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More "Inconsistency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... we stood upon, from the plain path which invited our footsteps, to be so fallen, so lost, is mortifying; but everything of virtue has, in a degree, taken its departure from our land.... What, gracious God, is man that there should be such inconsistency, and perfidiousness in his conduct! It was but the other day that we were shedding our blood to obtain the Constitutions under which we now live, and now we are unsheathing our swords to overturn them. The thing is so unaccountable that I hardly ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... 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 into writing her hidden life. Unless, ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... should have expected, but she couldn't help being a little disappointed. Eleanor had just shown herself so fine and downright, so willing to make all the reparation in her power for a course whose inconsistency had been proved to her. It was very disheartening to find that she cherished the old, reasonless grudge as warmly as ever. But if Betty had accomplished nothing for herself, she had done all that she hoped for Eleanor, and she tried to feel ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... but it is equally difficult to deny, first, that in so doing she exercises harshly an extreme and hard law; secondly, that her conduct with respect to the navigation of the St. Lawrence is in glaring and discreditable inconsistency with her conduct with respect to the navigation of the Mississippi. On the ground that she possessed a small domain in which the Mississippi took its rise, she insisted on the right to navigate the entire volume of its waters. On the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ulysses S. Grant • Ulysses S. Grant
... mind,—disliking the very virtues, and therefore half-consciously representing them as mere products of the violence, of the sex in general in all their whims, and yet forced to admire, and to feel and to express gratitude for, the exertion in his own instance. The inconsistency of the passage would be the consistency of the author. But this ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... not dwell on the subject; but she might as well have tried to dam a river with a piece of tissue paper, as prevent the thought from filling her mind; and that probably because—with true feminine inconsistency—she welcomed it quite as much as she tried to ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... was not living in a Paradisaical age, and he intentionally overstept the boundaries of decorum. But granting he had an object in view, was he justified in adopting such means to obtain it? certainly not; but he had some right to laugh, as he does, at the inconsistency of the public, who, while they blamed his books, bought up the editions of them as fast ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... soon now, and it might be long before he would again be given an opportunity to speak with any woman of Meryl's charm, or look into any face so full of attraction. And yet that was just what he wished; was actually the chief reason for his unsociable resolutions. His own inconsistency puzzled and worried him, and his eyes as he looked steadily to the horizon had a lurking ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... wisely contrived for the preservation of mankind. Now, does it not follow, from what has been said, that for a man to receive the news of his son's death with dry eyes, and to weep at the same time for the calamities of his country, is a wretched affectation and a miserable inconsistency? Is not that, in plain English, to receive with dry eyes the news of the deaths of those for whose sake our country is a name so dear to us, and at the same time to shed tears for those for whose sakes our country is not a name so ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... simply the old principle in a new disguise. James Mill applied the doctrine to politics. J. S. Mill again applied it, with still more thoroughness, especially in his doctrine of representation and of the equality of the sexes. Accordingly, various moralists have urged that this was an inconsistency in utilitarian doctrine, implying that they, too, could make a priori first principles when they wanted them. It has become a sort of orthodox dogma with radicals, who do not always trouble themselves about a philosophical basis, and is applied ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... be surprised at this. On a wrong road, inconsistency is inevitable; if it were not so, mankind would be sacrificed. A false principle never has been, and never will be, carried out ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... connection whatever with such perfidious wretches. He immediately resigned his commission as lieutenant-general and announced his determination to return to Spain. But alas, for human frailty and inconsistency, he was to take with him the five hundred thousand dollars of treasure of which the Peruvians had been ruthlessly despoiled. Perhaps ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott
... solely on account of Fouche's presence in the Ministry, I yielded to that consolation which is always left to the discontented. I watched the extravagance and inconsistency that were passing around me, and the new follies which were every day committed; and it must be confessed that a rich and varied picture presented itself ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... that the young Duke conceived hopes which his impetuosity hindered him from sufficiently disguising. Indeed, these were presumed upon so far as to give offence to the Queen; and, as the height of inconsistency, he committed at the same time the egregious folly of publicly enacting the led-captain in the rosy chains of the handsome but decried Duchess de Montbazon. It was only, however, by slow degrees that the Queen's liking for him abated. At first, she had proposed to confer upon him ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... good old 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 never have ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... foolhardy, and strangely in contrast with what also appears to him to have been an exhibition of cowardice on their part the day before. The narrative from which the incidents are taken (Martin's) shows no such singular inconsistency in the conduct of these men. This was Colonel Douglas' regiment, and, as Martin himself says, it moved promptly under orders from the ferry to the right to cover Stirling's retreat. "Our officers," he writes, "pressed forward towards a creek, where a large party of Americans ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... just and again brutal, and as the law of the Old Testament exhibits the same features, so the god of creation was to Marcion a being who united in himself the whole gradations of attributes from justice to malevolence, from obstinacy to inconsistency.[377] Into this conception of the creator of the world, the characteristic of which is that it cannot be systematised, could easily be fitted the Syrian Gnostic theory which regards him as an evil being, because he belongs to this world and to matter. Marcion did not accept it in principle,[378] ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 1 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... the Veda.] It is time, however, to give a brief estimate of the moral character of the Veda. The first thing that strikes us is its inconsistency. Some hymns—especially those addressed to Varuna—rise as high as Gentile conceptions regarding deity ever rose; others—even in the Rig Veda—sink miserably low; and in the Atharva we find, "even in the lowest depth, a ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... as a means of attaining spiritual happiness. Now, the Bible is filled throughout with references to clouds, stars, colours, and beauty, and often the mention of these is essential to the meaning of the parable or the message in which they occur. Here one must needs see the inconsistency of people who believe in the Bible, and yet deny us a right to talk about what we do not see, and for that matter what they do not see, either. Who shall forbid my heart to sing: "Yea, he did fly upon ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... gained the mastery over her affections with a strange suddenness, is but blind to her charms because dazzled by Violante's. She is prepared to aid in all that can give her rival to Peschiera; and yet, such is the inconsistency of woman" (added the young philosopher, with a shrug of the shoulders), "that she is also prepared to lose all chance of securing him she loves, by ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Talleyrand, the Duke de Richelieu, M. Decazes, and M. de Villele, the government of Louis XVIII. was ever consistent with itself; without false calculation or premeditated deceit, Charles X. wavered from contradiction to contradiction, from inconsistency to inconsistency, until the day when, given up to his own will and belief, he committed the error ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... Epistles be arranged in chronological order, it will easily be seen that there is a splendid growth in his theology from first to last. He never, indeed, gave up the doctrines of his earlier life; there is no inconsistency between one part of his writings and another; but neither his experience nor his thinking ever stood still; he made his first doctrines the foundations on which he reared a structure which was rising higher and higher to the very close ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... general interests of art; to exalt the fame of dead artists whose example may be beneficial; to weaken the fame of dead artists whose names have an injurious degree of authority; to speak always with absolute sincerity; to give expression to vicissitudes of opinion, not fearing the imputation of inconsistency; to make himself as thoroughly informed as his time and opportunities will allow, about everything concerning the Fine Arts, whether directly or indirectly; to enlarge his own powers of sympathy; to resist the formation of prejudices." The above requirements are well ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... all along on the ground that in keeping the strength of the Government intact lay the best chance of helping to bring the war to a successful and speedy conclusion, he was inconsistent, to say the least, in deserting his colleagues at a juncture which made their defeat inevitable. But the inconsistency is only superficial; when he once had lost hope that the Government could be got to alter their methods of conducting the war, their defeat and dissolution, which he had previously striven to prevent, became the lesser of two evils. It was not ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell
... differs from modern spelling, but is consistent within the text, e.g. atchievement, the original spelling is retained. Other typographical errors have been corrected, particularly where there is inconsistency within the text. A detailed list of these changes (including those described in the Errata) can be found at ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... marks and minor inconsistencies of punctuationwere silently corrected. However, punctuation has not been changed to comply with modern standards. Inconsistency in ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... regard to morality, Augustine showed that the gods were no examples to follow. He ridicules their morals and their offices as severely as he points out their impotency to bestow happiness. He shows the absurdity and inconsistency of tolerating players in their delineation of the vices and follies of deities for the amusement of the people in the theatre, while the priests performed the same obscenities as religious rites in the temples which were upheld ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... Tharon severely, and with lofty inconsistency, "that you'll remember your manners an' not start anything. Last's is in for trouble ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... her frocks were lengthened. Her room was never in order. Nothing was ever hung up; nothing was put in its place. Shoes were here and there—one might be under the dressing-table and the other under the bed; but with, an odd inconsistency she was always personally particularly clean, and although bathing was then unknown in Cowfold, she had a tub, and used it too with constant soap and water. With her lessons she did not succeed, more particularly ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... a rather bold statement for a man to make who improved upon almost every line he ever quoted; but the reader is no doubt acquainted with parallel instances of inconsistency in good men ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... enduring hatred or attachment. Your life is a mere capitulation. If the Evil One himself should appear on earth in visible form, I could show him the way by which he could league with you within twenty-four hours. The true source of your inconsistency is the fact that, separated from all good and true men, and surrounded by knaves and fools, you see and hear nothing but what is ignoble and false. If you could have made up your mind to leave Berlin, you would ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... denominations. It is especially hard to understand why a man who was in favor of abolishing religious disqualifications in the case of Roman Catholics should have thought it right to maintain them in the case of Protestant Dissenters. The explanation of this latter inconsistency may be found, perhaps, in the assumption that when Canning thought of the grievance to Roman Catholics he had in his mind the grievances to the Roman Catholics of Ireland, a separate country with a nationality ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... of a very bad description, which was entirely directed against the 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 the pope, harmonize with ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... minds are among the most horrible and tremendous of facts; and it is the imperishable glory of the prophets, that, whatever the priest the king, the Sadducee or Pharisee might do, they could not rest in or abide the idea that God's will was ever evil; no inconsistency was too glaring to check their indignation at Eastern fatalism which quietly supposed that as things went wrong it was their nature to do so;—vanity, vanity, all is vanity!—or that if men did wrong and prospered, it was God's doing, ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... upon that plan, and her own refined nature told her that it was not the life for a young girl. Mr. Vane's request for her head suggested a splendid hope; and after getting angry with him for hinting at her being a model, she suddenly decided to try it,—with the charming inconsistency of her sex. The more she thought of it, the better she liked the idea, and resolved to ask her new friend all about it, fondly hoping that much money could be made ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... views he had later made a full confession to the authorities and had been exiled to Siberia. Tolstoy, holding that it was most unjust to exile the disciple while he, the author of the book, remained at large, had pointed out this inconsistency in an open letter to one of the Moscow newspapers. The discussion of this incident, of course, opened up the entire subject of nonresidence, and curiously enough I was disappointed in Tolstoy's position in the matter. It seemed to me that he made too great a distinction between the use ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... I am far from seeking to despise. Indeed, considering the character of some of my own books, such an attempt would be gross inconsistency. But, while I appreciate its importance in a philological view, I am inclined to set little store on its aesthetic value, especially in poetry. Three parts of the emendations made upon poets are mere alterations, some of which, had they been suggested to the author by his Maecenas ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... courage and generosity so much, that he had never fairly considered this question. "Why, yes," he answered; "he died in the cause of disorder; he was trying to obstruct the law. No doubt there was a wrong there, an inconsistency and an injustice that he felt keenly; but it could not be reached in his way ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... suspended, and consequently that of reason, when any incongruous ideas occur in the trains of imagination, which compose our dreams; we cannot compare them with our previous knowledge of nature and reject them; whence arises the perpetual inconsistency of our sleeping trains of ideas; and whence in our dreams we never feel the sentiment of novelty; however different the ideas, which present themselves, may be from the usual course ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... always tempted to ask concerning his treasures, not, "What would you have more than these?" but "What possibly can you see in these?" for, to the bystander, there is a ludicrous and incomprehensible inconsistency between the child's words and the reality. The little thing tells him gravely, holding up the acorn-cup, that "this is a queen's crown, or a fairy's boat," and, with beautiful effrontery, expects him to believe the same. But observe—the acorn-cup must be there, and in his ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... cousin, Mr. Leonidas Force, who is coming home at Christmas, when we shall be married and go to live at Greenbushes, as you know very well, Col. Anglesea, for you have heard the whole matter freely discussed. You know this so well that I am surprised at the inconsistency of your action in ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... 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 ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... the workers eggs by chance than deposit them in an unsuitable place; and that she will not lay the eggs of males. I cannot yield to the pleasure of allowing this queen discernment or foresight, for I observe a kind of inconsistency in her conduct. If she refused to lay the eggs of workers in large cells, because nature has instructed her that their size is neither proportioned to the size nor necessities of common worms, would ...
— New observations on the natural history of bees • Francis Huber
... to him that he forgets the end of their creation. We can follow him step by step into the trap which he lays for himself by his own entire good faith and triumphant literality of vision, till the trap closes and shuts him in an inconsistency. The allegories of the Interpreter and of the Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains are all actually performed, like stage-plays, before the pilgrims. The son of Mr. Great-grace visibly 'tumbles hills about with his words.' Adam the First has his condemnation written ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... experiences in the Great Republic. It may well be that a long list of inconsistencies might be made out for any country, just as for any individual; but so far as my knowledge goes the United States stands out as preeminently the "Land of Contrasts"—the land of stark, staring, and stimulating inconsistency; at once the home of enlightenment and the happy hunting ground of the charlatan and the quack; a land in which nothing happens but the unexpected; the home of Hyperion, but no less the haunt of the satyr; always the land of promise, but not invariably the land of performance; a land ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... total abolition is or is not practicable." "A life devoted to" the emancipation problem "would be nobly spent or sacrificed." He talks with much acerbity of expression about the "slave-drivers," and the "flagrant image of human inconsistency" presented by men who had "the Declaration of Independence on their lips and the merciless scourge of slavery in their hands." "Never," he says, "since human sentiments and human conduct were influenced by human speech was there a theme for ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... we note the inconsistency of the sacramentarian theory. It insists on moral goodness in the recipients and ministers of sacraments. But if the rite works of itself, its mechanical performance should be sufficient. But no; goodness is needed ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... Christian, blush! for e'en the dark, Untutored heathen see Thy inconsistency; and, lo! They ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... of the contemners of evangelical truth, characterized by more active zeal and decided measures. Far from the giddy thoughtlessness of those who hardly reflect upon the subject at all, and from the strange inconsistency of such, as profess to respect what they really despise and hate,—these feel and express a deep interest in religious opinions; devote time and attention to theological studies; and, as the result of their investigations, avow their utter disbelief of the peculiar ...
— The National Preacher, Vol. 2 No. 7 Dec. 1827 • Aaron W. Leland and Elihu W. Baldwin
... Robin Hood rescuing Three Squires tells a similar story. This the compiler of the Gest has apparently woven in with the story of the previous fyttes, though he has not done so very thoroughly (e.g., the inconsistency of Robin's question to the knight's wife, 'What man hath your lord i-take?' with his knowledge of the knight's defiance of the sheriff). The compiler has also neatly prepared the way for the introduction of the seventh and eighth fyttes by the knight's appeal to the king; but, having ...
— Ballads of Robin Hood and other Outlaws - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - Fourth Series • Frank Sidgwick
... while he allowed the names of the months, as set down in the Republican calendar, to remain. He commenced by ordering the Moniteur to be dated "Saturday," such a day of "Messidor." "See," said he one day, "was there ever such an inconsistency? We shall be laughed at! But I will do away with the Messidor. I will efface all the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... accusation is built, is of great antiquity, though the superstructure is of very recent date. Were it sufficient for a biographer, who would deal uprightly, merely to contradict the evidence by demonstrating its inconsistency with indisputable facts, the business of refutation in this instance would be brief, as the accusation breaks down in every particular, from whatever point of view we may examine it. But the province ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... This is the inconsistency in almost all Orthodox systems. By dwelling so much on human weakness, they destroy at last the sense ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... reconcile every apparent inconsistency in her conduct, even to the entrusting to a stranger of the stolen secret, the purloined paper she dared not keep about her lest it ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... to move from a path which, after long reflection, he had decided to be the right one. He looked at politics judicially, and was so little of a party man that on several occasions he was accused (quite wrongfully, as I hope hereafter to prove) of gross inconsistency. The position of leadership, which he won so early and kept so long, he held by sheer force of giant intelligence, sleepless industry, and an integrity which no man ever doubted. But he was above all things a man of peace. When in after years, as president ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... considered an aggressor. God preserve Your Excellency many years." To which Jackson replied that "resistance would be a wanton sacrifice of blood," and that he could not but remark on the Governor's inconsistency in presuming himself capable of repelling an army which had conquered Indian tribes admittedly too powerful for the ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... in which men of common minds, with clouded countenance, would say, 'Ah! what is to be done?' It was a treat to see his animated and collected countenance in the heat of action. Sir Alexander remarked this seeming inconsistency, and mentioned that, after the Battle of the Nile, the captains of the squadron were desirous to have a good likeness of their heroic chief taken, and for that purpose employed one of the most eminent painters in Italy. The plan was to ask the painter to breakfast, ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... ye separate.' The very meaning of our Christian profession is separation. There is ludicrous inconsistency in saying that we are Christians and not being pilgrims. Of course, the separation is not to be worked out by mere external asceticism or withdrawal from the world. That has been so thoroughly preached and practised of late years that we much need the other ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... composed of maternal tenderness, childlike inconsistency, torturing jealousy and sublime unselfishness—and how is a man ever going to comprehend ...
— A Guide to Men - Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl • Helen Rowland
... letter says the large Danish dog will arrive on the 15th of February. In chapter 3 the dog arrives on the 15th of March "as the captain's letter had said." Other versions have the same inconsistency. ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... catch the Commissioners in a verbal inconsistency. The inconsistency is real, out of a deep-seated confusion of mind. Lust will seek an expression, they say, until "the hearts of men are changed." All particular expressions are evil and must be constantly repressed. Yet though you repress one form of lust, it will seek some other. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... leaders of the rest of mankind. Plato ridicules the notion that any individuals can corrupt youth to a degree worth speaking of in comparison with the greater influence of public opinion. But there is no real inconsistency between this and other descriptions of the Sophist which occur in the Platonic writings. For Plato is not justifying the Sophists in the passage just quoted, but only representing their power to be contemptible; they ...
— Sophist • Plato
... millions of people of other faiths compels us to revise our methods and to test them by our principles, the principles of a free Church within a free State. Roman Catholics and Jews object to our traditions and charge us with inconsistency. If temporarily we withstand their objections, we feel that a great victory has been won for religion when a psalm is read and the Lord's Prayer said at the opening of the daily session of school. We still have "religion" ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... individual a thorough, searching examination, and it is my firm opinion that he will not bear it. In the mean time we have agents at work, endeavouring to trace this man's past career; and very possibly we may soon discover in that way, some inconsistency in ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... and daring, they combined the rare qualities of magnanimity and urbanity. If they looked with indifference upon private morality, they were keenly sensitive to the feeling of honor and to public morals. If they made mistakes and did not escape the charge of inconsistency in their policy, these venial faults were, for the most part, due to the rapidly changing conditions of the country. No other set of statesmen of Japan or of any other country, ancient or modern, have witnessed within their lifetime so many social and political transformations. They ...
— The Constitutional Development of Japan 1863-1881 • Toyokichi Iyenaga
... Cabin Boy The Political and Biological Objections to Inequality Jesus as Economist Jesus as Biologist Money the Midwife of Scientific Communism Judge Not Limits to Free Will Jesus on Marriage and the Family Why Jesus did not Marry Inconsistency of the Sex Instinct For Better for Worse The Remedy The Case for Marriage Celibacy no Remedy After the Crucifixion The Vindictive Miracles and the Stoning of Stephen Confusion of Christendom Secret of Paul's Success Paul's Qualities Acts of the Apostles The Controversies on Baptism ...
— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw
... is 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
... it may appear paradoxical to mention an inconsistency in the mind of Mr. Vincent which never permitted him to discover the above Cainish mark of outlawry upon a wealthy visitor, of whatever country. In fact, it was with him as with many: riches were a splendid and thick robe that concealed all ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... preceding two decisions invariably elicit judicial condemnation. Thus, when a Michigan judge proceeding as a one-man grand jury concluded that a witness had given false and evasive testimony, not on the basis of anything inherent in the testimony itself, but at least in part upon its inconsistency with other testimony given by a preceding witness, and immediately thereupon suspended his investigation, and committed the witness to jail for contempt, such summary commitment, in the absence of a showing that it was necessary to prevent demoralization ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... then," said Viola, with sweet inconsistency, "that I owe that happiness and safety to his protection? Oh, let me so believe! Be silent, Gionetta! Why have I only thee and my own terrors to consult? O beautiful sun!" and the girl pressed her hand to her heart with wild energy; "thou ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... appeared next year—the year of Vanity Fair. But the author was twenty years older than Thackeray, though she survived him by nearly a dozen; she had not begun early; and she was fifty-five when she wrote Emilia. The not unnatural consequence is that there is a great deal of inconsistency in the general texture of the book: and that any clever cub, in the 'prentice stage of reviewing, could make columns of fun out of it. The general theme is age-old, being not different from the themes of most other novels in that respect. A half-idiotic spendthrift (he ends ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... the scale of things is to be larger, the pace swifter, and the volume and dispersion of this prospective leisure class somewhat wider. The work of this leisure class—and there is neither paradox nor inconsistency in the phrase—should be patterned on the lines worked out by their prototypes of the Victorian time, but with some appreciable accentuation in the direction of what chiefly characterised the leisure class of that era of tranquility. ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... the Liberal Ministry of those days would not do; at all costs they must stick to office, emoluments, patronage, the bestowal of honours, and the control of foreign policy. They clung to power, in fact, at all costs; even inconsistency with the bedrock principle of ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... as chairman of a committee of the Assembly appointed to consider the status of the Sugar Act, favored the commission of Hutchinson as a special agent of the Colony to go to England and present the claims of the colonists, he was accused of inconsistency in opinion and action, and of dereliction of duty as the acknowledged leader of the patriotic party. Combined with the extraordinary appointment of Hutchinson, which however never took effect owing to the opposition of Governor Bernard, Otis was ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... glanced off him. "Why do I suffer such a mean report of myself? Shall I lend myself to gibes of the sort? If they should come again to the water's edge, the ring they might have!" Too large to feel demeaned by an inconsistency, he shouts to them: "Hey, you lively water-beauties! Come quickly! I make you a gift of the ring!" Taking it off, he holds it toward them. This is the point in his fortunes where we perceive the ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... invariable value, but made use of one, as I shall soon show you, which involves what the metaphysicians call a non-ens—or an idea which includes contradictory and self-destroying conditions. Omitting, however, the inconsistency in the idea of real value as conceived by Mr. Malthus, there is this additional error engrafted upon the Smithian definition, that it is extended to "the necessaries and conveniences of life" in general, and no longer confined exclusively to labor. I shall, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 that he owed his discoveries of the aberration ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... confessions of his criminality to a friend, even when the friend condemns him, expatiating upon atrocities that deserved hanging, and justifying his vices on principle, is rather too glaring to be admissible. And by another odd inconsistency, Lovelace is described as being all the time a steady believer in eternal punishment and a rebuker of sceptics—Richardson being apparently of opinion that infidelity would be too bad to be introduced upon the stage, though a vice might be ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... course, succeeded his brother, and then, with the characteristic inconsistency of selfishness and ambition, he employed all the power of his realm in helping the King of France to subdue his younger brother, who was evincing the same spirit of seditiousness and insubmission that he had himself displayed. His ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the middle of the floor, when Carlisle went down, an inconsonant figure amid the showy splendors of the Heth drawing-room. So much appeared to the most casual observation. Far deeper to the understanding eye went the inconsistency of this man's presence here, in an hour of ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... mark their disapproval, some of them immediately withdrew what little custom they had given them: one who had given them none, promised them the whole of hers, the moment they sent the child away; while others, with equal inconsistency, doubled theirs, and did what they could to send them fresh customers: they were a pair of good-natured fools, but they ought not to be let starve! From that time they began to get on a little better. And still as the boy grew, and wanted more, they had the little more. For ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... and his crew disappeared than a body of individuals arrived at the top of the hall, and, placing themselves opposite the Managers, began rating them for their inefficient administration of the island, and expatiated on the inconsistency of their late conduct to the conquering Bombastes. The Managers defended themselves in a manner perfectly in character with their recent behaviour; but their opponents were not easily satisfied with their confused explanations and their explained confusions, and the speeches ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... exceptions which women of her kind are given to making. In general, she firmly believed that everybody who failed to have a saving faith in the vicarious atonement of Christ would be lost. In particular, she excepted many individual cases among her own acquaintance. And the inconsistency between her creed and her applications of it never troubled her. She spoke with so much confidence of the salvation of little Kate, that she comforted Albert somewhat, notwithstanding his entire antagonism to Isa's system of theology. If Albert had ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... the above instructions that, in the king's mind, there was no inconsistency in making the Indians work in the mines and their good treatment. There can be no doubt that both he and Dona Juana, his daughter, who, as heir to her mother, exercised the royal authority with him, sincerely desired the well-being of the natives as far as compatible with the ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... papal 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 History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... course, had forgiven Iris for her aloofness, and Iris, with that delightful inconsistency which ranks high among the many charms of her sex, found that "Philip dear," though she might not marry him, was her only possible companion. He, having acquired an experience previously lacking, took care to fall ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... afford Matter of Speculation, I likewise enter a Minute of it in my Collection of Materials. By this means I frequently carry about me a whole Sheetful of Hints, that would look like a Rhapsody of Nonsense to any Body but myself: There is nothing in them but Obscurity and Confusion, Raving and Inconsistency. In short, they are my Speculations in the first Principles, that (like the World in its Chaos) are void of all Light, Distinction, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... man, that there should be such inconsistency and perfidiousness in his conduct! It is but the other day that we were shedding our blood to obtain the constitutions under which we live—constitutions of our own choice and making—and now we are unsheathing ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... LAW did not fail to point out the inconsistency of condemning the Government scheme for its complexity and then immediately proposing another which would involve not one but a dozen partitions and make the political map of Ireland look like a crazy quilt. He advised the House to reject Mr. ASQUITH'S advice and pass the Bill, even though ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... "Just see that mercury to-day!" And whether toward the top I crawl Or down toward zero I may fall, They always fret, and say that I Am far too low or far too high. Although I try with all my might, I never seem to strike it right. Now I admit it seems to me They show great inconsistency. But they imply I am to blame; Of course that makes my anger flame, And in a fiery fit of pique I stay at ninety for a week. Or sometimes in a dull despair, I give them just a frigid stare; And as upon their taunts I think My spirits down to zero ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... piece of gold 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 ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... in his argument Ricardo constantly assumes that his 'natural price' will also be the real price of labour. The assumption that the labourers' wages tend to a minimum is a base for his general arguments. The inconsistency, if there be one, is easily intelligible. Ricardo agreed with Malthus that, though the standard might be raised, and though a rise was the only way to improvement, the chances of such a rise were not encouraging. Improved wages, as he says,[346] might enable the labourer to live more ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... beauties, pointing out to her 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 she had ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... characteristics and habits so divergent that the casual observer fails to recognise the least signs of relationship. Similar confusion arises in the case of plants of the same species producing foliage of varied form. One of the figs (FICUS OPPOSITA) displays such remarkable inconsistency that until reassured by many examples it is difficult to credit an undoubted fact. The typical leaf is oblong elliptical, while individual plants produce lanceolate leaves with two short lateral lobes, with many intermediate forms. ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... hope that Colonel House, to whom I had shown the letter and memoranda which I had sent to the President, would be so impressed with the inconsistency of favoring the affirmative guaranty and of opposing the doctrine of "the balance of power," that he would exert his influence with the President to persuade him to find a substitute for the guaranty which ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... the fervent ejaculation of my lips; such, in spite of its seeming inconsistency, was the real belief within my soul. What was it, then, that I did doubt? wherefore, then, the misery, the suspense, the suspicion, which grew and gathered, corroding in my heart, the parent of a thousand unnamed anxieties? It will be difficult to answer. The heart of ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... the two sovereigns was such as their respective positions demanded, but was yet very cool." Thiers describes the Emperor Francis as opening his arms almost sincerely to his son-in-law, displaying a sort of inconsistency, which is more frequent than is generally imagined, torn between delight at seeing his daughter so exalted and pain at Austria's losses; promising Napoleon his assistance after having promised Alexander ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Napoleon's pistol a toy pistol even while it was holding up their coach and mastering their money or their lives; they called his sword a stage sword even while they ran away from it. Something of the same senile inconsistency can be found in an English and American habit common until recently: that of painting the South Americans at once as ruffians wading in carnage, and also as poltroons playing at war. They blame them first for ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... sight this may seem to conflict with what was said in Part I., chap. x. But there is no real inconsistency. As pointed out there, there is no reason to think that Nature, left to herself, would ever produce a universal language, or that a simpler language would win, in a struggle with more complex ones, on account of its simplicity. But ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... be denied, that in this instance, Calvin acted contrary to the benignant spirit of the gospel. It is better to drop a tear over the inconsistency of human nature, and to bewail those infirmities which cannot be justified. He declares he acted conscientiously, and publicly justified the act. Cranmer acted the same part towards the poor Anabaptists in the reign of Edward VI. This ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... 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 ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... the Honor of our Navy or the great Cause we are contending for. Neither he nor his Friends could be at a loss for the true Cause of his Disappointment, if they would advert to the Judgment of the Court Martial which acquitted him with Honor. What a strange Inconsistency was there in that Court, in recommending Cap Manly for another Ship, and at the same Time holding up so great a Deficiency in his Conduct as the neglecting to prepare Signals for a Fleet under his Direction, and in general his Want of Experience. This was said by ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... movement. It can well be imagined, therefore, how intense was his surprise when he later received a warning from the Japanese Government against the resuscitation of the monarchy in China. When this inconsistency in the Marquis's actions was called in question in the Japanese House of Representatives, the ex-Premier absolutely denied the truth of the statement attributed to him by the Japanese papers, without any show of hesitancy, and thus boldly ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... inequality, contrast, disparity, divergence, unlikeness, disagreement, dissimilarity, diversity, variation, discrepancy, dissimilitude, inconsistency, variety. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... universally learned, and tell us, at the same time, in capital letters, that SIR CH. GRAN. is a CHRISTIAN; and that too, in the strictest and most bigotted sense of the word; for he refuses the woman he loves, for a difference in religious principles. This, in my humble opinion, is likewise an inconsistency, for universal learning naturally leads to scepticism, and the most useful, as well as solid branch of human knowledge, consists in knowing how little can be known. There are several other inconsistencies in his character, particularly in some of his duelling stories; besides, at any rate, his ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... horrors—there, it is all out. Why, he is as sensational as 'Jane Eyre,' this new English novel I am just reading," drawing it from under her pillow and holding it aloft as she spoke. "Currer Bell is not more mysteriously awful, but Garth is not artistic. I detected his intention by the inconsistency of his expression of face, which bore no part in his narrative, and at once ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... tending towards such a materialistic conclusion. This is the view which many scientific investigators have themselves taken of their work; and some of their philosophical exponents, notably Mr. Herbert Spencer, have, with more or less inconsistency, interpreted the idea of evolution in this manner. But, it may be well to bear in mind that science is generally far more successful in employing its constructive ideas, than it is in rendering an account ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... in a jesting manner, and punished him for this jealousy, she, herself, with all the inconsistency of a lover, fell into the same fault, and could not hide from him the jealous fears which the ladies from Brescia, especially the beautiful Madame de Te——, had created within her mind. Bonaparte answered ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... admittedly are unready; an acceptance of new things on popular report, without scientific basis, and a lack of courage to maintain the truth for its own sake, in the face of so-called authority, and a craving to be modern. At the root of all this inconsistency and possibly its cause, is the lack of a guiding policy or aim, the lack of belief in the scientific or psychological basis of education, and consequently the want of that strong belief in absolute truth which helps the teacher ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... elapsed, there still appeared to be no immediate prospect of the occupancy of the new house, public opinion experienced a singular change in regard to its theories of Mr. Hawkins's conduct. The "Hag" was looked upon as a saint-like and long-suffering martyr to the weaknesses and inconsistency of the "Fool." That, after erecting this new house at her request, he had suddenly "gone back" on her; that his celibacy was the result of a long habit of weak proposal and subsequent shameless rejection; and that he was now ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... of his other qualities, like the contrast which ultimately appeared between his sacerdotal tendencies and his political liberalism, contributed to make his character perplexing and to expose his conduct to the charge of inconsistency. Inconsistent, in the ordinary sense of the word, he was not, much less changeable. He was really, in the main features of his political convictions and the main habits of his mind, one of the most tenacious and persistent of men. But there were always at work in him two tendencies. ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... what Mr. Lodge demanded should and must be done when Mr. Wilson brought back the peace treaty. Inconsistency, as I have before remarked, Mr. Lodge cares nothing about, but his patriotism and partisanship are so inextricably intertwined that it is always difficult to discover whether in his loftiest flights it is the patriot who pleads or ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... 10. Note inconsistency in spelling: text has "Tysczkievcz", index has "Tysczkievez"; most likely meant to be ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... observes that the man had never divined about the matter, and said that he had done so only to complete the process of seduction. The critics dwell on the inconsistency of divination being resorted to in such a case:—'Divination is proper only if used in reference to ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... was so sensibly touched at the prospect of the approaching distress with which her friend was threatened, that she burst into tears and uttered some exclamations concerning 'the inconsistency of that affection, which could suffer a man to rest a moment without securing a provision in case of death, to a young woman he seemed to love with the greatest excess of tenderness'. 'Believe me, madam,' said the young gentleman, 'Mr Hintman was capable of no love that was ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... it changed to one that pleased me still better (which I won't describe) when our eyes met. You, you unbelieving dog, think that because she is "strong-minded" she must be repulsive and immodest. But there is a charming inconsistency about female ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... 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 in position. ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... it," says she. She looks round her cautiously, in the funniest little way, as if expecting enemies in the bushes near her. Then she hesitates. "After all, I won't," says she, with the most delightful inconsistency. "It wouldn't be a ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... was always fair in his comparisons and judgments, and whether he did not overlook elements of the gravest importance in the inquiry; whether, in fact, save for certain strong and broad lines common to the whole historic Church, the reign of anomaly, inconsistency, difficulty did not extend much farther over the whole field of debate than he chose to admit: all this is fairly open to question. But within the limits which he laid down, and within which he confined his ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... about the Congo River is its inconsistency. Although six miles wide in many parts it is frequently not more than six feet deep. This makes navigation dangerous and difficult. As on the Lualaba and every other river in the Colony, soundings must be ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... would have more astonished me at any time in my business life than to be told that I was systematically impairing and obstructing the usefulness of the men that I was paying to work for me and from whose labor I expected some profit. It is the most inexplicable inconsistency to me in congregations, which generally include a large percentage of business men. I have used the word systematically, because it seems to me that it is a system which pervades to a greater or less extent all congregations ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... be received by our progenitors were it possible for them to be now looking over my shoulder? These men, I say, theorize; and their theories are simply corrected, reduced, systematized—cleared, little by little, of their dross of inconsistency—until, finally, a perfect consistency stands apparent which even the most stolid admit, because it is a consistency, to be an absolute ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Account of the Doctrine of Christ, and the Primitive Church, with Respect to the Eucharist, shewing the Inconsistency of a late Sacramental Piece, called a plain ...
— The Annual Catalogue (1737) - Or, A New and Compleat List of All The New Books, New - Editions of Books, Pamphlets, &c. • J. Worrall
... chlorine is as strongly electro-negative. Hence the compound radical which united successively with these two elements must itself be at one time electro-positive, at another electro-negative—a seeming inconsistency which threw the entire Berzelian ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... this inconsistency: here is a Parisian who likes his city so little that he seeks out the most deserted nook to live in, the quietest, the least frequented, the spot that is most like a provincial retreat. He has a horror of the Boulevards, ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... 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 contempt for the customs of ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... thus uselessly playing the hypocrite, when amatory and bacchanalian choruses would not only have been more consonant with his own feelings, but doubtless more acceptable to the world? She had not yet learned what it often takes the wisest man a lifetime to discover—that every inconsistency of conduct is not hypocrisy, but that it is one of the most common idiosyncrasies of the mind to write and believe one thing, and as self-approvingly to feel and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Emily had been irate then, and all the more when her mother tried to cover her inconsistency by alleging that everybody knew of Lord Torwood's fall, whereas no one knew or cared who Francis Dayman was, or where he came from. Henceforth Emily's shame at the usage of Fulk had been double—or rather it turned ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to," and Margaret laughed through her tears at her own inconsistency. "Besides, Dora wants me to help him get a place, and I must do that; and then, sure, miss, do you think I'd let him know that I cared a farthin' fer him? Not a bit of it!" and Maggie pushed back her hair and ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... which had induced them to make peace with Philip, after experiencing the unprofitableness of an alliance with the Romans, should engage them to preserve it now that it was established. "Do you rather choose," said one of the ambassadors, "to imitate the inconsistency, or levity, shall I call it, of the Romans, who ordered this answer to be given to your ambassadors at Rome: 'Why, Aetolians, do you apply to us, when, without our approbation, you have made peace with Philip?' Yet these ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... built a commonwealth on the foundation of manhood. They recognized no other qualification, save for a period of inconsistency, color; which, happily, is now wiped out of the fundamental law, though not ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... him of inconsistency in externals. With his shaggy sandy hair, his great red face, covered with freckles, his long loose figure, clad in red French breeches a size too small, a threadbare brown coat, soiled linen and hose, and enormous hands and feet, he must have astounded the courtly ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... home (to show my inconsistency in regard to generalizing) is the place where prejudice is born, nourished, and grown to its fullest proportions. The child born and reared in a home is exposed to the contagion of whatever silliness and prejudice actuate the lives and dominate the thought and feeling of its parents. ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... so-called educated classes can persevere, on the one hand, in declaring belief in a personal God to be an indispensable principle of religion, and, on the other hand, in at the same time rejecting the belief in a personal devil as an exploded superstition of the Middle Ages. This inconsistency on the part of educated Christians is all the more incomprehensible and censurable, inasmuch as both dogmas in equal degree form an integral part of the Christian creed. The personal devil, as "Satan," "the Tempter," ...
— Monism as Connecting Religion and Science • Ernst Haeckel
... of this praiseworthy object, Alphonse Giraud wore a mustache only, and this—oh! inconsistency of great minds—he laboriously twirled heavenwards in the French fashion. It was, in fact, the guileless Alphonse's chief tribulation that, however industriously he cultivated that devil-may-care upward sweep, the sparse ornament to his upper lip invariably drooped downwards again ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... cloak, forgetting, with his characteristical inconsistency, that he showed his shirt ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... was pleased with the idea of a possible marriage of such distinction for her daughter, which would give her just the position she counted her fit for. These mutually destructive considerations were, with whatever logical inconsistency, both certainly operative in her. Then again, they knew nothing against the young man! He made himself agreeable to every one in the house. In Addison Square he showed scarce the faintest shadow of the manner which made him ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... defeat at the deliberations of the theologians on the question in which articles concessions might be made in the interest of peace, saying that the unlearned and the more vehement would not hear of concessions, since the Lutherans would then be charged with inconsistency and the Emperor would only increase his demands. (C. R. 3, 292.) Evidently then, even at that time Melanchthon was not entirely cured ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... leads us inevitably to the question, Why are criminals created at all? Why are idiots created? The deeper we look into the facts of life the more unsatisfactory does the theory of special creation become because we find a thousand things that contradict it and show its inconsistency. If the purpose of God was to create a heaven to be enjoyed by those who reach it we cannot see why He should create a humanity the majority of which is incapable of ever attaining it. If He creates them ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... respect for the African race. In this spirit he wrote to Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State under Washington, transmitting a manuscript copy of his almanac. The letter is a fervent appeal for the down-trodden negro, and a protest against the injustice and inconsistency of the United States toward that color. Mr. Jefferson's reply ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... intended or not is immaterial. 2. An intended property or behavior (as of a program). Whether it is good or not is immaterial (but if bad, it is also a {misfeature}). 3. A surprising property or behavior; in particular, one that is purposely inconsistent because it works better that way — such an inconsistency is therefore a {feature} and not a {bug}. This kind of feature is sometimes called a {miswart}; see that entry for a classic example. 4. A property or behavior that is gratuitous or unnecessary, though perhaps also impressive or cute. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... recognize the Unions but being unwilling to be controlled by them, most of us find ourselves taking sides very quickly. We are often amazed to see how quickly we take sides, and what amazes some of us most is our apparent inconsistency. We find ourselves now on the Union side and now on the employer side in the dispute between Capital and Labour. We never know when we take up the morning paper, some of us, which side will be our next; and very often, if we were suddenly asked why, on reading quietly about a new dispute in the ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... if it could have been proved, that Christianity had been fatal in the way of a magical charm to the Oracles of the world, would have proved nothing but a perplexing inconsistency, so long as the fathers were obliged to confess that Paganism itself, as a gross total, as the parent superstition (sure to reproduce Oracles faster than they could be extinguished), had been suffered to exist for many centuries concurrently with Christianity, and had finally been overthrown by ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... to take it by the hands in a spirit of friendship. We have been told that the long stagnation has been caused by the absurd scruples of the pendulum, which refused to go from side to side, lest it should be accused of inconsistency.' Under the different months, 'PUNCH'S Almanack' gives many important directions, one of which is for the proprietors of the public gardens: 'Now trim your lamps, water your lake, graft new noses on statues, plant your money-taker, and if the season be ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. My own opinion is, that a calm comparison of these assertions of universal abstract truths, and of their own individual opinions and acts, would not leave these men under any reproach of inconsistency; that the great truths they asserted on that solemn occasion they were ready and anxious to make effectual; wherever a necessary regard to circumstances, which no statesman can disregard without producing more evil than good, would allow; and that it would not be just to them, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... 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 ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... that right from fear of losing the parliamentary support of the Romanists, their bill was seen by the public to be a sham. This circumstance, taken in connection with the premier's vehement letter to the Bishop of Durham, threw an imputation of inconsistency and insincerity upon the political character of Lord John Russell, which impaired his subsequent ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... with the world warm about her. And he well knew why his Nataly had her look of a closed vault (threatening, if opened, to thunder upon Life) when he dropped his further hints. He chose to call it feminine inconsistency, in a woman who walked abroad with a basket of marriage-ties for the market on her arm. He knew that she would soon have to speak the dark words to their girl; and the idea of any doing of it, caught at his throat. Reasonably ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... security, leisure, independence, and love of honest work, but the hope of migrating to the middle class, and becoming a capitalist on a small scale. That was the last thing that Morris desired. Most of all he felt the charge of inconsistency that was dinned into his ears. It was held ridiculous that a wealthy capitalist and a large employer of labour, living, if not in luxury, at least in considerable stateliness, should profess Socialist ideas without attempting to disencumber himself of his wealth. He wrote ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... replied; 'I retain its complete exercise. To the proof: instead of attempting to cloak my inconsistency, I have, by way of preparing you, thrown it into strong relief. You will there, I think, recognise the philosopher who has the ecstasy to call you wife. The fact is, I have been reckoning all this while without an accident. ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... pathognomonic symptom of stupor conditions, there are other mood anomalies to be noted. One of these is the tendency for inconsistency in, as well as reduction of, the expression of emotion. For instance, in the states where one would expect anxiety during the onset of stupor or in its interruptions, manifestation of this anxiety is often reduced to an expression of dazed bewilderment. In the anxiety ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... the circus who rode several horses at a time. In the case I allude to, he set up no less than seven defences to account for the unhappy duck's finding its way into his client's pocket, and the charm of them all was their variety. Inconsistency was not the word to apply reproachfully. Inconsistency was Codd's merit. He was like a conjurer who asks you to name a card, and as surely as you do so you draw ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... deputation of wig-makers waited on George III. to protest against the hair-powder-tax, the mob, seeing that one of them wore his own hair, ducked him forthwith in Tower-Ditch,—a very Anglo-Saxon comment on his inconsistency. We should not have noticed these passages in Mr. Bartlett's Introduction, had he not, after eleven years' time to weigh them in, let them remain as they stood in his former edition, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... thoroughgoing Wesleyan, who sometimes fancies that the condition of souls is so desperate as to leave no time for good manners. Mr. Calvert had no fault to find with Stevens's civility, but there was certainly an inconsistency between his deportment now, and those characteristics which were to be predicated of the manner and mode of his very recent conversion. Besides, there was the story of the brandy-flask, in which Calvert saw much less of honor either to John ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... be that a long list of inconsistencies might be made out for any country, just as for any individual; but so far as my knowledge goes the United States stands out as preeminently the "Land of Contrasts"—the land of stark, staring, and stimulating inconsistency; at once the home of enlightenment and the happy hunting ground of the charlatan and the quack; a land in which nothing happens but the unexpected; the home of Hyperion, but no less the haunt of the satyr; always the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... her 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 ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... fantastic side of America, I allow beforehand that some of it may be meant to be fantastic. And indeed it is very difficult to believe that some of it is meant to be serious. But whether or no there is a joke, there is certainly an inconsistency; and it is an inconsistency in the moral make-up of America which both puzzles ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... are obliged to condemn, have thought fit to renew the Company's old order against contracting private debts in future. They begin by rewarding the violation of the ancient law; and then they gravely reenact provisions, of which they have given bounties for the breach. This inconsistency has been well exposed.[51] But what will you say to their having gone the length of giving positive directions for contracting the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the usage or acknowledgment of nations. According to these a belligerent takes to itself a commerce with its own enemy which it denies to a neutral on the ground of its aiding that enemy in the war; but reason revolts at such inconsistency, and the neutral having equal right with the belligerent to decide the question, the interests of our constituents and the duty of maintaining the authority of reason, the only umpire between just nations, impose on us the obligation of providing an effectual and ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Thomas Jefferson • Thomas Jefferson
... After their inconsistency and vacillation upon so important a subject as the Divorce clause, and voting against their own declared opinion on a measure which they had themselves originated, what dependence could we, small as could ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... of their Father as imprudent. The vicar-general, nevertheless, in conjunction with the ministers, made some regulations for the government of the provinces which were very useful; but, by a strange inconsistency, at the time when they were talking of modifications, they prescribed total abstinence from meat, and forbade its use either in or out of the cloisters, which was a direct contradiction of the rule, which ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... the discredit with which Pleydell had treated it. 'Assuredly,' thought Sampson to himself, 'he is a man of erudition, and well skilled in the weighty matters of the law; but he is also a man of humorous levity and inconsistency of speech, and wherefore should he pronounce ex cathedra, as it were, on the hope expressed by worthy ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... if possible, still more astonished. Having counted on general Marion as his firmest foe, they were utterly mortified to find him his fastest friend, and, venting their passion with great freedom, taxed him with inconsistency and fickleness that but illy suited with general ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... accorded to my brother's congregation, of singing his magnificent hymns." By this time the whole house came down in a perfect roar, and the confused blush on Bonar's face puzzled us—whether it was on account of the compliment, or on account of his own inconsistency. However, before his death he consented to have his own congregation sing his own hymns, although it is said that two pragmatical elders rose and strode indignantly down the aisle of ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... themselves with him for the purpose of driving from office a statesman with whom they cannot be said to have differed as to any important question. Nor had they even the prudence and the patience to wait for some occasion on which they might, without inconsistency, have combined with their old enemies in opposition to the government. That nothing might be wanting to the scandal, the great orators, who had, during seven years, thundered against the war, determined ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... extinct Dinornis, where again we meet in this particular with a sudden and sublime indifference to the maintenance of a typical structure. (Fig. 6.)[4] Now I say that if the theory of ideal types is true, we have in these facts evidence of a most unreasonable inconsistency. But the theory of descent with continued adaptive modification fully explains all the known cases; for in every case the degree of divergence from the typical structure which an organism presents corresponds, in a general ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... not fail to point out the inconsistency of condemning the Government scheme for its complexity and then immediately proposing another which would involve not one but a dozen partitions and make the political map of Ireland look like a crazy quilt. He advised the House to reject Mr. ASQUITH'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 7, 1920 • Various
... of addressing public audiences four times in my whole life, and but four—two of these were in favour of Old Tip, in 1840, and the other two upon the subject of temperance. I am well aware that there are many persons who would look upon it as a sort of inconsistency that a man, occupying my position, should be the honest advocate of temperance—but they so reason because they are uninformed in regard to the higher order ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... its immorality—the bishop's death-bed is surrounded by his natural sons and the wealth he leaves has been purchased by every kind of iniquity—its pride of life; its luxury; its semi-Paganism; its imitative classicism; its inconsistency; its love of jewels, and fine stones, and rich marbles; its jealousy and envy; its pleasure in the adornment of death; its delight in the outsides of things, in mere workmanship; its loss of originality; its love of ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... nevertheless considered the only distinction a woman could achieve was through their favourable notice—an attitude of mind produced by moral and social codes so effectively calculated to foster immoral and untenable inconsistency! ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... was in sarcastic allusion to the inconsistency of a religious order being an immensely wealthy organization, while its individual members were vowed to poverty. News, published everywhere except in the Philippines, of losses sustained in outside commercial enterprises running into the millions, ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... 3. The inconsistency of capitalization (e.g., Sub-section/sub-section, Sergeant/sergeant) and punctuation (mostly inside/outside quotation marks) are ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... way," he added, significantly. I did not pause to reflect that the Colonel's attitude, from his point of view (yes, and from mine,—had I not adopted it?) was the logical one. In that philosophy every man had his price, or his weakness. Yet, such is the inconsistency of human nature, I was now unable to contemplate ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... with the Central Empires, to be followed by a mobilization, marked the end of Greek neutrality. King Alexander, as yet a novice in statecraft, expressed surprise at the inconsistency between these acts and the repeated assurances given to the Greek people. He was told that the accession of M. Venizelos could mean nothing else but war: his Majesty knew it: having accepted Venizelos, he must ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... for the figure. It was very plain that Miss Trevor was radiantly happy; she was easily the handsomest girl in the room, and I could not help philosophizing when I saw her looking up into the Celebrity's eyes upon the seeming inconsistency of nature, who has armed and warned woman against all but ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... invincible." The anger of the old man vanished at once: he now thought only how he might console his son for the affront put upon him, and he gave him back his power, exhorting him only to conduct himself with more moderation and gentleness towards his subjects. All was inconsistency and contrast with these robust, rough, hasty souls; they cared little for belying themselves when they had satisfied the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... notice her inconsistency. "Yes, the wilderness is all right for a vacation, but I prefer Chicago for ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies. Accordingly he stands stoutly by the planters and the feudal scheme of subordination, whose annihilation he maintains would 'shut the gates of mercy on mankind.' For his apparent inconsistency Burke is attacked:— ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... of the recent war have the European nations been forced to wipe out the stain of illegitimacy, and in America we are still blind to this necessity. Only Scandinavia, under the leadership of such minds as Ellen Key's, was roused to this inconsistency in the mores without external pressure, and enacted legislation concerning illegitimacy which may well serve as a model to the whole world. The main points of the Norwegian Castberg bill are as follows: The child whose parents are unmarried has a ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... his Epistles be arranged in chronological order, it will easily be seen that there is a splendid growth in his theology from first to last. He never, indeed, gave up the doctrines of his earlier life; there is no inconsistency between one part of his writings and another; but neither his experience nor his thinking ever stood still; he made his first doctrines the foundations on which he reared a structure which was rising higher and higher to the very close ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... all rotten," she said bitterly, then added with feminine inconsistency, "Go on, Dan, be a darling. Fix it so I can speak to him without the old man ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... to the physical superiority of the North, or the necessity of peace and quiet to enable the new generation of Southerners to restore their fortunes, or even gain a livelihood. Nor was it easy to impress them with the inconsistency of arguing that it was slavery which made Southerners what they were before they went to war, and maintaining at the same time that the disappearance of slavery would produce no change in their manners, ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... always fair in his comparisons and judgments, and whether he did not overlook elements of the gravest importance in the inquiry; whether, in fact, save for certain strong and broad lines common to the whole historic Church, the reign of anomaly, inconsistency, difficulty did not extend much farther over the whole field of debate than he chose to admit: all this is fairly open to question. But within the limits which he laid down, and within which he confined his reasonings, he used his materials with skill and force; and even those who least agreed with ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... An apparent inconsistency in references to the major divisions of the University may be noted by some readers. These are sometimes referred to as "Departments" and sometimes as "Schools" or "Colleges," as the case may be. This arises from the fact that the official nomenclature was ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... defiance, on her face when my eyes fell on her, and it changed to one that pleased me still better (which I won't describe) when our eyes met. You, you unbelieving dog, think that because she is "strong-minded" she must be repulsive and immodest. But there is a charming inconsistency about female human nature. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... one else in the house represented law and order to him—Elise was the spirit of outlawry, and he her slave. She taught him a dance of her own invention entitled 'The Devil and the Maiden' (with a certain inconsistency casting him as the maiden and herself as the Devil), and frequently, when ordered to go to bed, they would descend to the servants' quarters and perform it to the great delight of the ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... matron—"Know, youth, that a mother knows not hunger till that of her child is satisfied." And with affectionate inconsistency, totally different from her usual manner, she added, "Roland, you must not fast; you have dispensation; you are young, and to youth food and sleep are necessaries not to be dispensed with. Husband your strength, my child,—your sovereign, your religion, your country, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... like that," I said, and I won my neighbor's easy laugh, "I always like to give my own sex the benefit of the doubt, and I haven't any question but man's inconsistency is always attributable ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... the Dunciad still lives; ay, in spite of seeming inconsistency, we declare it to be immortal. For, build with what materials she may, the works of genius that stand in the world of thought survive all time's mutations, cemented by a spirit she alone can interfuse. It must not be said that a poem shelved is dead and buried. Open it at midnight, and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... to be caught in an inconsistency!" he answered. "I've been afraid, though, that this desire to roost in one place was a sign of incipient ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... interfere once every thousand years), must needs have been instituted by the devil. And so more than one girl in that nunnery, and out of it, too, believed in her inmost heart, though her 'Catholic principles,' by a happy inconsistency, forbade ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... begin to rave, and insensibly[96] led him towards the house, that we might be joined by some other company; and am convinced that the widow is the secret cause of all that inconsistency which appears in some parts of my friend's discourse, though he has so much command of himself as not directly to mention her, yet according to that of Martial[97], which one knows not how to render into English, Dum tacet hanc loquitur. I shall ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... his name—lived, 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 we always divested ourselves of all hypocrisy when we were alone. We then dropped ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... 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 relative ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... chapters on this subject[190] one wonders at the absence of the sense of proportion. Perhaps it was necessary, considering the place which the Hebrew tradition occupies in civilised thought, to show its utter inconsistency with the facts of nature, but it was equally necessary to show that it has its place in the history of human thought. The folklorist replaces it among the myths of creation, and then proceeds to analyse and value it. The Hebrew is shown by the myth he adopted to have frankly ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... quarrels arise which in the eye of wives give an air of tyranny to husbands. The tyranny of a husband is always a terrible excuse for inconsistency in a wife. Then, in their frivolous discussions they are enabled to prove to their families and to ours, to everybody and to ourselves, that we are in the wrong. If, for the sake of peace, or from love, you acknowledge the pretended rights of women, you yield ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... termed the pedantry of costume. "When playing Buridan, in the Tour de Nesle, he appeared 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... a fatal inconsistency when, in spite of his assumption that this poem is the very word of Krishna spoken at a particular time, in a particular place, he informs us that "all Indian authorities agree in pronouncing it to ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... of evading the responsibility of such inconsistency. The first is by an appeal to the Society's Constitution, and by claiming to interpret it strictly in accordance with the rules of law as applied to contracts, whether between individuals or States. The second ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... the Elders have 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 ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... INCONSISTENCY'S paper is too much like a schoolgirl's composition for our pages; but she evidently tries to think, which is more ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 356, October 23, 1886. • Various
... to be seen until the tent of Miriam was struck. She knew that Kenkenes was without, waiting for her, and with the delightful inconsistency of maidenhood, she dreaded while she longed to meet her beloved again. And when the moment arrived she slipped across the open space to the camel that was to bear her into Canaan, but in the shadow of the faithful creature, Kenkenes overtook her and ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... them of extravagance. Yet that did not prevent him to-day from saying that the War Office should be more generous in their financial treatment of the Territorial Force, and particularly of the Cadet Corps. Naturally Lord Peel did not refrain from calling attention to this inconsistency—common to most of the financial critics of the Administration—but nevertheless he made a reply indicating that the grants for the Territorial Force were being revised, presumably in an upward direction, since Lord O'Hagan ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... happiness, makes a mind which stands in need of variety, to shudder with fear. It is only when there is little wind in the sails, that we can keep close to shore; but the imagination roves at large, although affection be constant; it is so, at least, till the moment when misfortune makes every inconsistency disappear, and leaves but one thought and one grief in ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... I have thought that there is some inconsistency in our common mode of teaching languages. We are told that it is proper to begin first with the Latin, and, having acquir'd that, it will be more easy to attain those modern languages which are deriv'd from it; and yet we do not ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... 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 ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... much inconsistency in the passages of the poem in which the Vanars are spoken of, which seems to point to two widely different legends. The Vanars are generally represented as semi-divine beings with preternatural powers, living in houses and eating and ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... these is not a man in the world who hates and detests tyrants and tyranny more than I do; yet I trust that I may, nevertheless, be permitted to admire certain traits in the character of the brave and murdered Napoleon, without being justly accused of inconsistency. If I am asked whether I should like to live under such a tyrant and such a tyranny as existed in France, during the latter days of Napoleon's reign, I answer NO. But if I must submit to a tyrant, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... an ambassador to her Diet. When this inconsistency was remarked to him, he replied, that "that nomination was an act of war, which only bound him during the war, while by his words he would be bound both in war and peace." Thus it was, that he made no other reply to the enthusiasm of the Lithuanians than evasive ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... early led him to try and raise the devil and make him speak. He left nothing untried, even the wildest reading, to persuade himself there was no God; and yet believed meanwhile in the devil, and hoped to see him and converse with him! This inconsistency is hard to understand, and yet is extremely common. He worked with all sorts of obscure people; and above all with Mirepoix, sublieutenant of the Black Musketeers, to find out Satan. They passed whole nights in the quarries ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... preceding facts it appears that in this branch of the Company's government little regard has been paid to the ease and welfare of the natives, and that the Directors have nowhere shown greater inconsistency than in their orders on this subject. Yet salt, considering it as a necessary of life, was by no means a safe and proper subject for so many experiments and innovations. For ten years together ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... rendering any further declaration of his principles unnecessary. Not so Mr. Cobbett. What he has written is no rule to him what he is to write maintain the opinions of the last six days against friend or foe. I doubt whether this outrageous inconsistency, this headstrong fickleness, this understood want of all rule and method, does not enable him to go on with the spirit, vigour, and variety that he does. He is not pledged to repeat himself. Every ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... table, while Fielding said pointedly, 'Yes, Captain, you deserve your holidays,' and he emphasised the word. The Captain caught the allusion and laughed heartily. It was evident that he saw no inconsistency between the epigram and his professed ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... origin of what looks like folly; at home, on its native soil, it was found to be justifiable, as a proper growth of wisdom. In the vast conflict of taste, preference, conviction, there was no real inconsistency. It was but that the soul looked "upon things with [93] another eye, and represented them to itself with another kind of face; reason being a tincture almost equally infused into all our manners and opinions; though there ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... often been said that we have two souls. Araspes, in the Cyropedia, adopts this language to explain his inconsistency, and desertion of principle and honour. The two souls of man, according to this hypothesis, are, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... spy he had hated, though he 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
... readable of his generation. He has the allurement of his own inconsistency, and the inconsistency of youth is its questing spirit, and, consequently, its ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... In apparent inconsistency with this declining state of belief in the higher classes, the multitude, without concern, indulged in the most surprising superstitions. With them it was an age of relics, of weeping statues, and winking pictures. The ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... standing there, encircled by, pigeons and forgotten by his fellow man, that there came to him a spiritual revelation. "Strange!" he thought; "I notice a certain inconsistency in myself, and even in my utterances. I am two men, one of whom is me and one not me; and the one which is not me is the one which causes me to fall into the arms of policemen and other troubles. The one which is me loves these pigeons, and desires ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... for me! O Emily—how sweet—how bitter are those words; what comfort, what anguish do they give! I ought not to doubt the steadiness of your affection, yet such is the inconsistency of real love, that it is always awake to suspicion, however unreasonable; always requiring new assurances from the object of its interest, and thus it is, that I always feel revived, as by a new conviction, when your words tell me I am dear to you; ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Coriolanus or of Brutus, "the high Roman fashion" of austere and heroic self-respect. In the other leading or dominant figure of this tragedy there is certainly discernible a genuine and thoughtful originality or freshness of conception; but perhaps there is also recognizable a certain inconsistency of touch. It was well thought of to mingle some alloy of goodness with the wickedness of Appius Claudius, to represent the treacherous and lecherous decemvir as neither kindless nor remorseless, but capable of penitence and courage in his last hour. But Shakespeare, I cannot but think, would have ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... to thank God for their sickness and pain—at the same time naively praying Him to take back His gift. This inconsistency was due to a combination of ignorance and the good old human foible of blaming some one else. Folks did not know then, as well as they do now, that they had the stomachache because they were too fond of rich dainties. The cause ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... mood of philosophic calm, in which he was prepared to spend his evenings alone—as became a grub—and to await with dignified patience the return of his wife, it was in the nature of an inconsistency that he should have walked the floor of the dull little drawing-room like a lion in cage. It did not seem in keeping with the position of superior serenity which he had assumed, that, reading Babette's notes, he should have ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... appear, therefore, that there is need for great care and watchfulness in the management of Indian affairs. That same inconsistency of character and absence of definite aim, which are such notable Anglo-Saxon qualities and which adapt themselves so admirably to the requirements of Imperial rule, may in some respects constitute an additional ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... order that he might reign in his stead; that is, he was doing exactly that which Edward had charged upon his brother Clarence, and for which he had caused Clarence to be killed; and yet, with strange inconsistency, Edward espoused the cause of this Clarence of Scotland, and laid deep plans for enabling him to depose and ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... a man who, in early life, rejected all generalities and abstract propositions, and who became the most strenuous and violent of conservatives. But there is an interval when, as the quarrel with the Colonies went on, Burke was as revolutionary as Washington. The inconsistency is not as flagrant as it seems. He had been brought forward by the party of measured propriety and imperative moderation, of compromise and unfinished thought, who claimed the right of taxing, but refused to employ it. When he urged the differences in every situation and every problem, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... distinction, inequality, contrast, disparity, divergence, unlikeness, disagreement, dissimilarity, diversity, variation, discrepancy, dissimilitude, inconsistency, variety. ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... There was an inconsistency in this affair, however, and Mrs. Vanderlyn thought herself a veritable Sherlock Holmes as she pounced on it. "But that note from Anna?" ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... reached here with the soldiers from Campania, Antony would certainly have come rushing from Brundusium instanter, just as he was, and would have burst into our city with all his armies like a winter torrent?[13] There is, moreover, a striking inconsistency in our conduct. Men who have long been campaigning voluntarily have put themselves at your service for the present crisis, regarding neither their age nor the wounds which they received in past years while fighting ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... thing!" Malcolm said, with his favourite air of detecting an inconsistency. "You want to work? Well and good, go ahead and do it! But don't expect me to tell you what to do. Your mother may have some idea. Your grandmother—and she was the loveliest woman I ever knew!—was ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... willing to recognize the Unions but being unwilling to be controlled by them, most of us find ourselves taking sides very quickly. We are often amazed to see how quickly we take sides, and what amazes some of us most is our apparent inconsistency. We find ourselves now on the Union side and now on the employer side in the dispute between Capital and Labour. We never know when we take up the morning paper, some of us, which side will be our next; and very often, if we ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... fishing grounds, unmolested highways of commerce, vineyards free from the tramp of armies. And with their desires fixed on these as needful, their attitude towards the political centralisation planned by their common ruler, often betrayed both ignorance and inconsistency. At various epochs some degree of imperialism for the Netherland group had been quite to popular taste. In Holland, Zealand and Hainaut, it had been conceded that Jacqueline of Bavaria was less efficient to maintain desirable conditions than her cousin of Burgundy, and the exchange of sovereigns ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... the happy extinction of the insurrection by the hanging of the last conspirator, William Garner, reported also, with enthusiastic indignation, the massacre of the Greeks at Constantinople and at Scio; and then the Northern editors, breaking from their usual reticence, pointed out the inconsistency of Southern journals in printing, side by side, denunciations of Mohammedan slave-sales, and advertisements ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Jati consists in the drawing of contradictory conclusions, the raising of false issues or the like with the deliberate intention of defeating an opponent. Nigrahasthana means the exposure of the opponent's argument as involving self-contradiction, inconsistency or the like, by which his defeat is conclusively proved before the people to the glory of the victorious opponent. As to the utility of the description of so many debating tricks by which an opponent might be defeated ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... on this was guilty of the following inconsistency; he pressed the paint carefully out of the brush into the pot. Having thus economized his material, he hurled the pot which contained his economy at "the Johnstone," he then adjourned to the "Peacock," and "away at ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... supposed to migrate into the bodies of beasts, or to revert to the condition of that species of creatures with which each tribe supposes itself to be related by ties of kinship or friendship. With the usual inconsistency of mythical belief, the souls of the dead are spoken of, at other times, as if they inhabited a spiritual world, sometimes a paradise of flowers, sometimes a gloomy place, which mortal men may visit, ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... the world must be appreciated by the evangelist, it must be undermined at its weak places, its inadequacy to interpret all that is present even in the mind which has accepted it—in other words, its inherent inconsistency—must be demonstrated; the attempt must be made to liberate the mind, so that it may be open to the impression of realities which under the conditions supposed it could only encounter with instinctive antipathy. It is necessary, therefore, ...
— The Atonement and the Modern Mind • James Denney
... some commentators accuse Goethe of dramatic inconsistency and of interrupting the sequence of the action, because he makes Faust for a time return to his old speculations, and because Mephistopheles does not at once appear in the shape with which we are so familiar—with his 'red gold-trimmed dress ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... conflict or inconsistency between the treaty and the act of the Congress last cited, it is not necessary to invoke the well-settled principle that in case of such conflict the statute ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 8: Grover Cleveland, First Term. • Grover Cleveland
... Bible is filled throughout with references to clouds, stars, colours, and beauty, and often the mention of these is essential to the meaning of the parable or the message in which they occur. Here one must needs see the inconsistency of people who believe in the Bible, and yet deny us a right to talk about what we do not see, and for that matter what they do not see, either. Who shall forbid my heart to sing: "Yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret place; his pavilion ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
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