"Avoidable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... burnt off her body, was lying near the grate dead. Of course the mother was wild with grief, distracted, raving, desperate, and of course all the other women were shocked and horrified; but point the moral as we might, we could not bring them to see that it was an avoidable misfortune with nothing whatever to do with the Finger Gottes, and the mothers who preferred locking their babies up alone to sending them to be looked after, went on doing so as undisturbed as though what had occurred could in no wise be a lesson ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... a special Misfortune, Unhappiness, or Hurt to one's life, by no means avoidable, and perhaps not discernible at once. Influenced by the King of its like suit, sudden: by the Queen, long continuing ere complete; by the Knave, Fortune through Persons; by the ten, through concurrence ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... and a commonplace one, if even the most trivial record of human effort and failure can be so styled. It was the story of half the subalterns in our Imperial Army—of small pay, engulfed by heavy expenses, avoidable and unavoidable; the upkeep of much needless uniform; too big a wine bill at Mess; polo ponies, and other luxurious necessities of Indian life, bought on credit; the inevitable appeal to the "shroff,"[21] involving interest upon interest; the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... makes allowance for our weakness and our frailty, we ought not to expect Him to indulge us in avoidable and needless errors. We made a mistake. Very well. We knew no better than to make it. But now that we do know better, we have no business repeating it. And right along here comes a great expanse of territory which holiness people need to cover. Here ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... the safe conduct of all who travel in my scows. But it would have been at the expense of much time and labour, and, very possibly, of human life as well—an incident regrettable always, but not always avoidable." ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... Trade, as the booksellers call themselves, while admitting that they can no longer stand under a protective principle, feel certain difficulties as to their future career, for unquestionably there is something peculiar in their business, in as far as a nominal price for their wares is scarcely avoidable. If so, the question is, How is it to be adjusted? at a lower allowance for the retailer? In that case, some would still undersell others; and the old troubles would still be experienced. Ought there, then, to be no fixed retailing price at all, but simply one for the publisher to exact from the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 - Volume 17, New Series, June 26, 1852 • Various
... to have destroyed any lingering hope that he had left for the future of American democracy. He spoke of it as "a perfectly avoidable war forced on by a band of unscrupulous politicians" who had behind them "a roaring mob."[201] The taking of the Philippines and the subsequent war in these islands confirmed him in his despair. In a private letter written from Paris, he said, "American ideals were the ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... succeeded in stealing the image of Christ crucified for the figure-head of his Salvationist vessel, with its Adam posing as the natural man, its doctrine of original sin, and its damnation avoidable only by faith in the sacrifice of the cross. In fact, no sooner had Jesus knocked over the dragon of superstition than Paul boldly set it on its legs again in the name ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... considered by itself, but that man might have lived without any public regiment, Hooker's Eccl. Pol. lib. i. sect. 10.) Sec. 75. Thus it was easy, and almost natural for children, by a tacit, and scarce avoidable consent, to make way for the father's authority and government. They had been accustomed in their childhood to follow his direction, and to refer their little differences to him, and when they were ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... prize-agents, his lordship, nevertheless, candidly acknowledged, that there might be instances where the delays of the payment of prize-money resulted, not from the villainy of the agents, but from accidents by no means easily avoidable in the common course of human affairs. In regarding the naval interests of his country, Lord Nelson was not unmindful of it's commercial prosperity; in censuring criminal abuses, he was careful not ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... express my opinion that in cases like ours, where a set of men are deputed to examine countries, time spent on rivers is absolutely thrown away. Of course in many instances such must be the case, but where it is avoidable, marching, and especially returning by a different route, should be adopted. Rangagurrah, be it known, is only two days' march from Suddiyah in a direct line, yet we have been a month proceeding by the circuitous line of rivers ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... will complacently absorb all the news of the day, so many hundred thousand men killed, wounded, or diseased in the course of the Balkan campaigns, so much ugly and hopeless misery all over the earth, and all avoidable, all caused, in the last analysis, by the incompetence, obstinacy, blindness, or greed of some highly placed official whose death at an earlier stage would have made for the ...
— Impressions And Comments • Havelock Ellis
... were perpetually passing eastwards through the Mediterranean while Australasian troops were perpetually passing westwards through the Mediterranean. Military forces belonging to the one belligerent Empire were, in fact, crossing each other at sea. This involved an avoidable absorption of ship-tonnage, it threw an avoidable strain upon the naval forces of the Entente, and it imposed an avoidable period of inaction upon the troops concerned. Look upon the Anzacs simply as counters and upon the Great War as a ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... it, would save him from many a foolish undertaking and protect him from many a business betrayal, Far from it. All the disagreeable, and many of the painful incidents of his subsequent life, all equally avoidable if knowledge regarding them had been instilled into him in his early years, he must buy with money and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... distinction, who turns his attention to the craft, and without any adequate practical training in it, which alone could teach its right principles, makes, and in the nature of things is bound to make, great mistakes—mistakes easily avoidable. No such thing can possibly be right. Raphael himself designed for tapestry, and the cartoons are priceless, but the tapestry a ghastly failure. It could not have been otherwise under the conditions. Executant separated from designer by all the leagues that ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... complain of the long hours of work and the small rate of pay from which English artisans in many branches of labour had to suffer. Why they had sought to see him he could not very well tell—and certainly if it had been left to Hamilton, whose mind was set on sparing the Dictator all avoidable trouble, and who, moreover, had in his heart of hearts no great belief in remedy by working-men's deputation, the poor men would probably not have been accorded the favour of an interview. But the Dictator insisted on receiving them, and they came; trooped into the room awkwardly; at first ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... are concerned as to the manner in which their timber is treated after the felling, for, according to the more or less careful seasoning of it, the season checks—not altogether avoidable—are more or ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... childbirth, leaving older children without suitable protection and care, once thought events to which to be resigned, however sad and pitiable, are now seen to be preventable calamities for which society is to blame. Avoidable cripplement and invalidism of workmen, once considered either their own fault or unexplained misfortune, are now listed as cause for receipt of sickness and accident benefits under Workmen's Compensation Laws. Premature old ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... having a remedy proposed, as if the proposer were creating a mischief instead of offering relief from one. People are so inured to the evils that they feel as if it were unreasonable, if not wrong, to complain of them. Yet, avoidable or not, he must be a purblind lover of liberty on whose mind they do not weigh; who would not rejoice at the discovery that they could be dispensed with. Now, nothing is more certain than that the virtual blotting out of ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... it is important to keep to certain simple rules, of which these are the chief:—(1) Never discharge below a potential difference of 1.85 (or in rapid discharge, 1.8) volt. (2) Never leave the cells discharged, if it be avoidable. (3) Give the cells a special full charging once a month. (4) Make a periodic examination of each cell, determining its E.M.F., density of acid, the condition of its plates and freedom from growth. Any incipient growth, however small, must ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... troublesome game, and not a misunderstanding rises between the players. Manners aim to facilitate life, to get rid of impediments, and bring the man pure to energize. They aid our dealing and conversation, as a railway aids traveling, by getting rid of all avoidable obstructions of the road, and leaving nothing to be conquered but pure space. These forms very soon become fixed, and a fine sense of propriety is cultivated with more heed, that it becomes a badge of social and civil distinctions. Thus grows up Fashion, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... bullet. His scheme was not to assemble epitaphs for the dead of the village but to tell crisp anecdotes of the living. He had no iniquities in the human order to assail, since he believes that the order is just and that it rarely hurts any one who does not deserve to be hurt by reason of some avoidable imbecility. He made no specialty of scandal; he did not inquire curiously into the byways of sex; he let pathology alone. He appears in the book to be—as he is in the flesh—a wise old man letting his memory run through the town and recalling ...
— Contemporary American Novelists (1900-1920) • Carl Van Doren
... to the conclusion that more than half the disease which embitters life is due to avoidable errors in diet, ... and that more mischief, in the form of actual disease, of impaired vigor, and of shortened life, accrues to civilized man from erroneous habits of eating than from the habitual use of alcoholic drink, considerable as I know that evil ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... anchor is said to be foul, or fouled, either when it hooks some impediment under water, or when the ship, by the wind shifting, entangles her slack cable a turn round the stock, or round the upper fluke thereof. The last, from its being avoidable by a sharp look-out, is termed the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... not confirmed by their own reflexion. Shame is an invaluable protection to men, as a restraining feeling. But the objects to which it properly attaches are wrong-doing, unkindness, discourtesy, to others, and, as regards ourselves, ignorance, imprudence, intemperance, impurity, and avoidable defects or misfortunes. While it confines itself to objects such as these, it is one of the sternest and, at the same time, most effective guardians of virtue and self-respect. But, as soon as a man begins to care about what others will say of circumstances not under his own control, such as ...
— Progressive Morality - An Essay in Ethics • Thomas Fowler
... not, if avoidable, be in tents when bullets are ripping through them: at such times a hole in the ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... supply-pipe will be less than the volume of a gas of lower density, e.g., coal-gas, if the pressure in the pipe is the same for both. This implies that on an extensive distributing system, in which for practical reasons leakage is not wholly avoidable, the loss of gas through leakage will be less for acetylene than for coal-gas, given the same distributing pressure. If v the loss of acetylene from a distributing system and v' the loss of coal-gas from a similar system worked at ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... expenditure is that the prevention of suffering from the actual lack of adequate physical comforts is an essential element in the common good, an object in which all are bound to concern themselves, which all have the right to demand and the duty to fulfil. Any common life based on the avoidable suffering even of one of those who partake in it is a life not of harmony, but ...
— Liberalism • L. T. Hobhouse
... such a crisis in our lives let us make no avoidable mistake; let us not say that our self-respect is in peril, when we mean our pride. To strike back, even in self-defence, is to turn our backs to the path which Christ pointed out to us. To fight against almost insuperable odds, as we must, can be justified only by ...
— A Comparative Study of the Negro Problem - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 4 • Charles C. Cook
... state-rights man, individualist, and anti-imperialist, I naturally disapproved of many acts of his administration, of the administration of his predecessor, and of his party in general. I disapproved, and still do, of the McKinley and Payne-Aldrich tariffs; of the Spanish war—most avoidable of wars—with its sequel, the conquest of the Philippines; above all, of the seizure of ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... a brewery, the air should have free access to the coolers on all sides, under and over; cleansing vessels should be similarly situated, and, if avoidable, the coolers should not lay immediately over them, to raise their temperature, which should not be many degrees above that of the atmosphere, at temperate, which is fifty-two degrees; but the descent from the cleansing heat (seventy-five ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... three years ago caused. Boston's fine system of medical inspection in the schools is the outcome of a diphtheria scare. Smallpox is a splendid stimulator of vaccination; so much so that some of the country's leading sanitarians now advocate the abolition of pest-houses for this avoidable ailment, and dependence upon the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... collision, the growth of a benevolent, if at times somewhat eccentric humanitarianism, possibly also the advance of democracy—though it is at times somewhat too readily assumed that democracies must of necessity be peaceful—have all contributed to create a public opinion which holds that to engage in an avoidable war is the worst of political crimes. This feeling has found expression in the more ready recourse which, as compared to former times, is now made to arbitration in order to settle international disputes. Nevertheless, so long as human nature remains unchanged, ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... of the engraver,—very pardonable; scarcely avoidable,—however fatal. Fault mainly of humility. But what has your fault been, gentlemen? what the patrons' fault, who have permitted so wide waste of admirable labor, so pathetic a uselessness of obedient genius? It was yours to have directed, yours ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... and his colleagues and the effort of men like Lord Meath. In January Willie Redmond was posted to his battalion, the 6th Royal Irish, at Fermoy, where the 47th Brigade had its headquarters. In his case, as in my own, there had been much avoidable and most undesirable delay; but his presence with the Division was worth an immense deal. There was delay also about his younger namesake, John Redmond's son—who was for a long time refused a commission in the Division in whose formation ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... poisoning should there be any avoidable delay in obtaining the advice of a physician, and, meanwhile, the friends or by-standers should endeavor to find out exactly what has been taken, so that the treatment adopted may be as prompt and ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... practice near of kin to picking men's pockets, and to other still viler and far fataler forms of scoundrelism be not resorted to in England, except in cases of the very last extremity. When some new gunpowder plot may be in the wind, some double-dyed high treason, or imminent national wreck not avoidable otherwise, then let us open ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... Teutonic spirit does not suffer things to reach this ultimate pass without stubborn resistance, and this is one reason why shyness is often so conspicuous, seeming deliberately to court an avoidable confusion. Over and over again it forces the recalcitrant body back into the arena, preferring repeated humiliation to a pusillanimous surrender. People often wonder at the recklessness with which the shy expose themselves to ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... me why so many varieties of wines are always served on American tables, and why the sparkling champagne is never avoidable? Wealthy families will spare neither pains nor expense to spread most sumptuous dinners, and it has been reported that the cost of an entertainment given by one rich lady amounted to twenty thousand pounds sterling, although, as I have said, eating is the last ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... where he can found a home, and bring up healthy children, will do more work, and better work, than the workman who lives in a damp, dark, ill-ventilated tenement, and who goes to his day's work with a heart sullen and broken because of avoidable illness and sorrow in his poor little home. Five thousand employees who have a night-school, luncheon-rooms, little houses and gardens, a savings-bank, and a library of books and pictures are worth more than ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... therefore were continually passing through our camp, and I had many opportunities of studying the morale of individuals of all ranks. The result was interesting and worth setting down. My experience was that the good heart of fighting men was affected by only two avoidable causes. The first was the large number of young able-bodied men engaged in occupations, on the lines of communications and at the base, which might have been carried through effectively by others. These young men never were in danger, while those who happened ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... Street, despite the Bank Holidays Act, many shops are open, chiefly those devoted to the sale of articles eatable, drinkable, and avoidable; these last being in the shape of chemists' shops, and shops for Christmas presents—to be shunned by miserly old bachelors. Let us turn into the British Museum and see sensible, decorous Boxing-day there. At the corner of ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... never a May-game for men: in all times the lot of the dumb millions born to toil was defaced with manifold sufferings, injustices, heavy burdens, avoidable and unavoidable; not play at all, but hard work that made the sinews sore and the heart sore. As bond-slaves, villani, bordarii, sochemanni, nay indeed as dukes, earls and kings, men were oftentimes made weary of their life; and had to say, in ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... might have been redeemed at a less price; but still the war taught a lesson, which, if avoidable at that instant, was certainly blamable; but it had its use in enforcing on other nations the conviction that England washed out insult with retribution, and for every drop of blood wantonly spilt demanded an ocean in return. Perhaps you will say this was no great improvement ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... chamberlain was, therefore, a very important one; for since it confined him a large part of the day in the queen's presence, it was scarcely avoidable that the lord chamberlain should become either the confidential and attentive friend, or the malevolent and lurking ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... elegant young lady of about twenty, applied a mercurial lotion to her face, which was covered with very small red points; which seemed to have been not acquired by any known or avoidable means; she was seized with inflammation of her liver, and after repeated bleeding and cathartics recovered, and in a few weeks ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... incumbents neglected public duty to do political work and especially in Southern States, they frequently were not only inordinately active in questionable political work, but sought to do party service by secret and sinister manipulation of colored votes, and by other practices inviting avoidable and dangerous collisions between the ...
— The Cleveland Era - A Chronicle of the New Order in Politics, Volume 44 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Henry Jones Ford
... speak to. Yes, it does. Your happiness is always dependent on just that person. Produce friction, and you suffer. Idle to argue that the person has no business to be upset by your tone! You have caused avoidable friction, simply because your machine for dealing with your environment was suffering from pride, ignorance, or thoughtlessness. You say I am making a mountain out of a mole-hill. No! I am making a mountain out of ten million mole-hills. And that is what life does. It is the little but continuous ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... way or other, to live where we do not choose, and in continual expectation of changing our place of abode. In the present state of society, this is in a great measure unavoidable; but let us remember it is an evil; and that so far as it is avoidable, it becomes our duty to check the impulse. It is not for me to lead you at present into any consideration of a matter so closely touching your private interests and feelings; but it surely is a subject for serious thought, ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... tiny pin-worms in the rectum may wander into the vagina, and the little girl feel a constant annoyance, which rubbing allays temporarily, but which results in the evil habit of the use of the hands to produce an agreeable sensation. Thus through avoidable causes the evil habit may be acquired. Then it may be taught by one thus learning it to another who, without this instruction, would ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... hard-headed men who have walked the earth. I only give it you at second-hand. Try it. Get your mind in hand. And see how the process cures half the evils of life—especially worry, that miserable, avoidable, shameful disease—worry! ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... of shelter is about one third for the house and two thirds for the expense of running it, largely due to dirt and its consequences. Mr. Wells wisely says: "Most dusting and sweeping would be quite avoidable ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... of sleep was a more serious hardship, especially as it appeared avoidable. Owing, presumably, to the thinness with which the line was held, and to the lack of potential reinforcements behind, we were not allowed to sleep in the wood. Every night we made our way either to the lower or ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... called for an immediate and drastic remedy, for, so long as it persisted, it irritated those whom it condemned to avoidable hardship, and their name was legion. It was also part of an almost imperceptible revolutionary process similar to that which was going on in several other countries for transferring wealth and competency from one class to another and for ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... 158. When avoidable, gunpowder is not to be sent from vessels to powder-houses, nor from powder-houses to vessels, in wet weather, nor when there is a probability of wetting the barrels or cases; and the packages must be conveyed in covered boats or ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... of The Queen Pedauque as Dumas would have equipped it... Yes, in reading here, it is the most facile and least avoidable of mental exercises to prefigure how excellently Dumas would have contrived this book,—somewhat as in the reading of Mr. Joseph Conrad's novels a many of us are haunted by the sense that the Conrad "story" is, in its essential beams and stanchions, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... remembered, that the good of the bounty is certain, and evil avoidable; that by the hope of exportation corn will be increased, and that this increase ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... being not yet erected. Innovation then was unavoidable on our part, if it be innovation to establish a system. We did it on fair and general ground, on ground favorable to Spain; but they had a system, and therefore innovation was avoidable on their part. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... found in a closer examination of the part played by the uncertainty in producing the panic which is common to men and animals. In the face of danger, as in everything else, man's first instinct is to reason and calculate, and his calculation results in finding the danger either avoidable and uncertain, which is almost always the case, or unavoidable and inevitable. If the danger is found avoidable, fear is the immediate result. Fear as we know it has come into being with reason, but at the same time, as will be seen later, it is only reason which can triumph over and destroy ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... of such instruction is avoidable or even undesirable; but it is so common that it has a very important ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... is avoidable. It is just as much a mistake to allow water to run away when it might be grinding pulp, as it is to drive sulphur into the air instead of catching and selling it. You pollute the air, you kill the trees, you spend a lot of money, and you waste the sulphur. Nature has a lot ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... the redeeming power of education which the reader may have previously entertained. Universal education, we have seen, constitutes the most effectual and the only sure means of securing to individuals and communities, to states and nations, exemption from all avoidable evils of whatever kind, and the possession of a competency of this world's goods, with the ability and disposition so to enjoy them as most to augment human happiness. Yes, education, and nothing short of it, will dissipate the evils of ignorance; it will greatly increase the productiveness of ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... all, that open hostilities between the Colonies and the mother-country were no longer avoidable; and on the nineteenth of April, 1775, the battle of Lexington announced to the world that the first blood of a desperate struggle had been shed, and that civil war, with all its train ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... these rules and all avoidable disease will be annihilated. On the other hand, where hygienic and sanitary science is not enforced, filth, decay and putrifying matter is sure to accumulate. In this we have suitable material for the propagation of disease ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... as human ingenuity can make it. Many of our leading roads have been foremost in the adoption of the most approved safeguards for the protection of travelers and employees, yet the list of clearly avoidable accidents continues unduly large. The passage of a law requiring the adoption of a block-signal system has been proposed to the Congress. I earnestly concur in that recommendation, and would also point out to the Congress the urgent need of legislation ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... derived from the truth or falshood of those judgments, they must take place wherever we form the judgments; nor will there be any difference, whether the question be concerning an apple or a kingdom, or whether the error be avoidable or unavoidable. For as the very essence of morality is supposed to consist in an agreement or disagreement to reason, the other circumstances are entirely arbitrary, and can never either bestow on any action the character of virtuous or vicious, or deprive it of that character. ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... realization is, on the whole, improbable. A mere universal disgust with war is no more likely to end war than the universal dislike for dying has ended death. And though war, unlike dying, seems to be an avoidable fate, it does not follow that its present extreme unpopularity will end it unless people not only desire but see to the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... or clauses for unnecessary sentences. The following series of independent assertions contains avoidable repetitions: "One morning I was riding on the subway to my work. It was always my custom to ride to my work on the subway. This morning I met Harry Blake." The full thought may better be embodied in a single sentence: "One morning, while I was, as usual, riding on the subway to my work, I ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... fever abate more speedily; I have never arrested the further spread of erysipelas, nor effected a resolution of the inflammation of the cellular tissue, more certainly; nor, if the termination in suppuration was no longer avoidable, have I ever succeeded in effecting the formation of laudable pus, the spontaneous discharge of the pus, the radical healing of the sore without any scar—how important is all this in erysipelatous inflammation ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... the full amount of suffering he endured, or the full amount of his wonderful patience. For all the latter years of his life she never left him for a night; and her days were so planned that all his resting hours might be shared with her. She shielded him from every avoidable annoyance, and omitted nothing that might save him trouble, or prevent him becoming overtired, or that might alleviate the many discomforts of his ill-health. I hesitate to speak thus freely of a thing so sacred as the life-long devotion which prompted all this constant and tender care. ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... what is commonly called education, but very quick in understanding where human relation came in. A point in construction or composition she would forget immediately; but once shown a possibility of misunderstanding avoidable by a certain arrangement, Amy would recall the fact the moment she made again the mistake. Her teachableness, coming largely of her trustfulness, was indeed a remarkable point in her character. It was partly through this that Corney gained his influence over her: superior knowledge ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... at their town of York (in Virginia, where they removed from Baltimore), the vindictive rigour to political opponents, the neglect of Washington's army, and the cabals against Washington's powers, combined to create disgust, with other less avoidable causes, as the growing depreciation of the paper-money, the ruinous loss of trade, and the augmented burdens of the war. Is the truth of this picture denied? Hear then, as witnesses, the members of Congress themselves. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... the spring of 1915. But one after another these anticipations were belied by events. And now the nation blithely accepts the further forecasts of the men who are chargeable with this long sequence of avoidable errors. ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... was silent for a moment, as though he realized, with reluctance, that the big decision was no longer avoidable. ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... accomplish his purposes aided this gradual degradation of conception, and directed the study of the workman to the most strange and ugly conditions of animal form, until at last, even in the most serious subjects, the fiends are oftener ludicrous than terrible. Nor, indeed, is this altogether avoidable, for it is not possible to express intense wickedness without some condition of degradation. Malice, subtlety, and pride, in their extreme, cannot be written upon noble forms; and I am aware of no ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... the remarkable failure of college women to marry can not be exhaustively investigated here, but for the purposes of eugenics they may be roughly classified as unavoidable and avoidable. Under the first heading must be placed those girls who are inherently unmarriageable, either because of physical defect or, more frequently, mental defect,—most often an over-development of intellect at the expense of the emotions, which makes a girl either unattractive to men, or inclines her ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... me abstinent and my youthful romanticism kept me chaste until my married life was well under way. Then in all directions I relaxed. I did a large amount of work, but I never troubled to think whether it was my maximum nor whether the moods and indolences that came to me at times were avoidable things. With the coming of plenty I ate abundantly and foolishly, drank freely and followed my impulses more and more carelessly. I felt no reason why I should do anything else. Never at any point did I use myself to the edge of my capacity. ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... out into the Dulwich fields on one side, and was itself full of buttercups in spring, and blackberries in autumn. But my chief remaining impressions of those days are attached to Hunter Street. My mother's general principles of first treatment were, to guard me with steady watchfulness from all avoidable pain or danger, and, for the rest, to let me amuse myself as I liked, provided I was neither fretful or troublesome. But the law was, that I should find my own amusement. No toys of any kind were at first allowed, and the pity of my Croydon aunt for my monastic poverty in this ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... himself agreed to take part regularly in the same, and so relieve the old warrior of what might have proved for him too arduous spiritual toils! And so began in his seventeenth year that blessed custom of Family Prayer, morning and evening, which my father practised probably without one single avoidable omission till he lay on his deathbed, seventy-seven years of age; when ever to the last day of his life, a portion of Scripture was read, and his voice was heard softly joining in the Psalm, and his lips breathed the morning and evening Prayer,—falling in sweet benediction on the heads of ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... we should make an obstacle race, however good and amusing exercise that may be, out of all our school life? We don't expect to win a game with a sprained wrist or ankle, and there really is no reason why we should plan to sprain the back of school or college life by avoidable mistakes. ...
— A Girl's Student Days and After • Jeannette Marks
... circumstances; and it is idle, considering that the manifest ordination and progress of things demand that such thoughts be encountered. The question still returns: Why do they seek amusement in sufferings which are unnecessary and avoidable? and till they honestly and thoroughly answer this question, they must be content to be looked upon as disingenuous reasoners, who are determined ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... declares as I write that the standard of English farming could be raised 50 per cent. Hall and Voelcker have estimated that 20 million tons of farmyard manure made in the United Kingdom is wasted through avoidable causes. ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... happen that the storage is freed or reallocated (and thus moved) through one alias and then referenced through another, which may lead to subtle (and possibly intermittent) lossage depending on the state and the allocation history of the malloc {arena}. Avoidable by use of allocation strategies that never alias allocated core, or by use of higher-level languages, such as {LISP}, which employ a garbage collector (see {GC}). Also called a {stale pointer bug}. See also {precedence lossage}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... all that happened during those five memorable years must have crowded in upon him and racked him with feelings of bitter remorse for his avoidable part in the cruel drama; and as he stood upon the spot that had been made famous by England's voluntary captive, it was not unnatural that he should have been overcome by a strange and possibly a purifying sadness. All of that which he had regarded in other days, under different conditions, ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... objection to seeing patients slip through ma fingers when it's avoidable, Mrs. Mossop, and I'll do ma best for your father, but ma medicine will na do him any good without your medicine to back me up. He needs a tight hand on him all ...
— Hobson's Choice • Harold Brighouse
... experiences—however devoid of stirring incident and adventure—should be written in the first person. At the same time, the writer of this unpretentious story of a summer's tramp cannot but feel that he owes his readers—should he have any an apology for any avoidable egotism. His excuse is that, no twit notwithstanding ding the glamour attaching to the old mining towns, it is almost incredible how little is known of them by the average Californian; for the Eastern tourist there is more excuse, since the ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... such unfailing tenderness and forbearance. I have never seen them molested, though I have noticed them in the indulgence of many eccentricities, and happened once even to see one of them sit down in a lady's lap. But that was on the night of Saint Patrick's day. Generally all avoidable indecorums are rare in the horse-cars, though during the late forenoon and early afternoon, in the period of lighter travel, I have found curious figures there:—among others, two old women, in the old-clothes business, one of whom was dressed, not ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... sacrificed to the convenience of others. In the estimate which you have made of the two states, it appears that the incommodities of a single life are in a great measure necessary and certain, but those of the conjugal state accidental and avoidable. I cannot forbear to flatter myself that prudence and benevolence will make marriage happy. The general folly of mankind is the cause of general complaint. What can be expected but disappointment and ...
— Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia • Samuel Johnson |
