctrine has been habited, its naked nature ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... safely infer that the system is at fault as much as the individual. Local American legislative organization has courted failure. Both the system of representation and functions of the representative body have been admirably calculated to debase the quality of the representatives and to nullify the value of their work. American state legislatures have really never had a fair opportunity. They have almost from the beginning been deprived of any effective responsibility. The state constitutions have gradually hedged them in with so many restrictions, have ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... of nature, honest, erring human nature, which could, if permitted, make out a fair case for itself, is not an essential element of the evangelist's code. In the hands of men less great than Wesley, it has been known to nullify the work of a lifetime. The Lincolnshire farmer who, after listening to a sermon on Hell, said to his wife, "Noa, Sally, it woant do. Noa constitootion could stand it," expressed in his own fashion the ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... General Ewing was nominated by the Democratic party, in the hope that he would gain support from a third party committed to inflation. Since then it would appear that the Democratic leaders seek to change the issue. The same old questions about the rights of states to nullify the laws of the United States—the same old policy to belittle and degrade our national government into a mere confederacy of states—are now ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... then must the atonement of the Mediator be restricted to them. There seems no evading this inference. To give the designed objects of the Saviour's atonement a greater extension than the covenant of grace, is to nullify its character as the stipulated condition of the covenant, and to render nugatory and unavailing the consolatory address by which the heart of many an awakened sinner has been soothed. 'Behold the blood ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... individual success: of course if a company were formed, especially if it were of unlimited lie-ability, the shares would be taken. No offence; there is nothing but what a pun will either sanctify, justify, or nullify: ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... Union, but war upon the elective franchise, the great fundamental principle of free government, and without which it is but a fleeting shadow. Democrats—people of all parties—my countrymen, while you are asked now by the Chicago Convention to vote against Mr. Lincoln, you would nullify by that very vote the right of suffrage, because, what is that suffrage worth, what is your vote but an empty form, if it may not elect your President? But if, because the minority who have voted against you, dissatisfied with your choice, can rebel, make war upon ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... have a complete supply in every part of the house, so that there need not be a dark corner anywhere. This I had specially arranged. It is worked by a set of turbines moved by the flowing and ebbing tide, after the manner of the turbines at Niagara. I hope by this means to nullify accident and to have without fail a full supply ready at any time. Come with me and I will explain the system of circuits, and point out to you the taps and the fuses." I could not but notice, as we went with him all over the house, how absolutely complete the system was, and ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... Government should have retained a possession, the occupation of which is wholly unprofitable; the receipts being far below the expenditure, "malgre" the increased taxation. At so great a distance from the seacoast and hemmed in by immense deserts, there is a difficulty of transport that must nullify all commercial transactions ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... the night signalman's duties to do this as soon as daylight appeared; it is possible, therefore, that Pritchard went down to the tunnel for that purpose. Against this theory, however, and an objection that seems to nullify it, is the evidence of Dr. Williams, who states that when he examined the body his opinion was that death had taken place some hours before. An inquest was held on the following day, but before it took place there was a new and most ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... should be as well treated as a private employer. Accordingly, most of the worst men put out were reinstated by the courts; and when the Mayor attempted to remove one of my colleagues who made it his business to try to nullify the work done by the rest of us, the Governor sided with the recalcitrant Commissioner and refused to ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... Consul for the next year. But the Patricians made one last effort to evade the law. By the Roman constitution, the Consuls, after being elected by the Comitia Centuriata, received the Imperium, or sovereign power, from the Comitia Curiata. The Patricians thus had it in their power to nullify the election of the Centuries by refusing the Imperium. This they did when L. Sextius was elected Consul; and they made Camillus, the great champion of their order, Dictator, to support them in their new struggle. But the old hero saw that it was too late, and determined ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... workers among themselves is the worst side of the present state of things in its effect upon the worker, the sharpest weapon against the proletariat in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Hence the effort of the workers to nullify this competition by associations, hence the hatred of the bourgeoisie towards these associations, and its triumph in every defeat which ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... did not cease, however, with the tumults which were its original manifestations. This earliest insurrection in organized shape against the central authority of the States-General; this violent though abortive effort to dissolve the Union and to nullify its laws; this painful necessity for the first time imposed upon the federal government to take up arms against misguided citizens of the Republic, in order to save itself from disintegration and national death, were destined to be followed by far graver convulsions on the self-same spot. Religious ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Benito, "is to remain to die! The order for execution may come at any moment! If you imagine that the justice of men will nullify a wrong decision, if you think it will rehabilitate you whom it condemned twenty years since, you are mistaken! There is hope no longer! ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... indirect corruption which takes the form of subscriptions, charitable donations, gifts of coals and of blankets; and yet, with the present system, these votes may decide the result of an election and completely nullify ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... and feel that annexation to the great Republic in their neighbourhood will swamp their nationality more effectively than the red or the blue coats of England can ever do, will desecrate their altars, will portion out their lands, will nullify their present importance, and render them an isolated race, forgotten and unsought for, as the Iroquois of the last century, who, from being the children and owners of the land, the true enfans du sol, are now—where? The soil, had it voice, could alone reply, for on ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... nation, yet acting in the nation's behalf to secure worthy occupants for the throne. For a time this system worked satisfactorily, but ultimately it inosculated itself with the views it was designed to nullify, and the Fujiwara became flagrant abusers of the power handed down to them. Momokawa's immediate followers were worthy to wear his mantle. Tanetsugu, Korekimi, Tsugunawa—these are names that deserve to be printed in letters of gold on the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... not shoot them down'; and also in the Canadian {131} who 'would have reduced Montreal to ashes' before enduring half that the governor endured. But Elgin acted not as the natural man, but as the Christian and the statesman, He refused to meet violence with violence; and he refused to nullify the principles of popular government by bowing before the blast of popular clamour. But a more unpopular governor-general never held office ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... God-like that, was commonly sufficient; and then there was no lack of material, for he had taken care to provide himself with a Riddle who, he really believed, had given an opinion, at some time or other, on every side of every subject that had ever been mooted in Leaplow. He could nullify, or mollify, or qualify, with the best of them; and these, which he termed the three fies, he believed were the great requisites of a Leaplow legislator. He admitted, however, that some show of independence was necessary, in order to give value to the opinion ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Like Arthur he will come again, and from Arthur to James IV. of Scotland, from James IV. to the Duke of Monmouth, or the son of Louis XVI., the populace believes and hopes that its darling has not perished. We destroyed the Mahdi's body to nullify such a belief, or to prevent worship at his tomb. In the same way, at Rouen, 'when the Maid was dead, as the English feared that she might be said to have escaped, they bade the executioner rake back the fire somewhat that the bystanders might see her dead.'* An account of a similar precaution, ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... healing-cult. Its members are forbidden, on penalty of expulsion, to use in the treatment of human ailments the most innocent natural remedies. The giving of an enema, or the common-sense regulation of diet are regarded as sufficient to nullify the power of their metaphysical formulas and to prevent the working of ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... void; cease to exist &c. 1; pass away, perish; be extinct, become extinct &c. adj.; die out; disappear &c. 449; melt away, dissolve, leave not a rack behind; go, be no more; die &c. 360. annihilate, render null, nullify; abrogate &c. 756; destroy &c. 162; take away; remove &c. (displace) 185; obliterate, extirpate. Adj. inexistent[obs3], nonexistent &c. 1; negative, blank; missing, omitted; absent &c. 187,; insubstantial, shadowy, spectral, visionary. unreal, potential, virtual; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... we rely were negative merely, and were designed to nullify existing as well as any future State legislation interfering with our rights. This result was accomplished by the constitution itself. Undoubtedly before we could exercise our right, it was necessary that there ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... President Krueger while they made him believe that, as they were fighting against that policy in England, there was no necessity for him to heed their advice. Their attitude in Europe was bound to nullify the effect of the warnings they were sending to Africa. It is astounding to see sedate men contradict themselves in that way. I cannot help wondering at Dr. Clark boasting on the 27th of September that owing to his endeavours Mr. Stead's pamphlet was ...
— Boer Politics • Yves Guyot
... Blackstone, with the honest evasion of one who will not answer an awful question hastily, "must be a false god, that is, no god. Therefore I presume there is some higher truth involved in every fact that appears unjust, the perception of which would nullify the appearance." ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... Church forty years to get a membership of 138,000. Mormonism in forty-four years counted 250,000. It seems incredible, nevertheless it is a fact. In this brief space of time it has also been able to nullify our laws, oppose our institutions, openly perpetrate crimes, be represented in Congress, boast of the helplessness of the nation to prevent these things, and give the Church supremacy over the State and the people. Bills introduced in Congress adequate to their ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... interest into the hands of his enemies, sold them into the hand of that conquering usurper, Oliver Cromwell, who, having stript them of their civil liberties, as the most effectual method to rob the church of her spiritual privileges, and nullify the forcible obligation of the sacred covenants (which, when preserved, serve as a strong barrier against all such usurpations), framed a hellish and almost unbounded toleration in Scotland, of heretical and sectarian ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... Adriatic. The western half of this great valley is Piedmont; the eastern is Lombardy. Its fertility and facility of cultivation are such that even Italian unthrift and ignorance of Agriculture are unable to destroy the former or nullify the latter. I never saw better Wheat, Grass, and Barley, than in my journey of a hundred miles across this noble valley of the Po, or Piedmont, and the Indian Corn, Potatoes, &c., are less promising only because of the amazing ignorance of their requirements evinced by nine-tenths of ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... From this it followed that Section XXV was a measure necessary and proper for extending the judicial power of the United States appellately to such cases whenever they were first brought in a state court. Nor did Article XI of the Amendments nullify the power thus conferred upon the Court in a case which the State itself had instituted, for in such a case the appeal taken to the national tribunal was only another stage in an action "begun and prosecuted," not against the State, but by the State. ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... acquisition by the people of a new political rank, an event by which they, (the ascendant class,) had for a while appeared amazed and stunned, has soon recovered to a prodigious activity of device and exertion to nullify that rightful acquisition. For this purpose have been brought into play, on the widest scale, that of the whole kingdom, all the means and resources of wealth, station, and power; with the utmost ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... maladies by which a man is afflicted do not nullify the sum total of human passion. To our shame be it spoken, a woman is never so much attached to us as when we ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... than probable that this humane and commendable purpose would fail of accomplishment if a military commander conceived it to be within his authority to suspend or nullify their operation, or to regard their application in certain cases as a matter falling within his administrative discretion. Especially is this true where a military officer refuses to receive well grounded complaints, or declines to receive demands for redress, in respect ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim
... constitution was slowly changing the governmental arrangements of Russia. It is, as yet, too early for outsiders to understand how it came to pass that the country was regarded as a centre of disaffection, or why, ever and anon some new step was taken to nullify its Parliament, and to place it more and more under military control. What we are concerned with is the simple fact that these things interfered but little with the steady progress of The Army, and that this proved at every step the ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... when the prize is great and the opportunity short. An election for the Legislature, held subsequently to that for the Convention, showing a public opinion decidedly adverse to it, the sole study of its members thenceforth seemed to be, how they could most adroitly and effectively nullify the ascendency of the majority. For this end alone they consulted, and caballed, and calculated, and junketed; and the Lecompton Constitution, with the Schedule annexed, was the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... he made this important admission however, and enunciated his golden Canon of interpretation, when he hastens to nullify it. His very next words are,—"The meaning of the Canon is only this,—'That we cannot understand Scripture without becoming ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... their flag was that of the Red Rover. They gave Philistinism many a shrewd blow, but perhaps at the same time helped to some degree—with other far deeper and stronger forces—to produce that sceptical and centrifugal state of mind, which now tends to nullify organised liberalism and paralyse the spirit of improvement. The Benthamites, led first by James Mill, and afterwards in a secondary degree by John Mill, had pushed a number of political improvements in the radical and democratic direction during ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... years of sanction by the highest judicial authority, should be honestly and faithfully observed and maintained by all who enjoy the benefits of our compact of union; and that all acts of individuals or of State Legislatures to defeat the purpose or nullify the requirements of that provision, and the laws made in pursuance of it, are hostile in character, subversive of the Constitution, and revolutionary in ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... nullify these various amiable intentions, Frank Osbaldistone leaped from his horse, and plunged into a thicket of alder trees, where he was almost instantly safe from pursuit. It was now altogether dark, and, having nowhere else to go, Frank resolved to retrace his way back to the little inn ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... to be remembered was that Germany's pledge to President Wilson was the only curb on frightfulness. Germany rashly assumed that the defeat of President Wilson would nullify it. At any rate, his uncertain outlook in the preelection period opened the way for a submarine outbreak which would be extended with impunity owing to the Administration's hesitation in taking action that ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... safety, and in, the second place swift transit and handiness. These are best furnished, by the American line, whose watertight compartments have no passage through them; no doors to be left open, and consequently no way for water to get from one of them to another in time of collision. If you nullify the peril which collisions threaten you with, you nullify the only very serious peril which attends voyages in the great liners of our day, and makes voyaging safer than ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... discover in that instrument, authority for slavery, and authority against endeavors to abolish it, are as great, anxious, and unwearied, as if they who made them, thought that the fortunate discovery would settle for ever the great question which agitates our country—would nullify all the laws of God against slavery—and make the oppression of our colored brethren, as long as time shall last, justifiable and praiseworthy. But this discovery will never be made; for the Constitution is not on the side of the slaveholder. If ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... an inducement to enter into this dangerous course. The great political truth was repeated to you that you had the revolutionary right of resisting all laws that were palpably unconstitutional and intolerably oppressive—it was added that the right to nullify a law rested on the same principle, but that it was a peaceable remedy! This character which was given to it, made you receive with too much confidence the assertions that were made of the unconstitutionality of the law and its ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... hitherto certainly, and probably it will be so for ever, even the most salutary movements and most effective social conceptions have been provisional. In other words, the ultimate certainty of dissolution does not nullify the beauty and strength of physical life, and the putrescence of Jesuit methods and ideas is no more a reproach to those who first found succour in them, than the cant and formalism of any other degenerate form of active faith, say monachism or Calvinism, prove Calvin or Benedict ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... President Pierce would nullify the election, and to this end he made a journey to Washington in April. On the way he delivered a public address at Easton, Pennsylvania, describing in lurid colors the outrage which had been perpetrated upon the people of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... lbs. The motor gave out 1 1/2 horse-power, which was sufficient to drive the vessel at a speed of up to 10 feet per second. This was not so good as Haenlein's previous attempt and, after L2,000 had been spent, the Tissandier abandoned their experiments, since a 5-mile breeze was sufficient to nullify the power of ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... quite non-partisanly wonders why on earth they have been allowed to continue. A second thought demonstrates, of course, that fear has had the major part in it, and that skill in cheating has gone so far as practically to nullify ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... die while those live who undertook it. I believed it until I desired to believe it no longer. But a man's self-persuasion cannot alter such laws—nor can human laws confirm or nullify them, nor can a great religion do more than admit their truth, basing its creed upon such laws. . . . No man can put asunder, no laws of man undo the burden. . . . And, to my shame and disgrace, I have had to relearn this after offering you a love I had no right to offer—a life ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... self-deluding hope, 'After us, the millennium.' Those who make no sacrifice to avert the deluge, and those who make none to hasten their millennium, are on the same moral level. And the former have at least the quality of being no worse than their avowed principle, while the latter nullify their pretended hopes by conformities which are only proper either to profound social contentment, or to profound social despair. Nay, they seem to think that there is some merit in this merely speculative hopefulness. They act ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... kinds of horrible, abominable, innumerable sins of unchastity [depraved lusts], in which they still wallow. Now, as little as we or they have been given the power to make a woman out of a man or a man out of a woman, or to nullify either sex, so little have they had the power to [sunder and] separate such creatures of God, or to forbid them from living [and cohabiting] honestly in marriage with one another. Therefore we are unwilling to assent to their abominable ...
— The Smalcald Articles • Martin Luther
... now about to accept gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretence about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, ...
— Germany, The Next Republic? • Carl W. Ackerman
... await the seal of final truth can deter from action those only who would have remained no less inert had no such knowledge been theirs. Thought that rises encourages where it disheartens. And to those of a loftier vision, prepared in advance to admire the truth that will nullify all they have done, it seems only natural still to endeavour with all might and main to enhance what yet may be termed the justice, the beauty, the reason of this our earth. They know that to penetrate deeper, to understand, to respect—all this is enhancement. Above all, ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable—when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us—that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... 3 of the note of August 19th," provided that an inquiry, joint or unilateral as the Transvaal Government might prefer, showed that "the new scheme of representation would not be encumbered by conditions which would nullify the intention to give substantial and immediate representation to the Uitlanders." They assumed that "the new members of the Raad would be permitted to use their own language." They expressed their ...
— Lord Milner's Work in South Africa - From its Commencement in 1897 to the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 • W. Basil Worsfold
... into effect, in part, an ordinance to nullify certain acts of the Congress of the United States purporting to be laws laying duties on the importation of foreign commodities," passed in convention of this State, at Columbia, on ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson
... all ties in grafting to prevent strangulation of the tender new growth. This, with removal of sprouts or suckers from the stock below the graft are two very important features of after-care, and neglect can nullify the most expert work in the ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... the tariff is a palpable, deliberate usurpation; Carolina, therefore, may nullify it, and refuse to pay the duties. In Pennsylvania, it is both clearly constitutional and highly expedient; and there the duties are to be paid. And yet we live under a government of uniform laws, and under a Constitution too, which contains an express provision, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... a little mistaken, not knowing in our ignorance, that we were making the Lieut. Governor commander in chief, and using his name to nullify the existing laws. Nevertheless, our mistake was not greater than many that have been made to pass current by the sophistry of the whites, and we acted in accordance with the spirit of the constitution, unless that instrument be a device ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... but confirms my suspicions; I obtained this safe conduct expressly to nullify or confirm them. Had they departed as I wished, all would have been well; but they linger, and I can feel their plans are maturing, and therefore they will not depart. Oh, Agnes," he continued, bitterly, "my very soul is crushed beneath ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... instant he saw the murderous-looking mob. To expose himself on the top of the wall was merely to make a target of his body for a dozen rifles to "pot" at, and so nullify all he had accomplished. Yet how was he to get over on to the other side without being observed? If he could but alight on firm ground safely, he could then make a rush for it, and trust to the luck which, so far, had been on his side. He thought of the ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... alone, of all the tribes of animated beings, has a power been given to nullify this feeling. Beast, bird, and insect, attend to the wants of their offspring, accordingly as those wants require much or little assiduity. But woman, if she will, can drug and stupefy this feeling. She can commit ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... class is a matter of prime importance, since a ballot in the hands of a black citizen is quite as potent as in the hands of a white one." Or (2) Negro suffrage meant a determined concentration of Southern effort by actual force to deprive the Negro of the ballot or nullify its use. This last is what really happened. But even in this case, so much energy was taken in keeping the Negro from voting that the plan for keeping him in virtual slavery and denying him education partially failed. ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... consul appointed in Norwegian Council, I ventured to point out 1) that this demand was entirely contrary to the Norwegian Constitution, 2) that an arrangement by which a Swedish authority of state might nullify a resolution adopted by a Norwegian authority of state would, according to the general principles of political and international law, impress upon Norway the stamp of a dependency, and 3) that it would therefore from a national point of view ...
— The Swedish-Norwegian Union Crisis - A History with Documents • Karl Nordlund
... their distribution to the several departments are as clearly expressed in that sacred instrument as the imperfection of human language will allow, and I deem it my first duty not to question its wisdom, add to its provisions, evade its requirements, or nullify its commands. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... brings us to the atom, which may be described as a number of electrons positive and negative in stable equilibrium, this condition being brought about by the mutual repulsion of the like and attraction for the opposite electrification so arranged as to nullify each other. Having thus established the law of the equilibrium of electrons, corpuscles, atoms, and molecules, I found that the same law applies to the equilibrium of our solar system, and, in fact, of the universe, and, by the elimination of either the positive or the negative ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... out of this text because it is not in the original. B. Wilson translates the verse in these words: "Do we then nullify law through the FAITH. By no means; but we establish law." The negative use of law is to restrain the evil; and the affirmative is to bring out the good, the spiritual. So, without any interference with the spiritual of any law that ever ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... Runacles broke in, "if you are talking of yourself, let me advise you to quit England by the first ship that sails. The child is already furnished with a guardian—a guardian, my dear sir, who will nullify your legal claim upon the child by the simple expedient of taking ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... woman of plain and severe exterior, who at once inspired confidence in everyone. The plots of the marquis and Madame de Bouille thus throve with most baneful success; but an accident happened which threatened to nullify them, and, by causing a great disaster, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE COUNTESS DE SAINT-GERAN—1639 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... came close to the Friends in their doctrine of the law of the spirit as being the only law to which they were to yield final subjection. They conceived this law to nullify the ceremonial system of the Old Testament, and even to reduce to a place of incidental importance specific moral injunctions. Sabbath observance was not fundamental, and while the reading of the Bible was a medium of communication by God's spirit, its importance ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... anecdote perhaps lacks evidence; but there can be no doubt that the freedmen of 1865 were, as a body, entirely unfitted to exercise the suffrage thrust upon them. A degrading and exasperating struggle was the inevitable result—the whites of the South striving by intimidation and chicanery to nullify the negro vote, the professional politicians from the North battling, with the aid of the United States troops, to render it effectual. Such a state of things was demoralising to both parties, and in process ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... religion for even a born Vermonter to stand against a sudden rush of money. This man seemed to start fair. He began his life with us. Next he went to Boston, the very spring and fountain of high moral ideas, where every law has a higher law to nullify it. He left his better half in the salubrious atmosphere, where she performed her domestic duties alone, while he was toiling down Erie railroad stock, and promulgating sweet sounds from the Grand Opera House. Bound together in ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... when this escapade of its youngest member came to light; while the grief and bewilderment of that little damsel herself, who had, in all good faith, believed that she had mother's sanction for her course, were pitiable to witness. As for Jim, not even the gratifying pecuniary results could nullify his mortification at the disgrace which he believed to have fallen upon the family, especially his beloved Miss Daisy; and he found it hard to forgive the captain, who had encouraged ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... these, so that we could change when we were tired of one colour. During the whole stay on the Barrier I myself wore a pair of ordinary spectacles with yellow glasses of quite a light tint. These are prepared by a chemical process in such a way that they nullify the harmful colours in the sun's rays. How excellent these glasses are appears clearly enough from the fact that I never had the slightest touch of snow-blindness on the southern journey, although the spectacles were perfectly open and allowed the light to enter freely everywhere. ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... low calibre of a good many first-rate men's sons, and gives a certain support to the common notion that they are always third-raters. Those sons inherit from their mothers as well as from their fathers, and the bad strain is often sufficient to obscure and nullify the good strain. Mediocrity, as every Mendelian knows, is a dominant character, and extraordinary ability is recessive character. In a marriage between an able man and a commonplace woman, the chances that ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... could almost promise him a knighthood or an earldom. He said, "Mr Weener, I don't need the offer of reward; I'm doing my best right now. But I'm proceeding along entirely different lines than Miss Francis. If I were to take her work over at this point I'd nullify whatever advance she's made and not help my own research by as much as an inch." If C can't replace F, I don't know who can. Very despondent, but wrote just the same. Can't ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... might take place before his departure: there would be the less delay before the marriage on his return, and it would be less painful to part if he and Romola were outwardly as well as inwardly pledged to each other—if he had a claim which defied Messer Bernardo or any one else to nullify it. For the betrothal, at which rings were exchanged and mutual contracts were signed, made more than half the legality of marriage, to be completed on a separate occasion by the nuptial benediction. Romola's ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... warfare the student or practitioner has to master those elements of evil too common to other minds. If it is hate that is holding the purpose to kill his patient by mental means, it requires more divine understanding to conquer this sin than to nullify either [30] the disease itself or the ignorance by which one unin- tentionally harms himself or another. An ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... Boston, a member of the Massachusetts Assembly, at that time about forty years of age, a political agitator, a Puritan of the strictest creed, poor and indifferent to money, an incarnation of zeal for liberty, a believer in original, inherent rights which no Parliament can nullify,—a man of the keenest political sagacity in management, and of almost unlimited influence in Massachusetts from his long and notable services in town-meeting, Colonial Assembly, as writer in the journals of the day, and actor in every ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XI • John Lord
... for thirty years past there has been a feverish and jealous discontent expressed in the cotton States. It had its first ebullition in 1832, when South-Carolina assumed the right to nullify the revenue laws of Congress. Since that time the North has continually been accused of an aggressive policy. Various extravagant pretenses have from time to time been raised up by the South, and urged as causes for dissolving the Union. They ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... waiting only for a favourable opportunity to betray him, and that it was liable to be overwhelmed by superior forces in the great open plains of Leipzig. He would have been wiser to lead it to the mountains of Thuringia and Hesse, which offered good defensive positions, and so nullify some of the numerical advantage of the royal coalition. In addition, the approach of winter and the need to feed their many troops would have soon compelled the enemies to separate, while the French army, its ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... piece. The diaphragm will throb inward during the half-cycle of current. The succeeding half-cycle being of opposite direction will tend to oppose the magnetism of the core. In practice, the flow of opposing current never would be great enough wholly to nullify and reverse the magnetism of the core, so that the opposition results in a mere decrease, causing the armature's gap to increase and the diaphragm to respond by an ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... the simulated opposition was effaced, for Ginoulhiac and Ketteler were as positive as Kenrick or Hefele. But it was a point which Rome could not surrender without giving up its whole position. To wait for unanimity was to wait for ever, and to admit that a minority could prevent or nullify the dogmatic action of the papacy was to renounce infallibility. No alternative remained to the opposing bishops but to break up the Council. The most eminent among them accepted this conclusion, and stated it in a paper declaring that the absolute and ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... its sections should be thoroughly awake to its danger from the destructive errors, idolatry and power of its ancient irreconcilable enemy; and should, by all legitimate means, labour to counteract and nullify its political influence. The ministry and the rising youth of the church should study carefully the Popish controversy, and should be intimately acquainted with the history of the rise and progress of the Papacy—its assumed blasphemous power—its accumulated ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... and this engagement had incensed various nobles of the Rhine, especially the Count of Luzenstein. He was eager that his own house should become affiliated with the Palatinate, and while he knew that there was little hope of frustrating Louis' prospective wedding, this did not nullify his ambitions. For was it not possible that the marriage might prove without issue? And, as that would ultimately set Frederick on the Palatine throne, Luzenstein determined that his daughter Leonora should wed the younger of the two princes. She herself was equally eager for the union, ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... vehemently in favour of the recognition of literary property, and against such infringement of it as had been ventured upon in the case of La Fontaine. He had no reason to be especially friendly to booksellers, but for one thing, he saw that to nullify or to tamper with copyright was in effect to prevent an author from having any commodity to sell, and so to do him the most serious injury possible. And for another thing, Diderot had equity and common sense enough to see that no high-flown ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... the great cathedrals of the Isle of France will tend somewhat to nullify the effect which is produced by Notre Dame de Bayeux, although, in point of size and general arrangements, at least, it fulfils its functions perhaps more acceptably than many a more renowned edifice. Its ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... said the agent, with barracks and shanties for a construction-gang; there were saloons, and what was called a hotel, but it wouldn't do for a lady. I pleaded that I was not fastidious—being anxious to nullify the effect which the name van Tuiver had produced. But the agent would have it that the place was unfit for even a Western farmer's wife; and as I was not anxious to take the chance of being blown overboard in the ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... alone finds happiness; till finally, the early education of the Laborer completed and order introduced into his occupations, to labor, with him, is no longer to suffer,—it is to live, to enjoy. But the attractiveness of labor does not nullify the rule, since, on the contrary, it is the fruit of it; and those who, under the pretext that labor should be attractive, reason to the denial of justice and to communism, resemble children who, after having gathered some flowers ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... Dreiser says specifically that he is more, that the thing he craves is not money but power—power to force lesser men to execute his commands, power to surround himself with beautiful and splendid things, power to amuse himself with women, power to defy and nullify the laws made for the timorous and unimaginative. But the intent of the author never really gets into his picture. His Cowperwood in this first stage is hard, commonplace, unimaginative. In "The Titan" he flowers out as a blend of revolutionist and voluptuary, a highly ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... obviously superior to others. A more thorough adjustment to the conditions of existence has given their spirit victory, scope, and a relative stability. It is therefore of the greatest importance not to obscure this superiority by intermarriage with inferior stock, and thus nullify the progress made by a painful evolution and a prolonged sifting of souls. Reason protests as much as instinct against any fusion, for instance, of white and black peoples. Mixture is in itself no evil if the two nations, being approximately equal, but having complementary gifts, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... our emotions nullify all attempts at speech, and to Albert Page, who before had felt himself alone and almost friendless in a great city, this was ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... we introduce through the Gospel a doctrine countenancing evil? Though the wisdom of the Gospel is a higher gift than human reason, it does not alter or nullify the God-implanted intelligence of the latter. Hence it is a perversion of our doctrine to say it does not teach us to love good works and practice them. "Now, if you cannot understand this truth from my explanation," Paul would say—"that through faith you have, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... human nature that that which we call civilization strives unceasingly to nullify emotion. The almost childlike faith which made our church spires point heavenward also gave us Gothic architecture, that emblem of frail humanity striving towards the ideal. It is a long leap from that childlike faith to the present day of skyscrapers. For so is the world ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... full of the dissolute life led by the officers in their garrisons, "The Inquest," where the author shows the violences to which the Russian soldiers are subjected, "The Night's Lodging," and "The Ensign of the Army," which stigmatize certain lace-bedecked "Lovelaces," only help to nullify his best arguments. In short, his fame spread rapidly and the young writer had to accept ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... off the atrophy, a sort of despairing inaction causes the Spaniards to remain under a government of unbelievably corrupt and inefficient politicians. There seems no solution to the problem of a nation in which the centralized power and the separate communities work only to nullify each other. ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... with the same amount at any time that it might please him, and you have the apprehension of the woman who knows that possession constitutes but few points of the law when there is ink and parchment to nullify the whole transaction. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston |
