"Inconsistency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... appropriated only the irony and mocking spirit of the humanist without his deep underlying piety. He became a universal skeptic, and a mocker of all things. The "esprit gaulois," beyond all others alive to the absurdities and inconsistency of things, found in him its incarnation. He ridiculed both the "pope-maniacs" and the "pope-phobes," the indulgence-sellers and the inquisitors, the decretals "written by an angel" and the Great Schism, priests and kings and doubting philosophers and the Scripture. Paul III called him "the vagabond ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Nothing of the sort; nothing more than a thoroughly candid and discriminating judgment, never over-stepping the bounds of courtesy, never exaggerating a defect or concealing a beauty. A talk might be raised about the inconsistency with a former tone; but if the fact was made apparent that the later effusions of a tender and melodious, but shallow Muse, were but dilutions, ever more watery and insipid, of the first sweet and abundant flow, was the critic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... presidency. The impossibility of such a judiciary system in antiquity is clear from its presupposing the Book of the Law as its basis, from its co-ordination of priests and Levites, and also from its actual inconsistency with incidental notices, particularly in Isaiah and the older prophets (down to Jeremiah xxvi.), in which it everywhere is taken for granted as a thing of course that the rulers are also at the same time the natural judges. Moreover, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... the most readable of his generation. He has the allurement of his own inconsistency, and the inconsistency of youth is its questing spirit, and, consequently, ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... very well; but it involved some inconsistency, in that we had veered round to the belief that the Transvaal would never have faced the music alone, and without the aid of the neighbouring State! That is to say: war was certain from the beginning; the Free Staters ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... French Revolution was a good thing, and whether the French Revolution, good or bad, had anything to do with the Quebec Bill. At length Fox, in seconding a motion for confining the debate to its proper subject, burst into the fatal question beyond the subject, taxing Burke with inconsistency, and taunting him with having forgotten that ever-admirable saying of his own about the insurgent colonists, that he did not know how to draw an indictment against a whole nation. Burke replied in tones of firm self-repression; complained of the attack that had ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Danvers, Massachusetts, the first victim being a wild Irishwoman, named Glover, and speedily involved the neighboring community of Salem. The mischiefs done by witches were usually trifling, and it never occurred to their prosecutors that there was an inconsistency between their pretended powers and their feeble deeds, or that it was strange that those who might live in regal luxury should be so wretchedly poor. Aches and pains, blight of crops, disease of cattle, were charged to them; children complained of being pricked ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... "These are no longer the old Austrians." On the capture of the Saxon army, which surrendered at Pirna, Frederick, who exacted such unlimited allegiance from his subjects and soldiers, gave a strange proof of inconsistency, and of that contempt with which he seemed to treat the feelings of other men; for, without so much as asking their consent, he ordered all the prisoners to be incorporated into the ranks of his army, and expected to make loyal Prussians ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 2 of 8 • Various
... entered the Palace and discovered Clytemnestra. But, as the mechanical arrangements of the Greek stage were not equal to this sudden change of scene, and since also it would, even with perfect machinery, have a tiresome interrupting effect, a slight confusion or inconsistency is allowed. We are supposed to be inside the house; but as a matter of fact the supposition is soon forgotten, and the play goes on without any attention to the particular place of the action. On Clytemnestra's speech see ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... struggle between virtue and inconsistency begins in your home, the whole question rests upon the constant and involuntary comparison which your wife is instituting ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... as prime minister in the fourth act, clad in velvet, but with a plain woollen shirt, whereas the courtiers around him wore fine linen garnished with lace. On his being asked the reason of this apparent inconsistency, he replied, that he did not wear a linen shirt because at the epoch referred to in the piece, they were not in common use; 'Nay, more,' added he, 'a century afterward, Isabel of Bavaria was reproached with extravagance for having too much of linen in her trousseau." He was once hissed at Orleans, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... Genlis make a cleverer hit than in the reading of the Genius Phanor's tragedy in the Palace of Truth. Comically absurd as the inconsistency is of transporting the lecture of a Parisian academician into an enchanted palace, full of genii and fairies of the remotest possible connexion with the Arab jinn, the whole is redeemed by the truth to nature of the sole dupe in the Palace of Truth being ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... east by south, would, he knew, bring him by the great city of Aisi, famous for its commerce, its riches, and the warlike disposition of its king, Isembard. He was the acknowledged head of the forces of the League; but yet, with the inconsistency of the age, sometimes attacked other members of it. His furious energy was always disturbing the world, and Felix had no doubt he was now at war with some one or other, and that the war-ship he had seen was on its way to assist ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... She is one of those persons with whom you might live in the same house for weeks and months, and yet never discover that she was a disciple of Christ. The other lady, on the contrary, is as eminent for godliness as her husband is for inconsistency. Her heart is in the cause; she prays with and for her children, and whatever example they have in their father, in her they have a fine model of active, fervent, humble piety, seated in the heart and flowing out ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various
... good in a less equivocal garb, my dear Joanna," answered the Earl of Mar, rather ashamed of the hasty words which indeed the suspicion of a moment had drawn from his lips; "judge my child by her usual conduct, not by an accidental appearance of inconsistency, and I shall ever be grateful for your solicitude. But in this instance, though she might betray the weakness of an enfeebled constitution, it was certainly not the frailty ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... censure of their subjects as to that of the universe. . . . France is undone if the present administration lasts."[4240]—When, under Louis XVI, a new administration proposes and withdraws feeble measures of reform, their criticism shows the same firmness: "Childishness, weakness, constant inconsistency," writes another,[4241] "incessant change; and always worse off than we were before. Monsieur and M. le Comte d'Artois have just made a journey through the provinces, but only as people of that kind travel, with a frightful ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... to be present, do, in heart and mind, approve of a daily morning and evening sacrifice of prayer. This conception of the daily service as a vicarious thing has a certain mystical beauty about it, but if it is to be adopted as the Church's own let us, at least, clear ourselves of inconsistency by striking out the word "common" from before the word "prayer" in characterizing ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... inequitable than that one man should suffer for the crimes of another, for crimes which he neither prompted nor permitted, which he could neither foresee nor prevent. When we consider the weakness of human resolutions and the inconsistency of human conduct, it must appear absurd that one man shall engage for another, that he will not change his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Gianicolo. The gardens are laid out in the artificial style of Italian gardening, a style which in England would horrify me as in the vilest and most old-fashioned taste—stiff, cold, unnatural, and altogether detestable. Through what inconsistency or perversity of taste is it then, that I am enchanted with the fantastic elegance, and the picturesque gaiety of the Pamfili gardens; where sportive art revels and runs wild amid the luxuriance of nature? Or is it, as I would rather believe, because these long arcades of verdure, these ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... power; and having once exerted himself with such applause, as he imagined, in defence of the Romish communion, he was ashamed to retract his former opinions, and betray from passion such a palpable inconsistency. While he was agitated by these contrary motives, an expedient was proposed, which, as it promised a solution of all difficulties, was embraced by him with the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... knew—who had lived above the breath of calumny for upwards of forty years, surrounded by and in close intimacy with many, both Europeans and natives, who would have rejoiced to have witnessed any inconsistency in his conduct, but who were constrained to admire his integrity and Christian character—whilst thus convinced of the certainty of his salvation, through the merits of that Saviour whom he had preached, yet so impressed with the exceeding sinfulness of ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... "twelve hundred millions of dollars," it is not somewhat hypocritical in her to be complaining, that the abolitionists are fastening the "twelve hundred millions of dollars" to her? And may I ask you, whether there is not a little inconsistency between your own lamentations over this work of the abolitionists, and your intimation that the South will never consent to give up her slaves, until the impossibility, of paying her "twelve hundred millions of dollars" for them, shall have been accomplished? Puerile and insulting ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... selecting these few servants which worried the President during his first months in office, for the federal offices were held by Federalists almost to a man. He hoped that he would have to make only a few removals any other course would expose him to the charge of inconsistency after his complacent statement that there was no fundamental difference between Republicans and Federalists. But his followers thought otherwise; they wanted the spoils of victory and they meant to have them. Slowly and reluctantly Jefferson yielded to pressure, justifying himself as he ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... the line of buttons that descended from the full white ruff of swansdown at her throat, to her delicate, trim waist. Her unconscious stateliness of girlish form, and the conscious shyness of her manner, were the loveliest inconsistency in ...
— Theo - A Sprightly Love Story • Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the storm is another inconsistency in the story. The storm signs belong to the gods of Aiwohikupua and his brother, the Sun god, not to Laieikawai, and were certainly not hers when Waka deserted her. If they were given her for protection ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... never had found it in his heart to slay her as he had sworn to slay all Huns. He had attributed this weakness to the fact that she was a woman, although he had been rather troubled by the apparent inconsistency of his hatred for her and his repeated protection of ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... this, something that stirs the youth like a bugle, and something, as I believe, that is essential in every generation for the purification of society. The past is as bad as anybody says it is, woven full of inconsistency and iniquity. We must escape it. We must fight it. And it is no doubt inevitable that there should be some who think that they owe it ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... affected by it less than he could have believed. He even achieved a rude bow as he bolted the door and ushered her into the office. More than that, he found himself explaining to the fair trespasser the reasons of his return to his own home. For, like a direct man, he had a consciousness of some inconsistency in his return—or in the circumstances that induced a change of plans which might ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... here necessary about the apparent inconsistency between this feeling of anxiety about strangers and the well-known ancient Italian practice of hospitium, by which two communities, or two individuals, or an individual and a community, entered into relations which bound them to mutual ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... should control the legitimately expressed will of the people; and now that, on that very ground, Gen. Taylor says that he should use the power given him by the people to do, to the best of his judgment, the will of the people, he is accused of want of principle, and of inconsistency ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... aristocratic prejudice. Bob had married deplorably beneath him; it was unpardonable, let the character of the girl be what it might. Of course you recognise the item in John Hewett's personality which serves to explain this singular attitude. But, viewed generally, it was one of those bits of human inconsistency over which the observer smiles, and which should be recommended to good people in search of arguments for the equality ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... administered a term of communion, existed among the Independents long before Bunyan's time. Crosby, in his History of the Baptists, makes some long extracts from a book entitled, 'The sin and danger of admitting Anabaptists to continue in the congregational churches, and the inconsistency of such a practice with the principles of both.' In America, Cotton and the Independents severely persecuted their Baptist brethren, even to deportation. As the Baptists increased in numbers, they refused to admit any to the Lord's ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... scene of action prepared to support the army by controlling the water, and by establishing in combined action a secure secondary base of operations from which further advances can be made with reasonable certainty of holding the ground gained. There was no inconsistency between Farragut's reluctance of the spring and his forwardness in the autumn. The man who, to secure New Orleans and compass the fall of the forts, had dared to cut adrift from his base and throw his communications to the winds, because he had an object adequate ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... when Gladstone published his pamphlet on The Vatican Decrees, Lord Acton wrote during November and December a series of remarkable letters to The Times, illustrating Gladstone's main theme by numerous historical examples of papal inconsistency, in a way which must have been bitter enough to the ultramontane party, but demurring nevertheless to Gladstone's conclusion and insisting that the Church itself was better than its premisses implied. Acton's letters led to another storm in the English Roman Catholic world, but once ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... originating, for instance, in disregard of the different modes of life and thought that characterize different periods, or in ignorance of the progress of the arts and sciences and the other ascertained facts of history, and may vary from glaring inconsistency to scarcely perceptible misrepresentation. Much of the thought entertained about the past is so deficient in historical perspective as to be little better than a continuous anachronism. It is only since the close of the 18th century that this kind of untruthfulness has jarred ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... By the strangest inconsistency my dear father, a genuine republican at heart (for all his fancied loyalty to the white lily of the Bourbons), a would-be scientist, who in reality was far more impressed by a clever and industrious French mechanic than by a prince (and ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... development we are seeking to outline. The military genius of him who had been the Corsican patriot and the Jacobin republican had finally asserted dominion over all his other qualities. In the inconsistency of human nature, those former characters now and then showed themselves as still existent, but they were henceforth subordinate. The conquered Milanese was by a magical touch provided with a provisional ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... nature of the ancient Aztec, a nation of refinement and culture and hideous barbarism and cruelty; a nation of epicures who upon great feast days ate of elaborately-served dishes of human flesh; a people who, in a garden like this, could find no inconsistency, no clash of discordancy, in introducing that which bespoke merciless cruelty and death, a grim token and reminder that a king's palace was a slaughter house as well; a strange race whose ears were attuned to ravishing strains of music and yet found no breach ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... twinkled with their old infantile devilry. "Thanks. It's awfully nice of you. But—couldn't you make it seem a little more spontaneous? You see, I don't want Rickman to know I had to ask you for them." He had a dim perception of inconsistency in his judgement of the lady; since all along he had been trusting her generosity ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... of their only foundation as a church, and of their only hope for time and eternity! Far more honorable were the infidels of the past generation than these ministers. They were wholly outside the Church. But now, behold the inconsistency! Men who are covered by the vesture of the Church, ministering its sacraments, and supported by its benevolence, are making an open attack upon that wisdom of God which made Christ Jesus the only ground for all righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. The predictions for the last ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... The inconsistency, if such it was, was quickly punished. For, alas! when I spoke of my morning's pilgrimage to an old resident of the town, he told me that Murat never lived in the house, nor anywhere else in Tallahassee, and of course was never its postmaster, alderman, or mayor. The Princess, he said, built ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... apparent inconsistency in the natural order of human affairs, it seems that women are called upon far oftener than men to make the hardest sacrifices; also, the call finds them far more willing, if the sacrifice is demanded of ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... "Villainous inconsistency!" exclaimed the Elder, in an indistinct voice, his eyes half closed, and the spectacles gradually falling from his nose. "You are scandalising my excellent character, which can't be replaced with gold." Making ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... none enjoy such perfect protection as those connected with literature; yet many of them oppose protection to all others, while actively engaged in enlarging and extending the monopoly they themselves enjoy. It will scarcely answer for them to charge inconsistency on others. ...
— Letters on International Copyright; Second Edition • Henry C. Carey
... introduced Mr. Wentworth yourself to me; you first invited him here—and why, mother, do you affect this surprise now?" and Pauline's color deepened, and her voice quivered as she thought, with a sense of her mother's inconsistency and injustice. ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... different from what it is;" at that serious worried expression, as if the anxiety of the whole world's deficiencies oppressed the heart within; and at that supreme conviction of wisdom, which after all was little but an exaggerated perception of folly and inconsistency in others!... She is not to be comprehended on an acquaintance of three days. Years must go to the understanding of her. She did not understand herself. She was not even acquainted with herself. Why! She was naive enough to ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... Arabian Nights in 1894 "with merely a few excisions absolutely indispensable." "Coming as it did so soon," she says, "after her somewhat theatrical destruction of The Scented Garden," this act "could not be permitted to pass unchallenged." She not only charges Lady Burton with inconsistency, but hints at pecuniary greed, for she mentions the sum she received. Yet there was nothing inconsistent in Lady Burton's conduct in this connexion. On the contrary, it is one more tribute to her consistency, ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... decided to spend a month in Dublin; while the gentlemen held meetings in Cork, Belfast, Waterford, Limerick, and other chief towns, finishing the series with a large, enthusiastic gathering in Dublin, at which O'Connell made one of his most withering speeches on American slavery; the inconsistency of such an "institution" with the principles of a republican government giving full play to his powers of sarcasm. On one occasion, when introduced to a slaveholder, he put his hands behind his back, refusing to recognize a man who bought and sold his fellow-beings. The Rev. John ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... that her year with the Desmonds was very nearly at an end. John's latest letter announced that he hoped to get back to the life and work he loved by the middle of April; and the girl read that letter with such strangely mixed feelings that she was at once puzzled and angered by her own seeming inconsistency. John had always stood unquestionably first in her life. It would be altogether good to have him with her again—to be able to devote herself to him entirely as she had dreamed of doing for so many years. And yet.... There was no completing the broken sentence, which, for ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... prescribes an abstinence from the natural juices of animal food, which would require an entire revolution in our shambles, kitchens, and tables. If these precepts were Divine commandments for men of all times, they should be obeyed in full; but there is the grossest inconsistency and absurdity in holding only a portion of one of them sacred, and ignoring all ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... suffer them; that, if man were not man, some other being must be man, is a position arising from his established notion of the scale of being. A notion to which Pope has given some importance, by adopting it, and of which I have, therefore, endeavoured to show the uncertainty and inconsistency. This scale of being I have demonstrated to be raised by presumptuous imagination, to rest on nothing at the bottom, to lean on nothing at the top, and to have vacuities, from step to step, through which any order of being may sink into nihility without ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... the lovely ghost stories about the Rhine, and the Black Forest," interrupted Miss Van Rensselaer, with feminine inconsistency. ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... distributed, by a military testament, [97] the remains of his private fortune; and making some inquiry why Anatolius was not present, he understood, from the answer of Sallust, that Anatolius was killed; and bewailed, with amiable inconsistency, the loss of his friend. At the same time he reproved the immoderate grief of the spectators; and conjured them not to disgrace, by unmanly tears, the fate of a prince, who in a few moments would be united with ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... large; with the universal principles of poetic beauty, not as they stand written in our text-books, but in the hearts and imaginations of all men. Does the answer in either case come out unfavourable; was there an inconsistency between the means and the end, a discordance between the end and the truth, there is a fault; was there not, there is no fault." [Footnote: Carlyle on ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... this inconsistency is rather imaginary than real. Philosophers are composed of flesh and blood as well as other human creatures; and however sublimated and refined the theory of these may be, a little practical frailty is as incident to them as to other mortals. It ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... was as courteous and tender in his manner to her as of yore, but there was a change, not to be mistaken. She had lost the brother of her girlhood for ever. While it bitterly grieved, it did not surprise her. She acknowledged in dismay the inconsistency of her conduct. She must have been mad! The universal similarity in the behaviour of girls, herself included, alarmed her. Was there some external will that drove them all, in hordes, to their fate? ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... re-establishment of religion. By a fatal caprice, the enlightened spirits in France wished to console themselves for the slavery of this world, by endeavouring to destroy the hopes of a better: this singular inconsistency would not have happened under the protestant religion; but the catholic clergy had enemies, whom their courage and misfortunes had not yet disarmed; and perhaps, it is really difficult to make the authority of the pope, and of priests subject to ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... work from any particular version of an event which he may have himself met. Of many minor events there are more than one version, and many scenes and assertions which he may think of importance would yet, by being related, cause inconsistency and contradiction. Of the nature of the work in which all should be introduced I have already given ...
— Early Bardic Literature, Ireland • Standish O'Grady
... been mentioned in another place, that he had been guilty of inconsistency. To clear himself of this, he asserted that he still held the same principles in respect to American independence which he at first imbibed. He had been, and yet was of opinion, whenever the Parliament of Great Britain acknowledges that point, the sun of ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Leonard Morrison; and then with fine inconsistency he added, 'If he did, it was because the fellow got a scholarship, and he ...
— That Scholarship Boy • Emma Leslie
... world it is!" thought Evan, unconscious of his perfect inconsistency. "How good it is to be young and alive; to see; to feel; to laugh; to love; to know things! I guess I'm a little drunk on it now, but I want more, more! I shall ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... possible way can the circumstance of the ladies wearing masks lessen the inconsistency ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various
... to what he does not hold at heart, 'twere for him deceitful and for us dangerous. Where his star calls, let him walk sincerely. If his creed is insufficient or inconsistent, in his struggle he shall test it, and in his sincerity he must make up the insufficiency or remove the inconsistency. This is the only course for honourable men and no man should object. To repeat, it puts an equal burden on all—the onus of justifying the faith that is in them. Life is a divine adventure and he whose faith is finest, firmest and clearest will go farthest. ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... living is a direct departure from the simplicity that is in Christ. The Lord's poor tell me they do not like to come to such a fine house to see me; and if they come, instead of being able to read a lesson of frugality, and deadness to the world, they must go away lamenting over the inconsistency of a sister professor. One thing is very hard to bear—I feel obliged to pay five dollars a week for board, though I disapprove of this extravagance, and am actually accessory in maintaining this style of living, ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... me now—you are wanting to go to Verner's Pride to-night," she reiterated with strange inconsistency, considering that she had just insinuated he did not want ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... never included in the Five-Great-Power series. The fact is, the Chinese have never grasped the idea of principles in history: their annals are mere diaries of events; and when once an apparently definite "period" is named by an annalist, they go on using it, quite regardless of its inconsistency when confronted with facts adverse to ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... which Hopalong started for Wallace's, he might have been expecting a relay of "quarter" horses to keep it going, but he pulled up short at the tent. Such inconsistency is trying to the temper of the best-mannered horse, and this particular animal was not in the least good-mannered, wherefore its rider was obliged to soothe its resentment in his own peculiar way, listening meanwhile to the loud and impassioned voice ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... to be attained were not very well defined even to his own mind is clear. He himself said, "I cast myself upon the waters, like Southey's little book; but whether the world will know me after many days, is a question I cannot answer." And some years after, alluding to a charge of inconsistency, he said, "I did not embrace my position at once; and indeed the position itself altered very rapidly; and I am free to confess before the world that my views of duty and responsibility were not so high at first as they have since been." Without doubt his direct and primary purpose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... offended several of the partisans of Voltaire by observing that, through a strange inconsistency, the constant flatterer not only of royalty in general, but of kings in particular, and of all the great men and vices of the age in which he lived, here shares the gratitude of a republic with the man of nature and truth, ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... tolerance of the Goths"; which is like talking about the legal impartiality of chicken-pox. He will decline to believe that the Jews were Germans; though he may perhaps have met some Germans who were Jews. But deeper than any such practical reply, lies the deep inconsistency of the parable. It is simply this; that if Teutonism be used for comprehension it cannot be used for conquest. If all intelligent peoples are Germans, then Prussians are only the least intelligent Germans. If the men of Flanders are as German as the men of Frankfort, we can only ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... city, Cloisterham, whose inhabitants seem to suppose, with an inconsistency more strange than rare, that all its changes lie behind it, and that there are no more to come. A queer moral to derive from antiquity, yet older than any traceable antiquity. So silent are the streets of Cloisterham (though prone to echo on the smallest provocation), that of a summer-day ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... the son of such a father." Dr. Elias tells us that a well-known lady-artist, who in middle life suggested to him the figure of Lona Hessel, was in later years the model for the Rat-Wife. There is no inconsistency between these two accounts of the matter. The idea was doubtless suggested by his recollection of the rat-catcher of Skien, while traits of manner and physiognomy might be borrowed from the ...
— Little Eyolf • Henrik Ibsen
... not even a good imitator. He possessed all the disposition to deceive, but wanted the power. Having no resources within himself, he was compelled to be the copyist of many, and being such, he was forever the victim of inconsistency; and of consequence he was an object of contempt, and was held as such even by his slaves. The luxury of having slaves of his own to wait upon him was something new and unprepared for. He was a slaveholder without the ability to hold slaves. He found himself incapable ...
— The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass - An American Slave • Frederick Douglass
... is undermining the future of institutional religion. There is a new enemy, more subtle and more powerful. It is the growing consciousness of an intolerable inconsistency between religious theory and practice. The war thus becomes a stumbling-block to faithfulness to conventional Christianity, and the glee of the rationalist is pardonable. I again ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... of their sage criticisms. Her hand rested on the shoulder of the Chevalier de Pean. She had an object which made her endure it, and her dissimulation was perfect. Her eyes transfixed his with their dazzling look. Her lips were wreathed in smiles; she talked continually as she danced, and with an inconsistency which did not seem strange in her, was lamenting the absence from the ball of Le Gardeur ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... after the seed that it holds. The Lord himself precisely defines from this point of view the place and value of the Scriptures,—"They are they which testify of me" (John v. 39). The seed of the kingdom is himself the King. Nor is there any inconsistency in representing Christ as the seed while he was in the first instance also the sower. Most certainly he preached the Saviour, and also was the Saviour whom he preached. The incident in the synagogue at Nazareth (Luke iv. 16-22) is a remarkably distinct example of Christ being at once the Sower ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... The inconsistency of having a system of slavery incorporated into a republican government was always felt by good men North and South, as well as its damaging effect on the social and political well-being of the whole community; and steps had been taken both in Virginia and Kentucky to do away with ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... became a saint. His sermons and other works were universally distributed. Medals in his honor were struck. Raphael painted him among the Doctors of the Church in the Camera della Segnatura of the Vatican. The Church, with strange inconsistency, proposed to canonize the man whom she had burned as a contumacious heretic and a corrupter of the people. This canonization never took place: but many Dominican Churches used a special office with his name and in his honor.[1] A legend similar to that of S. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... kindly tasks, good Norbert, uses for her unguent our own perfect inconsistency: and often when we are stabbed deep in the breast she distracts us by thin scratches in other parts, that in the itch of these we may forget the greater hurt till it be healed. Thus, the remembrance of last night, when you undisguisedly ran from the wrath of ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... his literary merits, he is but one among the many distinguished authors of this intellectual nation. They, however, in general, live but for their own fame, or their own pleasures. Their private history presents no lesson to the world, or, perhaps, a humiliating one of human frailty or inconsistency. At best, they are prone to steal away from the bustle and commonplace of busy existence; to indulge in the selfishness of lettered eas; and to revel in scenes ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... and jarred on his nervous temperament, endangering that outward calm which it was his pride and care to preserve as necessary to high-bred demeanor, and thus intrenching on his ideas of personal dignity. Yet, with strange inconsistency, it was her very indulgence of these peculiarities that inclined him most strongly to Constance Glen, and finally, I am well convinced, determined him on making her his wife, as one well suited to secure the welfare of his turbulent and incomprehensible child, his "rebellious Miriam," as he sometimes ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... ever be betrayed into the inconsistency of a truthful assertion, it seemed to his daughter that it was likely to be in this moment. His words sounded like truth; and, on reflection, Diana failed to perceive that she could by any possibility inflict wrong on her friends by obliging her ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... neither pen nor ink wherewith to write their report in the bare, dilapidated, cold, and dismal house. Observing persons and the heir might then have noticed a curious inconsistency which may be seen in certain misers. The dread the little old man had of the slightest outlay showed itself in the non-repaired roof which opened its sides to the light and the rain and snow; in the cracks of the walls; in the rotten doors ready to fall at the slightest shock; ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... as though the fact of marriage would crystallize him into a shape from which he would never alter or dissolve in the future. And with a reticence peculiar to her type, she never once permitted her mind to stray to her crowning beatitude—the hope of a child; for, with that sacred inconsistency possible only to fixed beliefs, though motherhood was supposed to comprise every desire, adventure, and activity in the life of woman, it was considered indelicate for her to dwell upon the thought of it until the condition had become too obvious ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... whole, their dress, manners and conversation were American, and Foster was sometimes puzzled by their inconsistency. He liked these people and got on well with them, but had soon discovered that in order to do so he must abandon his English habits and idiosyncrasies. His neighbors often showed a certain half-hostile ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... Bob was the very characteristic of which he had deprived his own boy, the vast fortune the capitalist had rolled up eliminating all struggle from Roger's career. Every barrier had been removed, every thwarting force had been brought into abeyance, and afterward, with an inconsistency typical of human nature, the leveler of the road fretted at his son's lack of aggressiveness, his eyes, ordinarily so hawklike in their vision, blinded to the fact that what his son was he had to a great extent made him, and if the product caused secret disappointment he had no one ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... shop." Then the next moment the wrangle would recommence, and the harsh trebles of wrath would swell high. Andrew could not appreciate this savageness of race loyalty in the face of anger and dissension, and his brain reeled with the apparent inconsistency of the thing. ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... for the abandonment of their policy and the abdication of the Government. The partial removal already made caused great chagrin. The report, at first, was hardly credited in British political circles, and, when confirmed, was construed into inability, inconsistency, and concession by the Administration, and a sign that things were ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... my newspaper that the Speaker interrupts {125} members who speak of speeches having been published. "This is one of the inconsistencies," Mr. Ross proceeds, "resulting from the determination of the House not expressly to recognise the presence of strangers." Inconsistency there certainly is,—the inconsistency of making publication a breach of privilege, and allowing it to ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 38, Saturday, July 20, 1850 • Various
... wondered how another man would have handled this situation. The ridiculous inconsistency of the human character infuriated him. Why should he be a totally different man on Riverside Drive from the person he was in Pine Street? Why should he be able to hold his own in Pine Street with grown men—whiskered, square-jawed financiers—and yet ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... letter rather than by the spirit, as pitiless and gloomy as one of the Puritans of old; while, on the other hand, by his own fireside he was considerate, forbearing, and humble almost to a fault. As a necessary result of this singular inconsistency of character, he was feared, and sometimes even disliked, by the members of his congregation who only knew him as their pastor, and he was prized and loved by the small circle of friends who also ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... have about the way Cassell's laid out the book is the amazing amount of inconsistency in the hyphenation, but we believe we have detected most of the instances, and put ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... forbears of a pre-scientific age, he will deliberately inoculate the virulent infective products of diseased animal tissues into the circulation of a healthy person. And as if to cap the climax of his stupidity and inconsistency, he performs ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... overtaxed invention, restrained from its proper food, he made his architecture a glittering vacillation of undisciplined enchantment, and left the lustre of its edifices to wither like a startling dream, whose beauty we may indeed feel, and whose instruction we may receive, but must smile at its inconsistency, and mourn ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... orders to advance after Antietam; persistently favors regular army officers over volunteers; directs Burnside to advance into E. Tennessee; correspondence with Burnside shows forgetfulness and lack of appreciation; inconsistency between official and private letters to Rosecrans; fails to understand distances and difficulties of transportation in E. Tennessee; indecision of character; wrong interpretation of Burnside's reports and action; thinks personal presence ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... solitary; Guy Seton's eyes were fixed upon her face with an expression at once so wistful and so ardent that it seemed impossible to meet it with her own. In her heart of hearts Rowena knew perfectly well what that look meant; but with the curious inconsistency of her sex the impulse was strong upon her to fly from what she had most longed for and desired. Conversation was the best refuge for the moment, and she plunged hastily into the first subject which ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... inconsistency has been the cause of many terrible wars and revolutions; for, as Curtius well says (lib. iv. chap. 10): "The mob has no ruler more potent than superstition," and is easily led, on the plea of religion, at one moment to adore its kings as gods, and anon to execrate and ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... prolonged warfare, by raging pestilence, by famine, and by intolerable taxation;[46] but while he paints this picture of misery and desolation in one place, he goes on to declare in another that the time which he spent at Sacco was the happiest he ever knew.[47] No greater instance of inconsistency is to be found in his pages. He writes: "I gambled, I occupied myself with music, I walked abroad, I feasted, giving scant attention the while to my studies. I feared no hurt, I paid my respects to the Venetian gentlemen living ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... give them a partial enforcement in Boston compelled a little legislative action and the result was what might have been expected in a State in which religious opinions are allowed to interfere with the credibility of a witness, and in which Diogenes, if he were here, would be struck with the vast inconsistency between the creed of Christendom and its practice, and the vast disparity between the progress of modern knowledge and the effete system of education in our Universities. He would wonder why modern colleges are more interested in the details of Greek life and letters than in the beneficent ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... common thing in humanity is inconsistency. To account for it were vain. We know only that ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... opinion that in the event of the abolition of the monopoly, the people of the country would have to make up for the loss of the revenue by submitting to some other mode of direct or indirect taxation. There is an inconsistency in the statements of the Court of Directors, which is absolutely amusing. "The free cultivation of the poppy," say the Directors, "would doubtless lead to the larger outlay of capital, and to greater ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... professionals gives an account in his book of what he calls "The Wonderful Lock Method." He says that though he is locked up in a separate room he can make the psychic power work through the walls. All that he does is to put his subjects in the way of hypnotizing themselves. He shows his inconsistency when he states that under certain circumstances the hypnotizer is in danger of becoming hypnotized himself. In this he makes no claim that the subject is using any psychic power; but, of course, if the hypnotizer looks steadily into the eyes of his subject, and the subject looks into his eyes, the ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... person except themselves can clearly perceive that they neither possess talent, intellect, public spirit, nor any other qualification calculated either to amuse or to instruct. When I see a sensible man in other respects fall into an inconsistency of this sort, I am always reminded of the fable of the Eagle, the Owl, and her young ones. The fact is, that I am more proud of my father than of any of my ancestors, because I know him to have been an excellent and an honest ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... understand me—I did not understand myself. We together exclaimed at the inconsistency of the human heart. Since then I have felt the same instinctive repugnance at reading to a single person what cost me not a single effort of violated modesty to give to the public: and after having long reflected on it, I find ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... had some suspicion of the inconsistency himself," said Bernard, "to judge from his attempt to obviate the difficulty, by ascribing a magic change in his hero, to the application of the child's hand to the head, instead of as before, to the heart. This part of the tale is slightly and ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... interests alike of the King and of the nation; and she concluded by pledging her royal word that she would uphold the Duke in his opposition, as resolutely as ever he had been supported in his former measures by the deceased monarch. More and more bewildered by this apparent inconsistency, Sully respectfully took possession of the document, declaring his perfect willingness to serve both her Majesty and the state by every means in his power; and he then awaited her pleasure upon other matters of more public importance; but on all else Marie was silent, and the disappointed ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... although I wished to do so. I hardly know why I waited until Friday; it was not only unreasonable on my part, but also not quite straightforward. How is it that, even when circumstances might enable us to act according to our impulses, some unexpected inconsistency in our own selves throws a bar across the path? I begin to think that it must be an idle dream,—sincerity, self-honesty. My thoughts are fixed upon it constantly, I strive towards it with heart and soul; yet daily, under the very eyes of my own ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... the practical effect of the modern theories, as Dr. Hart points out, is emancipation from the materialist method. On the other hand, as he also points out (pp. 38-9), imbecility and dementia still have to be considered physiologically, as caused by defects in the brain. There is no inconsistency in this If, as we maintain, mind and matter are neither of them the actual stuff of reality, but different convenient groupings of an underlying material, then, clearly, the question whether, in regard to a given phenomenon, ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... quickness of resource, an excellent memory, and a clear understanding. He most gratefully acknowledged that he had never gone through the sheets of any book that he had written, without having presented to him by the correctors of the press something that he had overlooked, some slight inconsistency into which he had fallen, some little lapse he had made—in short, without having set down in black and white some unquestionable indication that he had been closely followed through the work by a patient and trained mind, and not merely by a skilful eye. And in this declaration he ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... revolutionary spirit which has despoiled Spain of her splendid dominions in South America. All this, however plausible, may arise out of a mistaken policy. New political ideas and legislation, under constitutional rule, have respected the convents of the nuns. One can scarcely conceive of this inconsistency on the part of governments which, under the name of liberty, have ruled Spain in these latter times. If the abolition of the convents of friars had for its chief ground the uselessness of those who inhabited them, it must be admitted that infinitely more useless is the life of a nun, consecrated ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... not profess to be consistent with itself, or with the theory adopted by judicial decisions. Hence there is strictly no need to reconcile such a statute with the principles which have been explained. But there is no inconsistency. Although punishment must be confined to compelling external conformity to a rule of conduct, so far that it can always be avoided by avoiding or doing certain acts as required, with whatever intent or for whatever motive, still the prohibited conduct may not be hurtful ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... with some of us too. But whether that be so or no, however unobtrusive and quiet a Christian person's life may be, there will be some people standing close by who, if not actually watching for his fall, are at least by no means indisposed to make the worst of a slip, and to rejoice over an inconsistency. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the modern fashion somewhat to belittle Puritanism. It is easy to emphasize its absurdities, to ridicule the almost fanatical fervor which goaded men to harshness and inconsistency. The fact remains that a tremendous selective force was needed to tear the Puritans away from the mother church and the mother country and fortify them in their struggle in a new land. It was religious zeal which furnished this motive power. Different implements and differently ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... traditional usage, as then received by Christian princes. [2] But Frederic did do what was contrary to both in his refusal; and that, too, while professing to be imbued with the very faith out of which the homage in question sprang. Thus, it is no wonder that Adrian should view such an inconsistency as most inauspicious for the liberties of the church,—with which those of society were then so closely bound up,—and should, therefore, feel it imperative to pursue a line of conduct, which at first glance may appear so arrogantly exacting; but which, found, on closer examination, ...
— Pope Adrian IV - An Historical Sketch • Richard Raby
... commonplace and silly characters to be found in these novels. On this point the difference almost amounts to a contradiction, such as one sometimes sees drawn up in parallel columns, when it is desired to convict some writer or some statesman of inconsistency. The Reviewer, in 1815, says: 'The faults of these works arise from the minute detail which the author's plan comprehends. Characters of folly or simplicity, such as those of old Woodhouse and Miss Bates, are ridiculous when first presented, but if too often brought forward, or too ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... you," says he. "There is a remarkable inconsistency in human nature which gentlemen of my cloth have a great deal of occasion to observe. Selfish persons can live without chick or child, they can live without all mankind except perhaps the barber and the apothecary; but when it comes to dying, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... reason do sometimes conflict is in regard to single beliefs, held instinctively, and held with such determination that no degree of inconsistency with other beliefs leads to their abandonment. Instinct, like all human faculties, is liable to error. Those in whom reason is weak are often unwilling to admit this as regards themselves, though all admit it ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... willingly offered to be his disciple. Whether Master and I were surrounded by his students or by strangers, or were alone together, he always spoke plainly and upbraided sharply. No trifling lapse into shallowness or inconsistency escaped his rebuke. This flattening treatment was hard to endure, but my resolve was to allow Sri Yukteswar to iron out each of my psychological kinks. As he labored at this titanic transformation, I shook many times under the weight of ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... health of the people—exists near the metropolis. The King and the Court patronize and plan horse-racing, throwing the lasso, and, if recent report be true, hawking; the Parliament legislate, a bill is "ordered to be printed"—yet, the inconsistency and tardiness of these proceedings compel us to ask, where is the truth of the motto—Salus populi suprema lex. Convictions before magistrates for acts of cruelty are not uncommon; yet, it is in this, as in many other laws, the poor are caught, while the rich break through ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... to let "Casa Guidi Windows" stand as written, with all the inconsistency between its first and second parts, as each reflected what she believed true at the time of writing; and it thus presents a most interesting and suggestive commentary on Italian politics between 1850 and 1853. Its discrepancies are such "as we are called upon to accept at every hour by the conditions ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... to get rid of this inconsistency, and the scruples which might have been inspired by it, that Duke Charles, having bowed slightly to the royal chair, bluntly opened the sitting with the ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... he opened his cloak, forgetting, with his characteristical inconsistency, that he showed ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... the warm life they prefigured so close to him, seemed vulgar! And still he felt himself bound in honour; or judged from their manner that she and those about them thought him thus bound. He did not reflect on the inconsistency of the feeling of honour (living, as it does essentially, upon the concrete and minute detail of social relationship) for one who, on principle, set so slight a value on anything whatever that is merely ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... as I have said, in Goodge Street, where he had unfurnished apartments. I often spent part of the Sunday with him, and I may forestall obvious criticism by saying that I do not pretend for a moment to defend myself from inconsistency in denouncing members of Parliament for their duplicity, M'Kay and myself being also guilty of something very much like it. But there was this difference between us and our parliamentary friends, that ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... face for its sake a repugnant compliance with custom. They were married in Old St. Pancras Church on March 29, 1797, and the insignificant fact was communicated only gradually, and with laboured apologies for the inconsistency, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... commencing the fight, but even of standing their ground. Thus being driven back to the Red Rocks, (there they pitched their camp,) they suppliantly sue for peace; for the obtaining of which they were sorry, from the natural inconsistency of their minds, before the Roman garrison was drawn off from ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... offend these banished men, it may be allowable to remark that the light-hearted, careless inconsistency of the Sarmatian character does justify in some degree the satire of the Parisians, who, by the bye, would behave in like circumstances exactly as the Poles do. The French aristocracy, so nobly succored during the Revolution by the ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... he meant his own speaking upon a new charge, which, when I last saw him, he exultingly told me was given up. He explained the apparent inconsistency by telling me that some new change of plan had taken place, and that Mr. Burke was extremely urgent with him to open the next charge: "And I cannot," he cried emphatically, "leave Burke in the lurch!" I both believed and applauded him so far; but ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... religious liberty as soon as people came among them who disagreed with their opinions. But this view of the case is not supported by history. It is quite true that the Puritans were chargeable with gross intolerance; but it is not true that in this they were guilty of inconsistency. The notion that they came to New England for the purpose of establishing religious liberty, in any sense in which we should understand such a phrase, is entirely incorrect. It is neither more nor less than a bit of popular legend. If we mean by the phrase "religious ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske
... destroy one or other of the trains of reasoning; for it is common to them both, and in one of them it is made the sole ground for concluding that matter cannot think, while in the other it is made compatible with the supposition that matter may think. This extraordinary inconsistency no doubt arose from the fact that the author was antecedently persuaded of the existence of an Omnipotent Mind, and having been long accustomed in his intellectual symbols to regard it presumptuous in him to impose any limitations on this almighty power, when he asked himself whether it ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... months, and not logical at every point. The clause here mentioned I explain as a direct echo of the elections to the States-General; it was one of the first drafted; its precise significance was soon lost sight of and its inconsistency remained unnoticed. ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... Passions, Opinions, Manners, Humours, or Principles all subject to change. No judging by Nature, from v.158 to 178. III. It only remains to find (if we can) his Ruling Passion: That will certainly influence all the rest, and can reconcile the seeming or real inconsistency of all his actions, v.175. Instanced in the extraordinary character of Clodio, v.179. A caution against mistaking second qualities for first, which will destroy all possibility of the knowledge of mankind, v.210. Examples of the ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... The inconsistency of the word "daily" did not trouble Florence; moreover, she had found no fault with "Oriole" until the Owners & Propreitors had explained to her in the plainest terms known to their vocabularies that she was excluded from the enterprise. ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... three-fifths of the property of the District belongs to the United States. The people of the whole country would therefore be interested in observing the practical workings of this system on national soil. With 7,316 more women than men in this District, we call your special attention to the inconsistency and injustice of granting suffrage to a minority and withholding it from a majority, as you have done in the past. If the District is your special ward, then women, being in the majority here, have peculiar claims upon you for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the wig, "only to ask your pardon, my friends, for the impatience with which I have listened to your stories when I thought them too long, and for the truly human vanity and inconsistency which made me tell the longest story myself. But I knew that no one waited for me. I shall certainly never speak more. These are ...
— The Talkative Wig • Eliza Lee Follen
... advocates of female suffrage as the chief motives for a change in the laws which withhold from her the power of voting. But it is also considered by the friend of the new movement that to withhold the suffrage from half the race is an inconsistency in American politics; that suffrage is an inalienable right, universal in its application; that women are consequently deprived of a great natural right when denied the power of voting. A third reason is also given for this proposed change in our political constitution. It is asserted that the ...
— Female Suffrage • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... maneuvers; for he took yard after yard of line until he was far away from me, out in the Panuco. We followed him, and for an hour crossed to and fro, up and down, humoring him, responding to his every caprice, as if he verily were a king. At last, with a strange inconsistency more human than fishlike, he returned to the scene of his fatal error, and here in the mouth of the smaller stream he leaped once more. But it was only a ghost of his former efforts—a slow, weary rise, showing he was tired. I could see it in the weakening wag of his head. ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... reasonable belief can be held to the end without interruptions: they say that the received notions of the inspiration, and consequently of the complete truth of the Scriptures cannot reasonably be maintained; that he who does maintain them does so by a happy inconsistency;—he is to be congratulated for not following up his own principles; but why should he then find fault with others who do that avowedly and consistently to which he is driven against his professions by the clear necessity ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... reading-room," Q. 4800.—I must now speak of myself. When summoned before the commissioners as a witness, I took with me the printed Directions respecting the reading-room for the express purpose of pointing out their inconsistency and insufficiency, and of advocating the preparation of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... an anthropomorphic deity, with little that is specially characteristic of her solar functions. Here, however, it is plainly the sun itself which witholds its light and leaves the world to darkness. This inconsistency, which has greatly exercised the native theologians, is not ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... is apparently in opposition to Protestant interests, for it entitles Catholicism to the protection of Catholic Powers. He disguised from himself this inconsistency, and reconciled theory with expediency by the calculation that the immense advantages which his system offered to the princes would induce them all to adopt it. For, besides the consolatory doctrine of justification,—"a ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves. Yet all this was apart from any extraordinary dilapidation. No portion of the masonry had fallen; and there appeared to be a wild inconsistency between its still perfect adaptation of parts, and the crumbling condition of the individual stones. In this there was much that reminded me of the specious totality of old wood-work which has rotted for long ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... daughter what might be achieved through such a gift, and dwelling on the awful warning of those who, in spite of it, had failed to get what they wanted: to Mrs. Bart, only stupidity could explain the lamentable denouement of some of her examples. She was not above the inconsistency of charging fate, rather than herself, with her own misfortunes; but she inveighed so acrimoniously against love-matches that Lily would have fancied her own marriage had been of that nature, had not Mrs. Bart frequently assured her that ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the test of critical inquiry. But even worse was its philosophy. As Bentham pointed out, he was unaware of the distinction between society and government. The state of nature exists, or fails to exist, with startling inconsistency. Blackstone, in fact, was a Lockian who knows that Hume and Montesquieu have cut the ground from under his master's feet, and yet cannot understand how, without him, a foundation is to be supplied. Locke, indeed, seems to him, as a natural conservative, to go too far, and he rejects ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... recording his purchase, for another man, of a negro woman for the sum of ninety pounds. [Footnote: 3 Do., March 7, 1786.] There was already a strong feeling in the western settlements against negro slavery, [Footnote: See Journals of Rev. James Smith.] because of its moral evil, and of its inconsistency with all true standards of humanity and Christianity, a feeling which continued to exist and which later led to resolute efforts to forbid or abolish slave-holding. But the consciences of the majority were ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... into the attendant's hand, that the "Gracias" of his unmistakable Saxon speech revealed to her the reason of the lawyer's caution. Poindexter had evidently represented her to these people as a native Californian who did not speak English. In her inconsistency her blood took fire at this first suggestion of deceit, and burned in her face. Why should he try to pass her off as anybody else? Why should she not use her own, her husband's name? She stopped and ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... done, I saw written in his eye and mien a resolution to arrogate to himself a freedom so unlimited that it might often trench on the just liberty of his neighbours. I rapidly ran over these thoughts, and then I laughed a low and involuntary laugh, moved thereto by a slight inward revelation of the inconsistency of man. It was as I thought: Hunsden had expected me to take with calm his incorrect and offensive surmises, his bitter and haughty taunts; and himself was chafed by a laugh, ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... the people was the hardest for Christophe to bear, but their inconsistency, their formless, shallow natures. There was no knowing how to take them. The pig-headed opposition of one of those stiff-necked, bard races who refuse to understand any new thought were much better. Against force it ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... a curious inconsistency in the mind of Ida Locke which had prompted her to write in that red-covered note-book just what she had written. No one would have guessed the secret strain of introspection in her, nor guessed the impulse which led her to put ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... the defeat in the Louisiana Legislature (1908) of the anti-miscegenation bill, a measure designed to prohibit sexual cohabitation between white persons and Negroes; to be specific, between white men and Negro women. But there was no inconsistency whatever in the defeat of that bill. In all times and places, the status of that portion of the female population, Lecky's martyred "priestesses of humanity," whose existence men have demanded for the gratification ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... no subject on which more mistakes have been made than on that of the Goddess Isis, both by ancients and moderns. He calls attention to the inconsistency of calling her the moon when in many countries the moon is masculine. He is quite positive that if Isis is the moon, Ceres, Proserpine, Venus, and all the other female gods were the same, which in view of the facts everywhere at hand cannot be true. It is true, ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... he clings to life and shrinks with the uneasy sense that his paradise may not materialize, even if the hope is expressed glibly and fluently. The real craving is expressed in numberless passages: "May we live a hundred autumns, surrounded by lusty sons." Homer's Hades has wiped out this inconsistency, only to substitute another. Odysseus, on returning from his visit to Hades, exclaims baldly: "Better a swineherd on the surface of the earth in the light of the sun than king of the shades in Hades." It is almost adding insult to injury ...
— Cerberus, The Dog of Hades - The History of an Idea • Maurice Bloomfield
... could not be moved from his firm resolve. The ministry, however, was shaken. With no better stay than sophistry and inconsistency, its weakness became apparent, and, as had been for some time ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... on that very ground General Taylor says that he should use the power given him by the people to do, to the best of his judgment, the will of the people, he is accused of want of principle and of inconsistency in position. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... inconsistency here, somewhat incompatible with the impartiality which ought to regulate the works of criticism? I will not for a moment suppose it to have proceeded from a spirit of animosity, which I feel myself unconscious of deserving. But the reviewer ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... very day, the 24th of January 1799, even that ancient proof of the anger of the saint was, in the madness of the moment, considered as an additional token of his holiness's approbation! Such is the inconsistency of untutored folly, and the fate of misinstructed superstition; the power of superior cunning, and ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... you wanted to," and Eliza beamed upon the Doctor with an affection that was the acme of idealization. She had forgotten that only a few hours ago she had renounced her loyalty at the memory of the oil, but Miss Wingate smiled in appreciation of this display of further feminine inconsistency. ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... fellow-citizens. In that long period of time my opinions have undergone many changes. When I have had occasion to address my fellow- citizens upon public questions I have not reviewed my previous sayings through fear that some critic might arraign me for inconsistency. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... him tried, Sir," said this gentleman, smiling; "but from the inconsistency of the orders he issues to his dogs, I doubt ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of these improvements was James Bradley. Few men have possessed in an equal degree with him the power of seeing accurately, and reasoning on what they see. He let nothing pass. The slightest inconsistency between what appeared and what was to be expected roused his keenest attention; and he never relaxed his mental grip of a subject until it had yielded to his persistent inquisition. It was to these qualities ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... that, after this natural desire has been provided for, the course of all beyond has been predetermined by the spirit of the place. Before I proceed, I will remind those who are not satisfied with the restraint thus laid upon them, that they are liable to a charge of inconsistency, when they are so eager to change the face of that country, whose native attractions, by the act of erecting their habitations in it, they have so emphatically acknowledged. And surely there is not a single spot that would not have, if well managed, sufficient ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth |
